Oct 23rd, 2014

Author: donich_admin

The night is dark and full of Badgers….

With apologies to Game of Thrones (my all time favourite show) for the parody quote….

Every night I go out between 8 and 9pm to feed the wildlife. Basically I put two big scoops of peanuts on the ground for the badgers, and one scoop on the bird table for the pine marten. The badgers eat theirs pretty reliably every night, the marten is a bit more sporadic (though on at least one occasion he came early and ate nearly all the badger nuts before they turned up!).

I had a bit of a laugh tonight because I went out about five minutes ago to put the nuts out and I had been beaten to the punch by a badger already there – he had pulled over the cage I put out for the birds and was merrily munching away at the bird seed. We looked at each other for about two minutes and then he decided that discretion was the better part of valour and made off under the hedge. Chances are he will be back in five minutes.

The reason I had to reinstitute the ground cages btw – was because we have a bit of a problem with the little birds this year. The large number of jays at the feeder seem to be keeping them off the nuts, so I have had to make a separate feeding area for them inside a cage with mesh too small for the jays to get through. The jays are amusing to watch though – they used to be very timorous and would be away the moment we came anywhere near the window, but of late they are as bold as brass and won’t disappear unless you actually bang on the glass.