Badger - Meles meles

With it’s striking black and white striped head the Badger, also known as Brocks, are immediately recognisable and one of Britain’s favourite mammals.

Habitat

Their preferred habitat is woodlands and grasslands but they are frequent visitors to urban areas; natural caves and embankments are often the site of setts.

Description The stripes on the head of the Badger are its most identifiable feature and run from the nose to their shoulders. Their stocky body is grey and they have black legs, throat, neck, chest and stomach. Their tails vary slightly in colour from a light grey to almost black. Males and females can be difficult to tell apart as the only difference is in size with the female being slightly smaller than the male.

Biology

Despite being easily recognised Badgers are difficult to spot as they are nocturnal, on rare occasions they will feed during the day but only when food is in short supply, normally during the day they rest in their setts. At night they may travel a fair distance in search of food their favourite is earthworms but they will also eat nuts, fruit, bulbs, insects, frogs, rodents, birds, eggs, lizards and seeds. Due to their thick skin and long powerful claws they are one of the few species that eat Hedgehogs. As they are mostly seen at night when they roam to feed, they are rarely seen in their natural habitat and mostly seen in gardens and on roads where unfortunately many are killed.

Badgers lives in large family groups, or clans, with a dominant male (boar) and a breeding female (sow), they live in setts which is a complex system of chambers and tunnels underground with nest areas lined with dry grass, straw and dead leaves; often the nesting material is carried out of the sett during the day to be aired. Setts are passed on through generations and the longer a group lives there the larger the sett becomes; some are known to have many entrances and burrows and to be a very large size.

Female Badgers often display delayed implantation where after mating at any time of the year the fertilised eggs are kept in suspended animation until a time when temperature and food conditions are at an optimum for successfully raising the cubs. The young cubs are boisterous and are more easily seen when they emerge from the sett as they play fight with each other.

Threats

Road casualties are one biggest cause of Badger deaths and it has been estimated that as many as 50,000 badgers meet their deaths in Britain through road traffic accidents every year. Badgers have been considered a pest in the past due to crop damage and their digging causing subsidence. They are also the victim of a blood sport called badger baiting where badgers are forced to fight to the death against dogs, and have been persecuted in the past by digging, setting snares, having setts blocked and shooting. It has long been believed that Badgers pass bovine TB to cattle, this linked is still being investigated, and Badgers have been culled in an attempt to prevent its spread.

Conservation

The Badger is protected under Schedule 6 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981). It is fully protected in the UK by the Protection of Badger Act 1992 making it illegal to kill, injure, take or possess a badger or to interfere with a badger sett.