Woodlife Trails

The torrential rains on Friday brought some flooding to the local wood. The water running off the fields gathered in the catchment area I call The Swamp on the far easterly point of East wood. This is the first time it had been properly filled since last winter. It normally harbours a couple of Moorhens and Coots, but I didn’t see any today.

It was when I was walking up to this area that I noticed a couple of Badger tracks in the soft mud. The Badger sett is about 400 yards away to the north of the wood. I seldom see tracks in the wood itself although I know they must visit.

I followed the track about 20 yards up the rise and past the swamp. One individual track showed that the Badger might have turned towards the swamp. Whether it actually went down for a drink or a look I wasn’t too sure as I couldn’t see evidence by the water’s edge; however the trail resumed a little further along. I lost the track at the top of the rise as the mud gave way to grass.

I decided to back track and once I got my eye in, I picked up a meandering trail circumnavigating a large puddle. I was really pleased that I was building up a picture of why the Badger was walking the where it did. Firstly it appeared to keep to the right of the path using the undergrowth as cover, then crossed into the centre of the track to avoid a large, deep puddle, possibly dipping down into the swamp to the right, finally resuming a wander again to the right of the path to the top of the rise and then off into the field.

At one point I lost the track. I did the “lost track procedure” making a circular search of a couple of yards around the last track, but there was no sign. I remembered what Max Maxwell had told us on what to do next. “If you can’t find anything after this – sit down and have a cup of tea” which was exactly what I did. I really wanted to find out where the badger had come into the woods. There are 3 main paths into this part of the wood about 250 yards away (rarely used but paths nonetheless.) I searched those areas for any sign, but there was nothing that I could see. I had to be content with a 40 yard trail.

When I got home I looked up the stride length and registration of tracks in the Brown, Lawrence & Pope Tracks book. The approximate 6 inch stride and indirect registration told me the Badger was probably walking. It also said that a walking Badger might show fur signs from the underneath of the body in the mud, and I wish I’d known this before as I would have paid more attention to it.

My last job today in the woods was to finish off the Bucksaw I started last week. I sanded it off and tried it out on a piece of tough old Hornbeam. I was delighted it that it made short work of gnawing through a 4 inch piece. I notice the blade was bending a little at one end, so a bit of adjustment to the joints on the cross piece will have to be made. I’ll do that at a later date.
The site tweaking is more or less finished. If there any problems, please let me know in a comment.

Thanks for the visit.

Pablo.