Arguably the most charismatic British mammal, the Eurasian badger (Meles Meles) is the tank among our mammal species. Able to climb, swim, and sprint at up to 45mph, they’re brilliantly adapted for any situation. Strict omnivorous, over 50% of a badger’s diet is exclusively Earthworms, although they will eat pretty much anything. From fruit, nuts and leaves to toads and bees’ nests. Even hedgehogs and rabbits are hunted down and killed.
However, owing to their nocturnal habits and secretive nature, they’re often hard to see in the flesh, normally found at the side of the road as a lifeless body. Luckily for us though, they leave signs of their presence everywhere, and this blog post will give you a brief introduction into what signs you’re
looking for, because they’re probably closer than you think…
Where to start looking?
Being such adaptable animals, badgers readily colonise a range of habitats: forests, uplands, meadows, and increasingly urban gardens. Their preferred habitat though is deciduous woodland (a woodland that annually sheds its leaves) with a nearby open green space (e.g. arable field) where they forage for earthworms. That said, they’re not that picky, and anywhere where cover meets open land is the best place to start looking.
First, go directly to where the woodland meets the open area, as this is where they’ll build the bulk of their sett. Look into the trees, for large ‘ant hills’: piles of often sandy-coloured earth that’s been excavated, called spoil/spoil heaps. They stand out surprisingly well. Try and be as thorough as possible, walk round as much of the border as you can, scan the trees and scrub for those little humps.
It does work-the first sett I found was only because I noticed a little hill of earth in some bushes and decided to investigate.
Signs further from the sett:
If you’ve had no luck, then zoom out and look for signs further from the sett. The first of these is a path/run. Being low-slung animals, badgers are a bit like the brooms of the forest, and once they’ve walked along a certain route a few times, they can wear away the vegetation and topsoil. The paths can be quite long, although are much more obvious closer to the sett.
The most obvious have the top layer of earth rubbed off, exposing the lighter soil underneath. But look out for the less-used ones too, where the vegetation has been parted. Through thick cover they’re around 35cm tall. This can help separate them from paths made by deer and foxes, which’re less defined, and much narrower. No matter the size though, any path is worth investigating.
Another sign are tracks. Badgers can travel >22km to forage in one night, so it’s a good indicator far from the sett. Their tracks are middle-sized, with a broad, stout interdigital (middle) pad and often have long claw marks. The main way to tell them from foxes or a cats though is to look at the toes: badgers are the only ones to have five toes, unless you find one made by something similar (e.g. a fox) that has a disease like polydactyly. But this is extremely rare.
Not always reliable but found far from the sett are the marks left from where the badgers have been foraging. Because so much of their diet is earthworms, they do a lot of digging around, leaving very messy areas of turned over mud and roots, which’re hard to miss.
Unlike rabbits and foxes, when badgers dig, they can make quite a conical hole, matching the shape of their nose, whereas rabbits and foxes leave a more rectangular one.
Sometimes accompanying these are latrines. A warning to other roaming badgers and predators that they’re stepping into someone’s land, they’re made most often at the border of a badger clan’s territory, quite a distance from their sett. Very hygienic animals, they create a little hole beforehand unlike other animals, and from looking at the scat itself, you can even determine what it’s eaten. After eating a lot of worms (the most common type of scat) it’s very smooth, like a chocolate mousse, whereas if they’ve been eating something like beetles it’ll be dark, and any remains like exoskeletons are quite obvious (I’ve even found one with sweetcorn in before!).
Getting closer…
The closer you get to the sett, the more numerous and clear these signs will be. If you think you’ve found some already, then confirmation that the area you’re in has badgers living their could lie just at the bottom of a wire fence.
Let me explain… Badgers are hairy, and don’t care about fences. They push their way under most wire fences, so about ruler height and below on them, always check for bits of fur caught, it’s so much more common than you think. To tell if it is actually badger fur and not cat or dog, roll it between your finger and thumb. Dog and cat hair will feel smooth and cylindrical, while badger hair is rough and angular. Though appearing grey when together, individual hairs are around 2/5 black in the middle, 2/5 white at one end, and 1/5 white at the other.
Is the sett active or not?
Assuming you’ve found the sett, you might wonder if there are actually badgers using it, because a surprising amount of the time badger setts are found vacated, for whatever reason.
The first hint is how clean it is. An active badger sett will have a nice wide, smooth open entrance, clear of any vegetation. However, if you find an entrance with plants growing in front of or inside of it, it shows you it’s not been used for a while.
On the topic of keeping clean, bedding is another sign of an active sett. Being the germaphobes they are, (not literally, otherwise they wouldn’t eat worms or live in tunnels made of mud…) they regularly clean their setts, taking out old bedding material (grass/hay) and dumping it outside the sett, replacing it with clean stuff. Search the setts spoil heaps for any hay etc randomly dumped there, you can bet it was dragged out of the sett and put there.
Although very clean animals, badgers do smell pretty strongly sometimes (they don’t have Lynx after all) and sometimes when around an active sett long enough, you’ll get a faint musty smell of a badger, which you only get in active areas. The good thing is it’s very distinctive from the smell of fox, which smells almost exactly like weed.
Badger, Fox or Rabbit?
Badgers, rabbits and foxes all live in underground tunnel systems, and sometimes share one (I visit one where a fox couple live peacefully with a badger clan). So how do you tell who’s inside?
Out of the three, badgers have the biggest entrances, and the hole is normally shaped like a ‘D’ on its side, while fox ones are a bit smaller, won’t have the characteristic ‘D’ shape or be as smooth/clear of plants. Outside fox earths, you can also find the remains of prey they’ve killed, while badgers keep their homes clean.
Rabbit warrens on the other hand can be a similar shape and size to badgers’ setts and can have large spoil heaps in front of them too. The best way to tell if it’s the entrance to a rabbit warren is to look inside, a badger sett will stay consistently large and go straight, whereas a rabbit warren will get narrower straight away, and veer off sharply.
I hope this was useful-any questions feel free to ask them here, or on Twitter/Instagram! :)
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