2 Animals i want to observe in their natural habitat

[Nicolas]

I'm a Zookeeper, so naturally my love is foremost to observe animals and if I can in their natural habitat.
If I ask my parents they always say the same thing, Nico you were always looking around to find a snake a snale a frog or anything that moves and crawls.
Once when i was very small i found a scorpion (the yellow small and nasty once) in Greece and picked it up my parents nearly died on the spot by a heart attack and my mother hit it out of my hand

So here are 3 local (Ireland) animals I want to see in their natural habitat:

Badger (never seen one)
Fox (I have seen plenty, but not for long)

Badgers are obvious, they are pretty cool and I have never ever seen one, I think there is a real sensible approach to find one but I will have to read up and see where I can find them in Ireland, any help is welcome.

Fox shouldn't be too difficult, but my goal is a little higher set, I want to find if possible an active and well used den and if possible observe them with their offspring.

 

[mace242]

I'm a Zookeeper, so naturally my love is foremost to observe animals and if I can in their natural habitat.
If I ask my parents they always say the same thing, Nico you were always looking around to find a snake a snale a frog or anything that moves and crawls.
Once when i was very small i found a scorpion (the yellow small and nasty once) in Greece and picked it up my parents nearly died on the spot by a heart attack and my mother hit it out of my hand

So here are 3 local (Ireland) animals I want to see in their natural habitat:

Badger (never seen one)
Fox (I have seen plenty, but not for long)

Badgers are obvious, they are pretty cool and I have never ever seen one, I think there is a real sensible approach to find one but I will have to read up and see where I can find them in Ireland, any help is welcome.

Fox shouldn't be too difficult, but my goal is a little higher set, I want to find if possible an active and well used den and if possible observe them with their offspring.

I feel all kind of smug and guilty - I get both of those right near my house. We have a den with cubs and badger sett with a few young too.

I'd suggest starting with badgers. As long as the wind is in the right direction, from them to you, and you're still and quiet (with no silhouette) then you should be ok. They have rubbish eyesight but their hearing and smell are good.

Good luck.

 

[Nicolas]

I feel all kind of smug and guilty - I get both of those right near my house. We have a den with cubs and badger sett with a few young too.

I'd suggest starting with badgers. As long as the wind is in the right direction, from them to you, and you're still and quiet (with no silhouette) then you should be ok. They have rubbish eyesight but their hearing and smell are good.

Good luck.

ah you lucky sog
The young once must be cute as hell.

 

[RobertRogers]

See Pablo's wildlife blog for baby foxes in a den he found - very cute!

 

[myotis]

I think there is a real sensible approach to find one but I will have to read up and see where I can find them in Ireland, any help is welcome.

Ah, something I can actually help with.

I'm not sure what has happened to the badger population after the culling associated with TB, but the key to finding your badger sett, is to get a map and mark on it, all the potential badger signs you find when out walking. You can find examples on badger signs by googling, but I can also suggest some books that might help

If this is mixed farmland or pasture plus areas of woodland then it should be fairly easy.

You need to walk both sides of every linear feature (hedges, fences etc) and check out isolated features in middle of fields, pay particular attention to field corners.

Start by marking all the animal path ways (mammal motorways I call them), mark any badger pad marks and the direction they are travelling in. Where an animal has pushed its way under a hedge or barbed wire fence, check for any pieces of hair that have been caught (Badger guard hair s very distinctive, check on google). Mark everything up on your map.

Look for badger dung pits, badgers normally, but not always dig small pits to defeacate into, and the dung is usually a sloppy brown mess with a distinctive musky smell. Mark these on the map as well. You will also find feeding scrapes and although these are often distinctly "badger like" most are made by rabbits. The badger ones look are generally larger and much more untidy than the rabbit ones.

Going back to the pathway bit, although you are marking every mammal pathway down on your map, those paths with badger evidence on them need to be distinguished by using a double line, or specific colour on your map.

While doing a detailed survey for signs like this, you will also find setts. usually a single to many flattened oval holes, with a large mound of earth outside. Digging about a bit in this mound should show some badger pad marks and some hair trapped in the soil.

Count the holes an mark them on your map, active holes should show some signs of fresh digging.

All of this is much easier to do in the Spring and Autumn as badgers are at their most active and vegetation is lower. In the summer you will need to work harder, moving vegetation aside , crawling into denser areas of woodland. The setts are commonly on slopes or steeper hedgebanks, but again not always. In the Winter when the vegetation is lower. Glens and Valleys can be surveyed with binoculars where you scan the opposite slope to the one you are on for signs of digging.

If there are badgers present, then this sort of search should find some signs. If you don't find a sett, then the detail you have marked on your map together with a basic understanding of where badgers build setts, should help you pinpoint the spots that still need a more detailed survey, or those bits that need re-surveying.

And as for foxes, well strangely, as you do you badger survey you will find foxes as well. The dens tend to have upright oval entrances and the faeces a have a different shape, smell and content, but its almost impossible not to find foxes dens while searching for badger setts.

I hope that helps, but reading about badger ecology and behaviour to try and understand how badgers live will help tremendously.

If you can find time to survey the same area (once you have found badgers) at regular intervals, so you "know" this is fresh digging, and that this is the first time you have found a pad mark on this path etc, begin to get a feeling for what "your" badgers are doing, and it becomes an extremely rewarding experience.

Get back to me if google doesn't throw up enough information to get you started.

Graham