#84 Badger by Kerry Metcalfe
Meet Kerry Metcalfe, Assistant Forestry Manager and Scarborough Field Naturalist recorder!
Kerry works as Assistant Forestry Manager for a forestry consultancy based in Yorkshire and was previously Regulations & Incentives Support Officer at the Forestry Commission. Outside work, she volunteers for Forestry England surveying badger activity, walks the Fordon butterfly transect for Yorkshire Butterfly Conservation and surveys Woodcock for the BTO. Kerry was Volunteer Butterfly Transect Coordinator for Yorkshire Wildlife Trust throughout 2024 and is currently mammal and reptile recorder for Scarborough Field Naturalists Society.
Kerry can be contacted by email at mammals@scarboroughfieldnats.co.uk.
Kerry’s chosen species is the European Badger Meles meles. European Badgers are terrestrial, fossorial mustelids and the UK’s largest land predator. For most people they are a cryptic species, with sightings limited to the occasional flash of black, grey and white disappearing into undergrowth or, sadly, as traffic casualties. Despite this apparent rarity, they are widely distributed throughout the England and Wales, and populations have been (very) roughly estimated at ca485,000. Durham University is currently exploring new methods of data collection to assess population abundance, so we may see updates to this estimation in the coming years.
Badgers are predominantly nocturnal, usually leaving their setts in the early evening and returning early morning. Their activity is affected by lifecycle and other factors such as food availability and environmental temperature. Unsurprisingly then, the seasons are a key influence, with more activity seen during the warmer months when foraging is optimal, and less in the colder winter months (Cresswell and Harris, 1988b). Though badgers don’t hibernate, they do enter a state of torpor and can sleep for days or even weeks during cold months, surviving off fat reserves. Like most children, however, it seems that it’s never too snowy for young badgers to play outside, as the following camera trap footage of these 2023 cubs shows.
Badgers are social animals, and their setts are frequently shared by mixed age/sex individuals, forming a group, or clan. Within the group, grooming is an important social activity, and individuals will often spend time cleaning themselves and each other after emerging on an evening. This can result in an array of different (and daft) postures, as this camera trap footage shows [Clip: grooming]. Each group of badgers has a range, which is demarcated using latrines. As badgers have poor eyesight, they rely on their excellent sense of smell, and latrines are the perfect way (if you’re a badger) to communicate a range of information – think of it as badger Facebook. For example, latrines can tell other badgers, particularly those from other groups, where the boundary of a group range is, or they can advertise the breeding status of an individual (Buesching et al., 2016; Stewart et al., 2001, 2002; Buesching and Macdonald, 2001; Roper et al., 1986). Badgers breed using delayed implantation, so whilst they might mate at any time through the year, the fertilised egg (called a blastocyst) pauses development and is only implanted into the womb when triggered by hormones around December/January time. Gestation takes around 7 weeks, and cubs are usually born between late January and late March. Cubs are born altricial, meaning they’re born under-developed, quite helpless and need a lot of care. Accordingly, they remain in the sett for the first 8 to 10 weeks, after which they begin to explore the outer world. This camera trap footage shows the third day that these 2025 cubs have ventured out of the sett. At this point they’re still very small and remain close to mum.
Badgers are perhaps best-known for their ability to dig, and within their group range they may create multiple setts, from large, multi-entrance ‘main’ setts, to small single-entrance ‘outlier’ setts (Thornton, 1988). Setts can remain active for many, many years – this author has revisited setts in current use that were known to be active 20-30 years ago, whilst others have observed that setts recorded in previous centuries are still showing signs of activity. Setts can also be found in some surprising places. Across Yorkshire, they’ve been observed on top of and even in the side of cliffs, right next to a river, a few metres from roads, and going under, round and popping out at the top of a very large boulder. As excellent housekeepers, badgers regularly air their bedding, which usually made up of leaves, moss and grass. The task of dragging bedding out of the sett, laying it out to dry and then taking back in may seem laborious, but this process helps to kill off parasites such as fleas and keep the sett and its occupants clean and healthy. The clumsy yet determined process of moving aired or new bedding around is fun to observe.
Badgers have long featured in folklore and fairytale, often being represented as persistent and wise, and given a variation on the nickname ‘Brock’, thought to originate from old English, Gaelic and Celtic. Most of us have read the exploits of wise old Badger, Mole, Ratty and naughty Toad in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind In The Willows (1908), or Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Mr Tod (1912), where Tommy Brock the badger is a troublesome neighbour who steals Mr Tod’s house. This latter depiction of badgers as a nuisance is art imitating life, as the UK has a long and unpleasant history of persecuting badgers for ‘sport’, as vermin and spreaders of disease, so much so that special legislation (Protection of Badgers Act 1992) was enacted to afford badgers additional protection in comparison with other wildlife. Sadly, whilst illegal baiting and digging of badgers has not yet been consigned to the history books, it is a thankfully rare occurrence dealt with as a serious wildlife crime. In recent years, research on badgers has increased significantly – the badger population at Wytham Woods in Oxford are the most studied in the world – adding to our knowledge and understanding. Nonetheless, badgers remain a contentious species for many, most obviously evidenced by the science and debate around badger-to-cattle bTB transmission, and the resulting, itself highly contentious, cull. Here in Yorkshire, badgers escaped the cull, and strategy is now moving towards vaccination as an effective means of ending bTB transmission.
There’s a great deal more that could be said about badger biology, behaviour and lifestyle, and those wishing to know more could start with the Badger Trusts website or look out for good books – Ernest Neal and Chris Cheeseman’s ‘Badgers’ (1996) is a reliable, informative and comprehensive publication.
Finally, as badger cubs grow, so they get more boisterous. This can lead to harassed parents, a lot of noise and some very rough-looking playing. Watch out for the bonus footage at the end!
Badgers became a particular interest of Kerry’s in 2020, with many evenings lost to observing activity at local setts. This quickly led to a passion for finding, recording and monitoring setts and badger behaviour, which in turn resulted in badgers becoming the focus of her PGCert Ecology main project in 2021. This project also introduced Kerry to camera traps, an invaluable resource since they allow us to observe, with minimal disturbance, the natural behaviour of wild animals. Since then, she has continued to grow her interest/obsession, and to date has recorded over 250 setts (and counting) in Yorkshire. She also continues to collect camera trap footage from several different setts, capturing fantastic film, some of which is shared here. She regularly shares camera trap footage of badgers and other species on her Instagram account (@kerrymetcalfe1) for those wishing to see more.
Recording and monitoring
As mammal recorder (excluding bats, cetaceans and pinnipeds) for Scarborough Field Naturalists Society, Kerry accepts any and all relevant records, including road casualties. Scarborough Field Naturalists collect records in VC 61/62 (the Scarborough area).
Further information and acknowledgements
NEYEDC would like to thank Kerry for her time and expertise in helping to create this blog.
References:
Buesching, C. D. and Macdonald, D. W. (2001) ‘Scent-Marking Behaviour of the European Badger (Meles Meles): Resource Defence or Individual Advertisement?’, in Marchlewska-Koj, A., Lepri, J. J., and Müller-Schwarze, D. (eds), Chemical Signals in Vertebrates 9, Boston, MA, Springer US, pp. 321–327 [Online]. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4615-0671-3_43 (Accessed 4 September 2022).
Buesching, C. D., Newman, C., Service, K., Macdonald, D. W. and Riordan, P. (2016) ‘Latrine marking patterns of badgers (Meles meles) with respect to population density and range size’, Ecosphere, vol. 7, no. 5, p. e01328 [Online]. DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.1328.
Cresswell, W. J. and Harris, S. (1988b) ‘The effects of weather conditions on the movements and activity of badgers (Meles meles) in a suburban environment - CRESSWELL - 1988 - Journal of Zoology - Wiley Online Library’, Journal of Zoology, vol. 216, pp. 187–194.
Roper, T. J., Shepherdson, D. J. and Davies, J. M. (1986) ‘Scent Marking with Faeces and Anal Secretion in the European Badger (Meles meles): Seasonal and Spatial Characteristics of Latrine Use in Relation to Territoriality’, Behaviour, Brill, vol. 97, no. 1/2, pp. 94–117.
Stewart, P. D., Macdonald, D. W., Newman, C. and Cheeseman, C. L. (2001) ‘Boundary faeces and matched advertisement in the European badger ( Meles meles ): a potential role in range exclusion’, Journal of Zoology, vol. 255, no. 2, pp. 191–198 [Online]. DOI: 10.1017/S0952836901001261.
Stewart, P. D., MacDonald, D. W., Newman, C. and Tattersall, F. H. (2002) ‘Behavioural mechanisms of information transmission and reception by badgers, Meles meles, at latrines’, Animal Behaviour, vol. 63, no. 5, pp. 999–1007 [Online]. DOI: 10.1006/anbe.2001.1990.
Thornton, P. S. (1988) ‘Density and distribution of Badgers in south-west England–a predictive model’, Mammal Review, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 11–23 [Online]. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2907.1988.tb00066.x.