Badgering On

The reclusive badger's presence in Scotland's fields and forests marks both hope and uncertainty for the species

- Jim Crumley

BY the time the occupants of a badger sett on the Highland Edge begin to factor into their daily routine the imminent arrival of winter, the place can acquire something of a comatose aura.

On a night like this one, they might not show face at all, but rather hunker deep down in the warmth and the dry. Deterrents to venturing forth include sleety squalls and a bad-tempered wind barging gusts through the big trees that surround the sett on three sides.

Encouragement for this badger-watcher was an on-off moon somewhere over my shoulder and a wind that was mostly in my face, meaning that if badgers did decide to shrug off their warm underworld for the sodden overworld I inhabit, I was in a good place.

Mine was a spur-of-the-moment enterprise after a chance encounter with a human native who thought the local badgers were struggling and asked if I knew why. I didn’t know they were struggling and didn’t know why, but thought I might take the temperature of a local sett I like, one where I could sit on a low mound with my face to a west wind. A few feet from the top of the mound so that I didn’t break the skyline is where I like to sit.

I don't like hides — for watching badgers or anything else — I don’t climb trees and don’t perch on dykes, cliffs or up ladders. I prefer being part of their landscape, which means not trying to hide from them. It also means keeping a low profile presence, so stillness, silence and a capacity to do nothing at all but watch, listen and think for a few hours are the necessary tools of the job.