In the woodlands on top of a Surrey hill I sit. One direction I can see the view across the fields, and in the opposite direction I can see between the big oaks that are on the edge of the wood. The afternoon is bright but windy. The huge fluffy white clouds make the view more beautiful. They are vast in their size and shape and the blue sky is almost blocked right out, but it is there.
There is a ditch running along by the path for a short distance. I notice from below the brambles that cover the ditch, an incessant stream of wasps coming out, up and away. They also fly into the brambles at a certain point entering from all angles. A closer inspection reveals to me a wasps nest in a hole in the overgrown heap of spoil from the dig out of the ditch. I think to myself that it is a lovely sign to acknowledge in the country, and a lovely sight seeing the wasps come and go too. Now I am up and excited by this sign, I walk down the path in the woods, seeing what other signs I can find and enjoying myself as I know best.
A way off down the path and I presently see something small and white in among the dead leaves, off the main, bare track. I know what it is, and only by the experience of coming across so many. It is the broken eggshell of a woodpigeon, a very common thing to find in the woods at this time of year. So numerous are they in these woods that I can predict my always finding one when I go out everyday, and I do. Coming to the spot I see that it is the larger piece of a safely hatched egg. The edges are neat and chipped small, they are not informally jagged, like that of a plundered egg, robbed from the nest and eaten by a crow or jay
.
Coming out of the woods and into the open meadow on a slope, I climb up it, making my way into the yew trees. Just then, 50 yards ahead a bit of white stands out on the grass. The land here is on chalk and there is plenty of chalk rubble around, but this object is more pure white than the chalk, a more clean colour. Sure enough, as I reach the spot it turns out to be another woodpigeon eggshell. They are the commonest eggshell to be found in this county, then comes the beautiful brown pheasants eggshell, then the thrushes and blackbirds blue eggshells with markings.
I leave the shell behind me as I make my way up into the yews on the slope. I have an idea there are
Badgers around this area because I have seen their footprints in the mud, and I want to find there sett. By sheer luck and without much tracking I come upon a big clue. A mound in of earth appearing white from the chalk rubble in it calls out to me up ahead.
Arriving at the spot, there is just one hole, strange, I think. If a
Badger lives in this old well worn hole, then there is likely to be more holes in the area. I look around the hole for clues. The
Badger will often leave hair everywhere it goes, so this is what I always look for to affirm my suspicions, although at a glance, the immediate area is teeming with clues that there are
Badgers living here.
The hole has been dug through the hard chalk that lays just beneath the earth on the forest floor. The
Badger has the power to dig through the hard layer, and the spoil dug out from the hole periodically is mostly chalk rubble. I know what I will find amongst the earth and rubble on the spoil heap or on the path down into the hole. I grab a handful of earth and stones, sift it lightly through my fingers and pick out two black, white and brown wiry hairs.
On the spoil mound there is the furrow in the middle that is commonly seen at
Badger setts. This furrow is caused as the
Badger drags the soil back from the path leading into its tunnel and out onto the mound. At the very entrance to the hole on some small roots that poke through there is another
Badger hair. This tunnel is definitely in use, There is also no spider web across the entrance hole, affirming that it is being used.
Leading away from the right hand side of this entrance, there is a very faint track running off under a big yew tree. The track would hardly be discernable if it were not for the ever so slight rut that the
Badgers have caused coming and going. It shows up a touch lighter than the rest off the forest floor, and the leaves that are falling at this time of year are lying a little flatter from the pads of the
Badgers than the other fallen leaves about. I will explore this path in a minute.
Just behind the hole there is a dead oak whose bark is gradually expanding and contracting in the heat and damp and cold. The bark falls to the ground occasionally and leaves another patch of the trunk bare, the
Badgers killed this tree, for at the base there is no bark from being scratched away, and there are the signs of recent claw marks. The ground on a preferred side has been padded down more than the rest, this is where the
Badger comes to sharpen and clean his claws by stretching up to scratch at the bark. This is a typical sign of a
Badgers sett, there will often be such a tree near their holes that they use as a scratching post. There are even
Badger hairs on this trunk.
I follow the track leading away from the hole. As I get on my hands and knees to get under the very low yew branches, the track leads me down a dip and up again. Coming up the other side I now see another hole, then another as I get nearer. I think these are the main chambers as I find another hole totalling three in this area. Each entrance has the characteristic mound of spoil outside with a furrow in it. There is hair everywhere. I suspect that there will be
Badger hairs on its other paths that run further away from its sett too. This could help me in future when tracking
Badgers.
And so my mind wanders, thinking about all the obstacles on a
Badgers route that would catch its hair or rub against its body causing its hairs to drop on the path, twigs over hanging, stumps or fallen branches that get in the way of its path and cannot be moved, encroaching brambles or briar with thorns that the hairs will catch on. Just for fun I see what the chances are of me taking a handful of earth and leaves from a track to see if there are any hairs left on it. So this I do, and I pick out a wavy, stiff hair. I smile to myself and look around for the other clue I have in my mind. The
Badger’s latrine. They are often at a short distance from the sett and are identified as small pits on the ground in groups or singly. A worn path leads into the brambles above the sett, but I do not take it, for I am sure that is where the latrines are, besides, there is no need, there are so many clues to find around the sett.
Badgers will often dig latrines where they happen to be out on their wanderings aswell as having a site near the sett. The latrines can often be seen abroad in the country, in woods and along verges and by hedgerows, once it is known what they look like.
I leave the
Badgers sett and start to head out of the eerie yew trees. The sound of great tits, blue tits and long-tail tits is above me in the canopies. The long-tail tits are busy working on the buds, flying to and fro keeping generally in their group, they are not bothered by me below, they are too busy to care, and so I get good views of them like acrobats with their balancing pole tail feathers. The other tits are cautious and curious. One great tit comes closer to me, and I watch him as he watches me. He keeps his eyes on me most of the time, and I find it funny to see his little head twitching and turning to the sounds of the others. It is not apparent to me yet but presently I see why there are so many tits in the trees and bushes around me. There is a nuthatch sounding its rich chirp chirp chirp alarm call, it has seen me, and I get a brief look at it just before it flies over my head and away into the green. So the tits are hanging round the nuthatch for nut scraps, I think to myself. This can often be seen in the woods, if you are aware enough.
There is a fallen yew tree that I can see through the bushes, The white chalk shows up in the roots. The sheer enormity of this tree laying on the ground with roots wrenched up is amazing to me. In the chalk rubble that the roots have grown around I pick out with my fingers, a smooth round lump of chalk. It is a Micraster, in geological terms, or the fossilized test of a heart shaped sea urchin. Not the first one I have found on these hills.
The way the trees and bushes hang in the woods often dictates my route, I choose the easiest way through the forest when I am most relaxed. The location of the natural obstacles often leads me to very interesting discoveries, even the tufts of grass in the meadows will often induce me to take an easier route between them, but I still wander, I cannot help the natural tendency of curiosity in me.
It is this tendency that leads me to follow the trail of a
Rabbit from its look-out mound. I notice how it sits on the moss that covers the mound, which ways its body faces and where it puts its paws to hop up onto the mound. The trail is ever so faint and tests my knowledge of the
Rabbit and gives me an insight to what it thinks. I am lead, eyes straining and frequently looking behind me at the trail, out into the meadow on the slope again. I give up the trail as it disappears among the brambles, and make my way onwards into the advance of the early evening.
Woodlandguy
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