One of our clients has kindly given us permission to use footage gathered from site… and it’s fantastic!
The badgers seen here are just outside an entrance hole of their main sett, at least three individuals have been identified using this hole from various different images and video footage captured.
For anyone that has spent time watching badgers, you will know that they spend a great deal of their time grooming and in this video we can see a commonly observed behavioural activity wherein two individuals are grooming each other, commonly referred as ‘allo-grooming‘, just outside the entrance of their sett. Grooming plays an important role in badger health and interestingly, it can be seen that where a badger cannot reach itself to groom, predominantly on its back and shoulders, an individual in its colony will come to an allo-grooming session to focus specifically on those areas. The reciprocity is astonishing.
We would never have been able to see into the behavioural world of badgers without the innovative technology of trail cameras. These pick up movement and record activity for us to review and understand more about sett activity, territory and seasonal behavioural changes in badger colonies such as sows bedding down for cub season!