A Badger Skull

Rocks are not the only things that you can find on the spoil heap outside a badger sett entrance. Sometimes, you may find a badger's skull!

How does a badger skull end up lying on the ground outside a badger sett? Well, when a badger dies of old age or for some other natural reason, it usually dies underground in its sett. The badger's body decomposes, and after a while, only the bones are left.

Some time later, another badger gets the urge to dig out all the old bedding material from the chamber in which the other badger died. Out comes all the old, rotting bedding material, along with some earth - and the skull. The skull rolls down to the bottom of the spoil heap, and is left lying among the rocks and leaf litter.

That is just how I found the skull in the photo above. It is lying upside down, so you can see the jaw bone and some of the teeth. To show you what a badger skull looks like the right way up, here is a drawing:

For the next sign on the trail of the badger, we will have one last look at the spoil heap . . .