Badger Hair Caught in Barbed Wire

Question: Why did the badger squeeze under the fence?

Answer: To get to the other side of course!

When they leave their setts to go looking for food, badgers follow their own badger paths. These paths go through woods, along hedgerows, and across fields. On the coast, badger paths often go along the tops of cliffs! Where hedges, walls or fences cross the badger's path, the badger finds a way to get through them, over them, or under them.

Can you see the place where badgers get under the fence in this picture? It's the spot where there is a large patch of bare soil on either side of the fence. This is where the badgers have scratched away the earth to make a gap to squeeze through. The badgers in this area like to go looking for food in the rough grass and brambles along the top of the cliffs - and a fence is not going to stop them!

How can we tell that it is badgers who squeeze under the fence here, and not foxes or rabbits?

Well, we need to get down and have a look at the strand of barbed wire that runs along the bottom of the fence. What we find is that there are a lot of animal hairs caught in the barbs. These aren't just any animal hairs - they're badger hairs.

Look carefully at the hairs in the top left part of the picture. Can you see that they have white tips, then a band of black, and then they are white again? Hairs like this come from the back or sides of a badger. This is why badgers look grey - because of the mixture of black and white on each of their hairs.

Badger hairs can also be found in other places. Sometimes hairs get caught in the thorns of brambles. And often, you can find badger hairs outside badger sett entrances. These hairs may be lying loose on the ground, or they may be stuck in the soil with bits of old bedding material.

Badgers have a thick coat of fur, and very tough skin underneath that. So hopefully, it doesn't hurt them too much when they have to squeeze under barbed wire fences.

Where next on the trail of the badger? Well, the badgers follow their paths to look for food, so let's see if we can find signs of where they have been feeding . . .