Last night a badger was caught on one of the security cameras bustling off into the undergrowth down the side of the driveway/track/ditch.
The weather has been brutal here for a number of weeks, punishing us with the full range of named storms. This has led to some of the wildlife being a bit more visible than normal – the other week I had to slow down while driving along as a couple of rabbits chose a really daft time to try to cross the road.
I’m hoping that the badger has taken up residence here, as at least it shows that we’re not the only things daft enough to spend a lot of time in this wilderness.
Anyway, last night’s footage was from a camera mounted on the electricity pylon (tall wooden pole with bits taken out of it by careless turf-cutters and their tractors), reasonably high up. The camera’s wireless, just to be clear – I’m not running a cable up the side of the thing of course.
The angle of view wasn’t great, but you can make out enough to know it’s a badger at least.
I decided to try to go one better today, so added another camera at ground level. To make the badger feel more comfortable with its extra surveillance, I designed a stunningly realistic badger-cam so it would blend in.
After careful consideration of the impact on the badger of any uncanny valley-based reaction, with heavy heart I had to tone down the realism just a notch to this:
I’m still not convinced it will be enough to prevent the badger running off into the sunset with the device, but I’m hoping for the best.
To sweeten the already massively alluring deal, I fecked a lot of vegetable peelings into the hedge around the area of last sighting. So with a bit of luck tomorrow will bring some better wildlife videos…
Update: day 2 of badgerwatch has resulted in absolutely nothing. The barcode-furred monster hasn’t made its way past the new camera at all, despite being showered with gifts (well, potato scraps)