Mr Badger's View Site · May 28, 05:27 PM

Looking down at ranch buildings from up on a hill Badgers live underground in burrows called setts. (Learn more about badgers here and here). It’s been my experience that they like to be high up, looking our over the country below. This picture is taken from above a local sett—you can see some of the loose dirt the badger has pushed out in the lower part of the picture. His sett overlooks the buildings below.

A group of badger holes making up the badger sett. A lot of loose soil is piled up around the entries to the holes. A sett is usually made up of more than one hole as you can see here. Badger holes make nice homes for other living things—snakes and frogs perhaps. But I would think they’d take up residence only in abandoned badger setts since badgers tend to be loners.

A hole in the earth with roots dangling I was curious about how far in the hole went but I wasn’t going to stick my hand in. Instead I pointed my camera down the hole and got a picture of the grass roots hanging from the roof of the tunnel.

In times past farmers and ranchers would try to eliminate badgers from their fields because they felt the digging was destructive. Larger animals can trip when their feet land in a hole and the holes can also lead to erosion. This particular badger sett is on a steep slope at the top of a swale. I imagine in years to come the the swale will enlarge and eventually become a wash or watercourse. The digging of the badger might speed up this process and then again it might not.

This badger is welcome to keep lookout over the place. Like some of the newcomers to our area, he has made his home where there’s a nice view. But his home blends in with its surroundings and you have to go looking for it to spot it!

Update: On another visit to the badger sett, I again used my camera to explore the hole. When I first looked at this picture I thought the marks you can see were simply cracks in the dry earthen wall of the tunnel.

Claw marks on the inside of the badger holeBut if you look closely you can see these are claw marks from when the badger was excavating, back when the earth was still damp. Imagine how powerful those diggers must be!

* * *

Previous: Hiding in the grass Next: Web design on the range