It was still daylight as we settled into position; both of us standing with our backs against tree trunks to minimise the obvious human silhouette. Blackbirds were alarming frantically; probably the first stirrings of the Tawny Owl, that was soon hooting mournfully from the branches directly above our heads, had triggered their agitation. A Nuthatch suddenly began trilling nearby, the first one we’d heard in this particular piece of woodland. Crows and Rooks cawed as daylight faded and the woodland was lit by the eerie light of the moon, filtered through a thin layer of cloud. The eyes start to play tricks on the mind at this time of day – was that a movement in the undergrowth? is that shape a tree stump or something much more interesting? Then it happened; a flash of white in the gloom. Then nothing…no, wait, there it was again – this time appearing from behind a tree trunk on a bend in the track through the wood. Sprinting up the track straight towards us; not the Fox that we’ve seen on all our previous visits to this site, but a Badger cub. Hurtling at breakneck speed. What’s it doing? That question was soon answered…it was coming to investigate me. For 10 seconds I was within inches of the cub as it sniffed my legs. Not sure whether it was going to bite me or scent mark my feet, I moved my head fractionally because it was so close that I couldn’t see it. Then it was off, back down the track. The movement had revealed my identity. I should probably be offended that it didn’t seem too concerned by my scent…something gleefully pointed out by Sarah, who’d had a grandstand view of the proceedings from 10 feet away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was still daylight as we settled into position; both of us standing with our backs against tree trunks to minimise the obvious human silhouette. Blackbirds were alarming frantically; probably the first stirrings of the Tawny Owl, that was soon hooting mournfully from the branches directly above our heads, had triggered their agitation. A Nuthatch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1390,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions\/1390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}