2 March, 2024
A wet night, like the night before, which showed no badger activity on either the trailcam or, as far as I could tell, on CCTV. I deployed some additional trailcams to see if I could determine if the badgers are entering and exiting the wood where I think they might be doing so.
This morning, after rain for most the night, I had hours of CCTV to look through but one of the trailcams helpfully indicated what times to check for passing badgers.
Two left via our bit of the wood at half past midnight (video below) and a third may have followed five hours later, unless one returned and left a second time. An empty trailcam photo suggested it was possible--sometimes they don't trigger fast enough.
Interestingly, the badgers didn't appear to transit the wood as I thought they might. There were signs of foraging on a path in the wood but not, on trailcam anyway, of their exiting the wood into an adjacent field on what has at times in the past been a through route.
Ten minutes after the "third" badger passed the nearest trailcams (above) another appeared on the far side of the wood. The sett it likely came from is in a field at the edge of another nearby and much larger wood a few fields away, and is where I think last year's visiting family may have resided at the time.