Fox v Two Badgers

Our local fox has taken to foraging in our garden just before dark to gain an advantage over two Badgers that also visit on a regular basis

Last night he was munching away on blackberry sandwiches and all was going well until the first of the two Badgers arrived at a lower level.

Next up was a second Badger that muscled its way into the tasty stash.  The young Fox rightly backed off and exited stage left

The lower Badger soon realised that all the goodies were on the top wall and his mate was demolishing them fast

  

So it was now his turn to muscle his way in to claim his share of the stash.

All of this might seem to be a bit tough on the young Fox but he is smart enough to know that the badgers will soon have moved on allowing him to return later as he always does to clear up what  they have missed.

Badger Interaction

Our Badger interaction images do not come along easily as when foraging they tend to keep some distance apart to avoid confrontation and in the case of the two seen below the larger right hand male tends to set the distance and drives the female or submissive male off when they are too close.

In this case the second Badger has found the last food source so the dominant male has moved in trying to take control but he is too late as the second already has a face full of sandwich which it take away as it leaves !

The above image shows my camera, wide angle lens and tripod set up early in the evening for taking remote shutter activated images of Fox or badger later in the evening !

For this shoot my 14-24mm wide angle lens is set to capture interaction between two badger as they compete for a peanut butter sandwich hidden behind the log on top of the garden wall.

Enter the second badger which has got scent of the sandwich.

It moves in while checking out the location of the dominant male.

The sandwich is claimed just in time as the male has got wind of it too

So the second Badger claims the prize and I get my introduction interaction shot which is a crop of the above image and when the dominant male gets another sandwich provided we all depart on a happy note !

Fledging Wrens

We have always had regular sightings of wren foraging around our garden but this year they have set up home with us and yesterday was the first time in ten years that we have a family of fledglings

Peanut Hunt

We had just one hungry Badger checking out all of our garden's peanut stash locations last night and nowhere avoided inspection until the nuts were found and this time they were half way up a tree trunk

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Last nights Portraits

We had a nice show from two of our local fox cubs again last night.  Both arrived together and had a good forage around interacting to find our latest peanut stash which never takes them very long.

When the first of two badgers arrived on the scene both cubs decided to abort their visit but they were leaving happily with the treats that they had come for.

The two badgers had a good root around but failed to produce the   ' Pole Dancing '   shots that I had been looking for but           ' Watch this space '

With the Badgers gone our ex-ferrel male cat Mr Purdhu had to check out the scene just in case any treats had been missed !

Dinner Date

Our local Fox and Badger currently seem to have a bit of a ' Dinner date ' most evenings with both arriving just after sunset.

Both tolerate each other head to head within a foot and each will even give way if the other finds food first.

The secret of retaining harmony between then appears to lie in hiding many small cashes of food spread out in several locations so that they have options to diffuse any rivalry over offerings in one just one and neither of them end up going away hungry.

The Pecking Order

When one of our local Fox cubs arrived quite early last night it was delighted to find himself alone to forage for any offerings.

As he munched his way confidently into a few peanuts he was disturbed by the arrival of a hungry Badger and now he was not quite so sure of his claim.

Just to top it all another badger arrived and the young cub gave up his claim and went off looking for quieter feeding grounds.

                                                                        Badgers Rule OK !

Fox Cub Portraits

One of the new Fox cubs visited our garden on its own last night just after the Badgers had been and gone so it had a free range for a lot longer than would normally happen.

I had been taking some quite close portraits of it for nearly an hour when around One AM the vixen  shown in the last image arrived on the scene looking for the cub

The vixen cleared up the last few peanuts herself and then took the cub off back to the safety of their nearby den !