I have recently set up a ‘Badger Feeding Station’, sounds good but as described in an earlier post it is just a biscuit tin with peanuts in and a couple of bits of wood on top held down by some rocks.

The idea is that the badgers are strong enough to remove the rocks but smaller creatures like squirrels are not. So I set it up a couple of weeks ago and on my return a few days later the rocks were pushed aside and the peanuts gone. I was a bit suspicious that this might not be down to badgers but maybe a dog had moved them and then the squirrels, mice and voles moved in. I reset it and this time put a camera trap close by so that I could see what was happening. And it was the squirrels that were pushing the rocks to one side and then helping themselves to the nuts, so on my camera trap I had a couple of hundred photos and videos of the squirrels and no badgers.

The solution obviously was to use bigger rocks so that they become too heavy for the squirrels, this I did and today I went back, the rocks were again pushed aside and peanuts were gone and what was on the camera trap? Another 250 photos of squirrels. I did have a couple of photos of rabbits and also a Muntjac deer, but no badgers. Obviously the squirrels are far stronger than I thought.   On the videos from the trail camera I have seen three squirrels at the same time so maybe they work together like a tug of war team and all push at once??? No I know that’s not it, but they must be very determined and muscular.

Well still no sign of what is moving the rocks and accessing the peanuts, but I think it could be that I have not set up the trail camera correctly as the first photo from the most recent set showed the peanut feeder already with the rocks removed, also no night time photos. So I have reset it and maybe it will reveal the culprit when I collect it tomorrow.