Bumblebees, Badgers and Briallu

Pushing onion sets into my dry soil it was a welcome sight to see the return of insect life after our mini ice age of a long winter. Not sure what it was, looked like some small kind of a bee. Jazzy bumblebees were focussed on the purple heather and not the close-up lens.

I walked through the woods to retrieve footage from my motion detect camera and clumps of Briallu (primroses) were in bloom at last. Also a few violets. 

As for the film footage; still no baby badgers but the parent, after a ceremonial scratch, was gathering new bedding for the nursery. Interesting technique, bit like a baling machine in reverse. 

Icy Snowdonia

Successive freeze-thaw and blasting wind created spectacular sculptures. Clumps of icicles like pipes on a cathedral organ. Reeds in sheaths of ice. 

Gravity-defying windswept tendrils
of frozen water. 

Towards the top of Moelwyn Bach the snow, sealed in a shiny layer of ice, crunched beneath our boots as we followed the trails of snowboarders down towards the west.  

At the snow line a lone badger ran down the steep grassy slope into the drifts against the stone wall. We watched from high as it sought the exact spot, dug into the snow and eased its way through the square mesh of stock wire and a convenient gap between the stones.

This is what it sounded like underfoot:

And this is some shaky footage of the badger:

Badgers chilling out

There’s a patch of flat ground by the badger sett where the grass is all trampled down. So I put out my night vision camera this week and now know that it’s being used as a wrestling ring. At the end of their session the badgers engaged in some mutual grooming before serious scratching and then retiring to bed.

And this has to be the funniest clip which reminds me of Baloo the Bear teaching Mowgli the finer points of good scratching.