Evening visit to St. Nicholas Church and surrounding areas – 10th November 2020

Date: 10th November 2020

Time: from 4:30 p.m.

Weather: dry, cloudy, dark, 12°C

My last evening visit 4 days ago resulted in no sightings of Badgers or Red Foxes due to the appalling letting off of fireworks in very close proximity to St. Nicholas Church …. see here.

Given that the disturbance caused by fireworks in my local area had significantly reduced since that weekend visit, I decided to again try and watch my local Badgers and Red Foxes.

As always, when I arrived at the site, I scattered some chopped apple, peanuts and dog biscuits at the usual location. I then settled down to wait to see if the Badgers would emerge.

Whilst I could see a few fireworks being let off, they could not be heard since they were several miles away. Since it was considerably quieter, I hoped that I would be successful in seeing the Badgers.

However, in 2 hours, I unfortunately failed to see any Badgers. Since early June, when I first started watching them, I have only had one “no show” on my many evening visits.

I am not sure why tonight was a “no show”. Maybe it was just a matter of bad luck. There are no guarantees with wildlife watching but, other than that one previous occasion, I have always seen at least one Badger within 30 minutes to an hour of darkness falling. Maybe the Badgers have become so disturbed and frightened by the noise of fireworks which started well before 5th November 2020 that their behaviour has changed and they have been emerging much later in the evening or in the middle of the night when the fireworks ceased. I will obviously try again over the coming days and weeks and see what occurs.

I had much greater luck with the Red Foxes.

At 5:45 p.m., I caught the slightest glimpse of movement where the Badgers usually emerge and very quickly after that a Red Fox briefly appeared before disappearing again. I hoped that it would return to take advantage of the food that I had put down but this wasn’t the case.

At 6 p.m., I saw a Red Fox walking around the perimeter of the church car park before it disappeared in to the hedge to then re-emerge in the grassy strip that runs down to St. Nicholas Lane. It crossed the grassy strip and at 6:15 p.m., it, or another Red Fox, appeared in the same area. At 6:25 p.m., as I was leaving the site, I saw a Red Fox cross the bottom of Church Hill near to the junction with St. Nicholas Lane.

With regard to birds, the highlight was a Redwing calling as it flew overhead in the darkness. This was not at all surprising since calling Redwings at night are one of the regular and expected experiences of October and November when large numbers of these birds arrive from Iceland and Scandinavia to winter in the UK.

In addition, I  heard several Robins and Blackbirds alarm calling before they settled down to roost for the night plus I saw a few fly-over Carrion Crows.

It was mainly overcast and cloudy during my visit. However, it did clear slightly during some of the time to reveal Jupiter and Saturn still in close conjunction in the southern sky.

Species recorded during this visit were as follows (heard only records in italics):

Red Fox

Redwing
Robin
Blackbird
Carrion Crow

Site totals to date:

Birds = 50
Mammals = 6
Butterflies = 21
Dragonflies and damselflies = 7
Reptiles = 1
Amphibians = 0

💚🦆 🦉🦋🐝🦊🦡🌼 🌳💚

Stay safe, stay well, stay strong, stay connected with nature