Animal of the Year

Videos recorded by  Kalmer Lehepuu

Information posted by the Animal of the Year team

The video clips were made this year in mid-July in Puka municipality in Valga County, at a badger sett where the cubs have a pleasant time playing outside a burrow entrance. Somersaults and playful wrestling. The sett with 10 entrances is situated in an old forest on a natural elevation.

The familiar eleven-headed wild boar flock at the badger sett. At last the badger also showed up this week.  At the end of the video he is searching for small gravel here in the hazel coppice; in the spruce tops a nutcracker calls.

Author: Animal of the Year team

Last time we were introduced to badger Matilda’s brave character and her offspring. Now we will see where this plucky badger lives.

I saw fox cubs at play around a chipping wood stack. This is also a bit of explanation to the fact that the fox burrows in the neighbourhood were empty this year. Why a fox family should prefer chips stacks to the burrows is not clear. In the stacks at field verges brown hares (Lepus europaeus), various rodents, weasels and stoats may also live, in addition to the above foxes and raccoon dogs. In forests there are also pine martens and several more rodent species besides those mentioned. Of birds I have come across wagtails, redbacked shrikes, whitethroats, blackbirds, wrens, robins etc.

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In addition to the badgers, sometimes also foxes and raccoon dogs live in badger setts but with the changes in the use of wood their choice of places for living has widened in recent years. A new phenomenon in our landscape are the stacks of wood chips. As ever, nature does not like empty space and so new inhabitants have quickly moved into these stacks too. Usually stacks left standing for a somewhat longer period are preferred. Furred as well as feathered species live there.