DRIER GROUND, MORE BRAVADO... (My new poem about the Temple Balsall badgers...)

 Drier Ground, More Bravado…

Daytime cloud cover of light grey

Had kept the temperature low

And colder in the bluster of an early June

Wind, until late afternoon, when finally

Sunlight warmed the air and baked the earth.

And a badger-watch had been arranged for the end of the day… 

Little time was wasted by a trio of badgers at bay,

Scrabbling from their setts deep, dark and below

The hardened copse floor and soon

They feasted warily, eagerly, yet silently

Upon my scattered morsels, likely due to the dearth

Of worms in the wood, tousled by a wind’s affray…

Soon another, younger badger made its cautious way

From a gaping hole, its movements deliberate and slow.

 Yet its eager, inquisitive foraging was quickly in tune

With those of its cete, until it hesitated, looked my way glaringly

And retreated, slipping its lean and muscular girth

Inside its sett, having too far in daylight, edged astray…

Pete Ray

2nd June 2023

Once again, I noticed the hurt badger, now known as Limpalot, also White Streak with its pelt marking.

Three badgers were clearly eager to feed and indeed when a car zipped past the copse, two of them didn’t even bother to disappear into the safety of their burrows.

One younger badger popped up from a hole nearby and unknowingly enabled me to film its foraging, whilst behind me a couple of wood mice rushed about in the debris of last autumn’s leaves…