The holes through the fence, under the fence and throughout my lawn tell me badgers are frequent visitors. I have seen glimpses on the night vision camera but have never seen them in person, so at the start of lockdown I set my peanut trail nearer to the house and waited to see if anyone would visit. Over many nights and several cats and foxes later I finally got to see my visitors who would end up helping me keep my sanity through the very long and lonely days during the pandemic.

April (see picture) was the first one I saw, a small dark badger who did not seem too disturbed by the lights and TV on in my lounge. April was easy to spot as it was so dark in colour plus it had a ring of light coloured fur around its tail. It was soon followed by my special visitor and unashamedly my favourite of all the badgers, Blondie. On the night camera it looks albino, in reality it is erythristic (it has some colour and pink eyes). Two further badgers appeared during the month of April, Patch as it was easy to spot with a white rump and a white patch on its back and Pixie who was missing its ears and also had enormously long white claws.

There were far more visitors than I thought in the garden, I was definitely going to need a bigger bag of peanuts.