Sunday 14 April 2013

Thank you Mr & Mrs Brock

One of the questions that Roundball Wardens are often asked is whether there are still badgers at Roundball?  A walk up through the woods and along the top meadow will reveal entrances to badger setts  that look to be unused and overgrown. In fact the badger holes protected by signs in the meadow show no sign of use except by rabbits.

However if you look closer along the boundary of the woods and the meadow and along the hedges adjoining Roundball Hill you will see plenty of evidence of recent badger activity. If you approach Roundball Hill via Roundball Lane you will see a large sett entrance to the left of the steps. It stands clearly with recently excavated sand and often fresh badger footprints. This sett entrance is 300-400 yards from the sett entrances in the woods the other side of the hill and poses the question is this the same sett.


Survey work related to bovine TB in 1977 resulted in a number of badger setts being excavated to see if gassing with cyanide gas would be effective. From this work a typical sett was found to have 38 entrances, 78 chambers and 360m of tunnels. Subsequent excavation work in 1990 estimated a sett as having 178 entrances, 50 chambers and 897m of tunnels. This would suggest that the entrances at Roundball Lane and Roundball Woods may well be part of the same sett.

Setts are not only valuable to todays badgers They can be centuries old and are a valuable resource handed down from generation to generation of the same badger social group. We can only be grateful that there are not more active entrances to trip us up in the top meadow. So for this, thank you to Mr & Mrs Brock and family.

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