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Last night a lot of holes were dug in our back lawn. I suspect it was a fox, but I could be wrong. Any suggestions?
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Fox or Badger?
The latter may leave evidence of forced entry under a fence or such like.
Any droppings left behind?
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Almost certainly a fox. They do eat a lot of earthworms.
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I would have guessed at a badger, my lawn and wood-chip path have both been attacked by something digging out small divots along their length, I've seen a badger running down the side of the house so I know they are around here somewhere.
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Foxes round here. Holes about two - three inches deep in a long scrape.
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Excavations in lawns are usually caused by a range of critters looking for chafer grubs. Fortunately the damage on our grass, caused by the foraging of green woodpeckers, is only slight and and akin to piercing by a stiletto heel - actually, I regard it as a help to aeration.
My mate reckons the damage on his lawn is caused by foxes, whilst one of the gardeners in the Abbey gardens, here in Bury St Edmunds, claimed that it was due to crows - through I'd have thought it a bit much for crows.
The worst damage that I've observed - and this was major excavations - was down at the NT's Dyrham Park near Bath. The gardeners knew that the culprits were badgers - because they'd seen 'em.
So, the best answer is to keep an eye on things, spot your critter, and shoot it.
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Badgers are protected by law so they can wipe out hedgehogs and toads and frogs...
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>> Badgers are protected by law
except of course, where the law is shooting them.
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now i know why i never see squashed headog. only see deadbadgers roadkill
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Buy yourself a trail camera. Fascinating to see what creatures inhabit your garden after dark.
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Fracking badgers do 'moor' damage/dig bigger holes, than Mr Fox, from my experience.
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My damage looks like something has been snuffling under the woodchips and made a couple of holes in the lawn so I assumed it was due to badgers as I've seen them in the woods behind the garden whereas I haven't seen any foxes recently, we did have a problem at the beginning of the year when we had a lovely display of crocuses in the lawn, they were out on the Monday but by Tuesday morning when we got up every single flower had been eaten and just stalks left behind! we put this down to either squirrels or more likely a pair of small Muntjac deer that roam from garden to garden chewing off the emerging buds from all of the plants.
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We variously get rabbit scrapes, fox scrapes, and badgers. The badgers can dig serious holes.
When there hasn't been much rain, they seem to seek out any damp areas or soft soil and dig away. Plentiful round here, very common road kill (though one or two very unlucky ones may well have been shot before being run over).
A couple of years ago they dug a big hole on the edge of our little pond and ruined the liner.
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The only things that keep trashing my lawn are ants.
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The only things that keep trashing my lawn are children.
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My bees keep invaders away - except for wasps. The badgers dig up wasp nests and eat them (two I know of in our garden).
My next door neighbour kills the magpies (Larsen trap) and uses the bodies to bait teh fox traps.. He then shoots the foxes.
He would shoot the badgers as well if legal.. there are a LOT of them
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There are a couple of other critters which do things to grass: grey squirrel (if your lawn is full of dry moss - they pull out a circle about 8-10" to line their drey - I know this because a cat raided local drey, and the rebuilding involved four such bald patches in our front lawn.)
The other thing is wild boar. None of them near me, but the Forest of Dean is reckoned to have a few hundred, and their range is increasing, west into Wales.
There are also smaller numbers on Dartmoor/South West, and in Kent.
Edit - all over the place:
www.britishwildboar.org.uk/index.htm?map2.html
Last edited by: AnotherJohnH on Mon 2 Sep 13 at 13:21
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>>Buy yourself a trail camera.
What setup do you recommend, CG?
I have been thinking of doing this as there are about 25 holes in our lawn at the moment. I am not much bothered as I only keep it roughly cut anyway. From the narrowness of them, I would say they are caused by badgers.
There are also large-diameter excavations in a partially wooded border, as if these fellows are bent on building a sett, but the holes are only about 18" deep. I have only seen one badger in the garden in 37 years but that was just a few months ago. They are rumoured to have been disturbed by development in a small but thick wood about a quarter-mile away.
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I've got one of these:
www.amazon.co.uk/GMYLE-Infrared-Outdoor-Scouting-Wildlife/dp/B0041VM0F2/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1378136890&sr=1-2&keywords=trail+camera
Good fun. Reasonable quality images and easy to use. Apart form anything els I proved with incontrovertible evidence that next- door's cat was responsible for burglary and theft of my moggy's Whiskas.
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Noted with thanks. I will check it out.
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On the offchance that you have access to not one, but two iOS devices, then there's a nice little free app called Presence, that allows you to set one device up as a camera and view it from another.
The point is it does motion detection, so will email you a little movie clip if something moves in its vision. Handy for keeping a watch on stuff overnight (you need enough light for the camera to work of course), especially for free.
The neighbour's cat has, by evidence of paw prints on the new paintwork, decided to hop into the upstairs hall window at night, climbing various roofs to do so. At least I know now it IS the neighbour's cat, not a tiny Fen Tiger.
It might exist on Android too, I don't know. The app, not the cat. What am I, Schroedinger?
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Looks interesting that Presence - pity they don't do a version that sends to PC.
There are a few motion activated video recorder apps, although they get mixed reviews. There's also things like Lapse It, which you can set up to take photos at fixed intervals eg. every 10 seconds; that does get good reviews.
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Ooh, now, a photo taking interval thingy is just what I need for my latest ridiculous project to do with copper pipes and a paperweight.
Ta for that!
Last edited by: Crankcase on Tue 3 Sep 13 at 08:32
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>> It might exist on Android too, I don't know. The app, not the cat. What
>> am I, Schroedinger?
I was thinking more Pavlov?
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You can make a critter cam out of an oldish pc, a camera with usb interface, and with some free software (securecam works) - no good in the dark, but at least it captures movement and the provided viewer plays through the still captures (squirrel with a mouth overfull of my lawn).
The most obscure cat which has come past is a Bengal - handsome creature.
Or, if you have the time and inclination, there's an article in the October 2013 PC PRO which uses a raspberry Pi and some Python, the results are uploaded to dropbox.
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I have used an old android phone running IP Webcam tinyurl.com/IPwebcam and a program called Vitamin D Video tinyurl.com/ccrgava which records when it detects movement. As with AJH's suggestion above it isn't any good in the dark.
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>> I was thinking more Pavlov?
That rings a bell. Or is that just a hunch?
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We get a lot of wild boar trouble around here these days.
I'm not too bothered about the ants.
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>> We get a lot of wild boar trouble around here these days.
>> I'm not too bothered about the ants.
>>
It's the wild boar which keep the ants in check!
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Squirrels can make a surprising mess of a lawn, the pesky things have left holes all over ours, I saw some of them doing it at 6:00 this morning when I came back walking the dog.
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>> the pesky things have left holes all over ours
They do that when they are getting on a bit - they forget where they put the nuts.
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Holes dug in lawn by animal - Bromptonaut
