Holes dug in lawn by animal: Motoring Non-motoring forum

Non-motoring > Holes dug in lawn by animal	Miscellaneous
Thread Author: L'escargot	Replies: 30

View Threaded

Mon 2 Sep 13 10:55

Holes dug in lawn by animal - L'escargot

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?

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 10:59

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Bromptonaut

Fox or Badger?

The latter may leave evidence of forced entry under a fence or such like.

Any droppings left behind?

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 11:02

Holes dug in lawn by animal - CGNorwich

Almost certainly a fox. They do eat a lot of earthworms.

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 11:18

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Rudedog

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.

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 11:26

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Zero

Foxes round here. Holes about two - three inches deep in a long scrape.

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 11:13

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Haywain

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.

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 11:19

Holes dug in lawn by animal - madf

Badgers are protected by law so they can wipe out hedgehogs and toads and frogs...

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 11:24

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Zero

>> Badgers are protected by law

except of course, where the law is shooting them.

Reply to this message | Report message

Thu 5 Sep 13 22:39

Holes dug in lawn by animal - slowdown avenue

now i know why i never see squashed headog. only see deadbadgers roadkill

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 11:40

Holes dug in lawn by animal - CGNorwich

Buy yourself a trail camera. Fascinating to see what creatures inhabit your garden after dark.

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 11:57

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Dog

Fracking badgers do 'moor' damage/dig bigger holes, than Mr Fox, from my experience.

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 12:32

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Rudedog

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.

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 12:37

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Manatee

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.

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 12:45

Holes dug in lawn by animal - VxFan

The only things that keep trashing my lawn are ants.

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 12:49

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Alanovich

The only things that keep trashing my lawn are children.

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 12:54

Holes dug in lawn by animal - madf

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

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 13:19

Holes dug in lawn by animal - AnotherJohnH

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

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 15:13

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Ambo

>>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.

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 16:53

Holes dug in lawn by animal - CGNorwich

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.

Reply to this message | Report message

Mon 2 Sep 13 16:56

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Ambo

Noted with thanks. I will check it out.

Reply to this message | Report message

Tue 3 Sep 13 08:22

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Crankcase

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?

Reply to this message | Report message

Tue 3 Sep 13 08:28

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Focusless

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.

Reply to this message | Report message

Tue 3 Sep 13 08:32

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Crankcase

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

Reply to this message | Report message

Tue 3 Sep 13 08:33

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Zero

>> It might exist on Android too, I don't know. The app, not the cat. What
>> am I, Schroedinger?

I was thinking more Pavlov?

Reply to this message | Report message

Tue 3 Sep 13 08:47

Holes dug in lawn by animal - AnotherJohnH

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.

Reply to this message | Report message

Thu 5 Sep 13 23:10

Holes dug in lawn by animal - The Nut

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.

Reply to this message | Report message

Tue 3 Sep 13 09:32

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Crankcase

>> I was thinking more Pavlov?

That rings a bell. Or is that just a hunch?

Reply to this message | Report message

Tue 3 Sep 13 09:55

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Mike Hannon

We get a lot of wild boar trouble around here these days.
I'm not too bothered about the ants.

Reply to this message | Report message

Tue 3 Sep 13 13:02

Holes dug in lawn by animal - L'escargot

>> 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!

Reply to this message | Report message

Tue 3 Sep 13 19:21

Holes dug in lawn by animal - MJW1994

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.

Reply to this message | Report message

Tue 3 Sep 13 20:11

Holes dug in lawn by animal - Manatee

>> 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.

Reply to this message | Report message

Forum Version 3.0 - By Khoosys