[Closed] Badger!

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Nice! I've only ever seen dead badgers. 🙁

I’ve only seen them a couple of times live. I’ve always been surprised by just how big they are - I wouldn’t like to tangle with one that’s for sure!

I thought this was going to be a tubeless thread!😀

I had one run diagonally into my leg on a night ride once, kind of shouldered me sideways like a big chunk of alarmingly powerful silver-furred muscle on legs then disappeared into the night. I was too surprised to be scared until afterwards.

Seen a couple more on night rides too and we have one that very occasionally wanders into the back garden presumably off the farm land out back.

A mate of mine almost got knocked off on a night ride a few years ago, we were about 20 yrds behind him when it ran out of the undergrowth and into his front wheel, they are definately bigger than I'd thought they were

We've seen them quite a few times on night rides. We also get them in our garden sometimes.
T'was a shock on the Roman rd into Hope on one night ride, when a badger ran across our group. It hit me on the side of my calf as it zig zagged down the track (felt soft and not bristly as I expected), somehow I stayed on the bike. Was a scary but exciting experience.
My poor friend Kat hit one on a descent once and she came off worse than the badger (having hit it at speed and gone otb).

Edit: BWD - was that the same night ride? I'm sure you were there.

I used have have one living under my shed.

Never seen one alive but would love to. More night rides are in order.

Noodling thru a coppice, I was once startled by a wild boar. At the time i didn't know they were, er, "wild". Fortunately it was somewhere dahn saff as if it had been local - Cannock Chase - I'd have probably taken it as conclusive proof of the "pig man".

Used to work near Towcester, Northamptonshire. Used to see quite a lot of dead badgers on the lanes, apparently run over by a .22 bullet.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hGlyFc79BUE

Hands up who thought this was a tubeless thread?

Never seen a live badger. Quite often get accompanied by barn owls who fly parallel with you. - probably waiting for you to disturb something interesting and snack-like.

A combination of work and family means that I have night ridden so much I hardly make a distinction from day riding after 22 years.

Consequently, the number of badgers, deer, owls and other night time critters is a saturation point.

I do forget this. Occasionally when a daytime rider spots a deer and they get all excited, I kinda forget why.

Seeing a badger on a ride is a rare and special thing.

I wouldn’t like to tangle with one that’s for sure!

My surprise thrill today was seeing a BIG bird in the surrey woods. Oh, adult Red Kite I thought.
Then realised it wasn't and was in fact a large Buzzard. Seemed bigger than the 1.2M span the online guide suggests but because it was amongst the trees it may have been just that I had something to scale it against.

This one got scared by a car then ran into the back garden after shouldering open the side gate. It dug under the wooden fence to the nature reserve behind the house but got stuck between that and the chainlink fence behind. Cutting him out was quite terrifying. Having your hands 2 inches from an angry badger is scary.

Thanks @Drac , I will never tire of seeing that pic.

Another one expecting tubeless, thought it might have been a "on this day in whatever year it was" thread

Occasionally when a daytime rider spots a deer and they get all excited, I kinda forget why.

I don't worry about single deer, the herd that I saw 2 weeks ago during the day was a bit special. It's getting a bit big and I expect the landowners will be culling them sooner rather than later.

I've only seen two live and they were both round the corner from my house in Sheffield. I expect to see foxes but badgers surprised me as It's very much an urban area.

I did a lot of night riding on the road bike last summer. Used to see them a fair bit.
Unfortunately the last time I did the little bugger I tried to pass on the far opposite side of the road, instead of disappearing into the hedge on his side, did a random 180 degree turn and shot across the road into my front wheel sending me down into the road in a heartbeat.
And he ran off without even offering to pay for the damage! I went down hard at about 15mph, damage to the bike and a bloody elbow and a coccyx that hurt for about 2 months.

I’m no longer a fan of badgers.

if you want to see badgers,foxes and even bats,ride the bath-bristol cycleway at night if you get the chance. i saw loads of badgers,foxes cycling it after midnight.

years ago i was walking back from my local garage at night and a badger crossed the road and ran past us on the pavement. they are beautiful creatures for sure.

There was an interesting character in the village I grew up in known as badger.
Kind of a Compo figure.

True story.

Sadly only ever seen dead ones in the wild, on Beacon Hill and Old Winchester Hill road edges, over the last four years. 🙁

We're getting quite a few urban badgers in north Bristol nowadays. They live in the allotments and are alarmingly chucky when you come across them.

Edit: BWD – was that the same night ride? I’m sure you were there.

I don't think so. It was a long time ago and happened on the approach to that small ford above Rowarth. The badger sort of got caught between me and the wall on the right and made a bid for freedom straight through me 🙂

They are amazing animals though. Always sad to see one dead at the side of the road.

BWD - Ah I know where you mean.
If you see a dead badger, beware as they bloat up and have been known to explode. Not pretty and one can smell a dead badger a mile away.

Drac - that badger photo still makes me chuckle after all these years.

Once ran over a badger at glentress. After shaking himself down, clearly uninjured, the angry little fella chased me down the rest of the run..

Magnificent beasts..

Used to do a lot of night runs, and once had two badgers escorting me, running alongside me for about 200m up a mountain. Felt like a wizard.

Loads of badgers in my area, big mature beech and oak woodland, you can see their excavations everywhere. They are often out and about in the nights, especially this time of year.
Me and the dog startled one once , and it ran towards me, saw me, turned tail and charged off in the other direction . The dog thought it was attacking me, chased towards me, but badger wasnt stopping. Ran straight through the dog like Jonah Lomu, putting him a couple of feet up in the air.

I have run a rabbit over on a road bike too, very sketchy experience.

Got woken up by two badgers fighting in the back garden a couple weeks ago. The noise they were making was genuinely horrible.

They stink and are full of ticks but admittedly do like nice from a distance.

We see them fairly regularly on night rides. They are to be avoided as they are solid and nonchalant about their own safety. 🦡

Have come up against a few during other activities and they are a sight to behold for sure.

Keep your dogs away from them as they are utterly viscous lol.

Great things to see really, very funny to watch if they are in a group.

I hit one side on once on a nightride with NATSMTB when it decided to cross the trail between riders, otb into a bloody hawthorn hedge, it was like hitting a jumbo sandbag.Thank god for riding glasses, I looked like a porcupine

Had a couple of cubs come up to me and raise on their hindlegs to get a better look. Mum was whiffling at them to get back. That was on Hergest Ridge.
Healthy badgers don't smell. My Dad grew up with them as pets. They used to nick stuff and hide it under the furniture. After the War he was sent to collect another Hunt dug up cub. It took the end of his gumboot clean off, bit too late to tame.....

My surprise thrill today was seeing a BIG bird in the surrey woods. Oh, adult Red Kite I thought.
Then realised it wasn’t and was in fact a large Buzzard

@eddiebaby buzzards, more than most species, are known for quite a significant individual variation in size.
Some buzzards are indeed bigger than other buzzards.
But also it is a thrill, and perhaps disorienting, whenever you see a buzzard below the canopy in woods.
I had one encounter that I hoped was a goshawk but could have been a lovely buzzard below the trees.

Every day is a school day. Thanks 👍🏼

Like pretty much all raptors the females are bigger than the males.

I'm in the middle of a game with our local badger set. I spend time 'badger' proofing the garden, they spend time showing me new ways into the garden. I know when they have been as they dig up the lawn. At the moment, I think I am slightly ahead. Beautiful creatures, but a pain in the neck.

Like pretty much all raptors the female [buzzards] are bigger than the males.

Actually, it’s way more than that. I just went and fact checked myself on Wikipedia;

Females average about 2–7% larger than males linearly and weigh about 15% more. Body mass can show considerable variation. Buzzards from Great Britain alone can vary from 427 to 1,183 g (0.941 to 2.608 lb) in males, while females there can range from 486 to 1,370 g (1.071 to 3.020 lb).

You’re quite right, but individual buzzards can vary in weight by up to 3:1!!! That’s quite ridiculous compared to other birds. You’d never see, say, a pigeon 3x bigger than another. The on average 15% heavier female mass means that a big buzzard does not equal a female buzzard.

Night ride a few years ago and one ran from my left side, missed the front wheel but went under the bike only for my back wheel to go over it. Like hitting a big log / rock, luckily I was stood up and back wheel just bounced over it. It ran off totally unfazed, scared the c#@@ out of me, they're pretty big close up.

Love them, until they dig up your lawn and eat your fences 😁

Seen badgers a few times around local fields. Badgers ain't good for the local hedgehog community.

Hands up who thought this was a tubeless thread?

Never seen a live badger.

I see lots of dead ones, and when I worked for BCA driving in and out of Devon and Cornwall badgers and pheasants were by far the most common things lying in the road, after tyres and hi-viz jackets?
And I was expecting a return of the tubeless thread! Is disappoint.

We’re getting quite a few urban badgers in north Bristol nowadays.

A few years back me and a mate were on our way out of Bristol after a gig, on the A420 on Two Mile Hill, right by St Michael The Archangel church, and a badger just sauntered across the road in front of us, first time we’d seen an urban badger like that.
Hares are surprisingly big if you get one close up; on my way back from the pub one night with the same mate, on a single track road, we came up behind a hare just lolloping along in the centre of the road, it didn’t give a damn about having a car crawling along five or six feet behind it, we followed it for at least a hundred meters while it checked out different field entrances before it found one it liked and turned off. I wouldn’t want to hit one of those on a bike at speed, although the hare wouldn’t shrug the impact off like a badger would, it would still have you off the bike, like hitting a medium sized dog.

Seen live ones whilst cycling at dusk in the suffolk countryside. I remember seeing a dead one on the Northumbrian moors which was the size of an adult pig.

Also found a badgers skeleton when one of the allotmenteers opened up his compost heap one spring. Must have hidden in there to take advantage of the heat of the decomposing matter, or after worms, and died.
Also bumped a deer one dark dark night up around the Afan bike park trails. Well, i think it was a deer, whatever it was it was shifting undergrowth and tree branches 4 ' from the ground level.