<span style=”color: #222222; font-family: ‘Open Sans’; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.390625px; background-color: #fbfbfb;”>I’ve seen plenty run along side us while out night riding though – always figured they were following the lights in some way.</span>

There’s some buzzards and at least one Owl fly alongside cars and bikes back home. Buzzards seem able to keep up with a car at 40mph, and an owl easily able to keep up with a bike at 20mph. They are always on the left, about six to ten feet up.

They are waiting for you to scare some prey in the verge, which will then give itself away when it moves.

I wonder if your badger has developed the same technique? Or maybe it’s just like a collie and thinks it’s fun

<span style=”color: #222222; font-family: ‘Open Sans’; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.390625px; background-color: #fbfbfb;”>I’ve seen plenty run along side us while out night riding though – always figured they were following the lights in some way.</span>

There’s some buzzards and at least one Owl fly alongside cars and bikes back home. Buzzards seem able to keep up with a car at 40mph, and an owl easily able to keep up with a bike at 20mph. They are always on the left, about six to ten feet up.

They are waiting for you to scare some prey in the verge, which will then give itself away when it moves.

I wonder if your badger has developed the same technique? Or maybe it’s just like a collie and thinks it’s fun

Was out on the road bike tonight, seen 4 badgers within 10 minutes! Its funny how they see you, then trot along the road. One must have gone about 100m before heading off into the verge. Another one stopped in the middle of the road just in front of me me to look around, before heading for the opposite verge.

I have seen one badger… was walking many years ago with my mum and gran. First and only time they had seen one too.

<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>I imagine they have them in zoos but not seen one there…</span>

if you think about it, it’s quite odd that a creature everyone has heard of is so elusive and people don’t think it is some conspiracy…

At a pub in Mickleham, the willy the forth,  badgers used sit on the raised bit
at the edge of garden and watch the drunk people.

Saw two this morning – one dead on the way back from the gym in a very built up area and the junction of 4 roads, so no real surprise there.

And low and behold during the cycle to work at about 8.20 I witnessed one tootling along a country road right in front of me and then in to a field. It must have missed the last bus!!

I once ran one over…

Similar to Scapegoats post, I hit a badger side on up a country lane at about 30mph two up on an old Kwack zx10. Bike left the ground but landed straight and I managed to stop without falling off amazingly. Distressingly the badger wasn’t killed immediately but took a few seconds to die after I got back to check it out. Considering the amount of weight that had hit it it’s testament to how robust they are considering it wasn’t dispatched outright, awesome beasts. I think the word Trundling was invented to describe the movement of a badger, so fitting 😉

oh, and as for Honey Badgers – you wouldn’t want to mess with those things at any level, truly the SAS of the animal kingdom!

We used to have a kids’ slide in the back garden, about 4ft high. One morning there was a freshly curled heap of badger crap on the top. No idea whether it climbed the steps or scampered up the slide but presumably it didn’t fancy the way back down again.

A former colleague wrote his Volvo 343 off hitting a badger on the M5. Destroyed the front bumper, valance, radiator area and obviously didn’t do the badger much good.

Over the last ~13 months, I’ve caught the fleeting glance of one dashing into the bushes, plus sadly ~12 dead on the road (including a youngster last week) up around Warnford… The stench of the poor blighters is unreal as you cycle past them in this heatwave! 🙁

Years ago, I saw a badger whilst riding back though the woods near home so I stopped and looked for the sett. The next night I went back before dusk, sat down wind of the sett and waited to see what would happen. Soon, I was surrounded by about 3-4 adults and half a dozen cubs, all oblivious to my presence. Absolutely amazing experience which in part contributed to meeting my now wife.

Anyway, after about 30 mins or so, they all disappeared so I took the opportunity to move off. As I stood up, I turned round to find a couple hiding in a bush behind me…they’d obviously got there before I arrived and couldn’t let me know they were there as it would have scared the badgers. Predictably, I crapped myself on the spot.

One ran out in front of me during a night ride in Kirkhill forest near Aberdeen, many years ago. It took off down the trail but somehow managed to trip over its own feet and tumbled like a bowling ball before finally coming to rest and disappearing back into the undergrowth. I almost crashed from laughing at it.

Badgers don’t have great eyesight, do they?

Not badgers but the most surprising wildife encounter I’ve had was when a buddy and I were riding down a lane in a cutting with high fences each side, slowing for a car that was coming up when two deer jumped the fence and landed right in front of us. We and the car stopped, the deer realised they were trapped and panicked; one managed to clear the opposite fence in one huge jump but the other failed and bounced back, crashing hard onto the road. It absolutely freaked out, turned round with hooves scrabbling on tarmac and tried to jump back the away it had come, failed again and was bounced violently back, crashing into the lane again. Two more failed jumps and on the fifth attempt it made the opposite fence but by then the energy it had expended was so huge that the lane was full of flying debris, dust, fur, dried leaves, all kinds of stuff. We rode on and for the next couple of minutes we were spitting deer hairs out of our mouths!

Wonderful animals, makes me so angry people enjoy killing them for no reason.

A friend in town has up to ten that visit their garden every night for peanuts. You can sit by the sliding doors and watch them eat literally 2cm from you, bang on the window, camera flash or whatever you like and they don’t bat an eyelid. The young ones are very entertaining and sometimes the older ones just lie down for a little snoozle right there.