My theme this week is WILD MAMMALS OF THE UK.
It might seem obvious, but I have realised not everyone knows what mammals, as a group of animals, are. They feed their young with milk produced by mammary glands (hence their name) as well as various other features such as being warm-blooded, vertebrates (with a spine and skeleton) and some other differences in their anatomy and physiology. Many don’t realise that cetaceans (whales and dolphins) are actually mammals and not some kind of fish (whereas sharks are fish). Cetaceans feed their young with milk whilst swimming in water, unlike other sea mammals which usually feed their young on land.
I will start off with mammals we’ve seen in our garden in Loughborough during the 20 years we have lived here. We live on a suburban housing estate with an average garden about the size of one and half tennis courts and surrounded by other houses and gardens. It is about 40 years old, so the garden is reasonably mature.
The first mammal we saw in the garden was a HEDGEHOG one morning. We didn’t see any more hedgehogs until we started using a wildlife camera at night about ten years later. The quality of the photos is therefore not very good.
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- Hedgehog
Just a month ago, the British hedgehog was classified as “vulnerable to extinction”
on the international IUCN list – their numbers have declined drastically.
In 2011, we realised a larger animal was coming into the garden at night and were amazed and thrilled when we realised it was a BADGER which we had never before seen, not even in the countryside, as they are such shy animals only only emerging from their setts at dusk. They are nocturnal, but our first badger started coming before dark and allowed me to sit at the open patio door and photograph it with flash just one metre away while it dug up the peanuts I had buried for it! I was spellbound. I felt it was almsot eating out of my hand. Since then, badgers have become more common in urban settings.
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- Badger
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- Badger drinking from our pond
What a beautiful animal!
I will continue the saga of hedgehogs and badgers in our garden tomorrow.
CROSSING CULTURES, FINDING FREEDOM 
I’ve never seen either of these animals in the wild. In the zoo, but not the same. Hope the hedgehog can make a comeback. 😊
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We had never seen a live badger or hedgehog before so you can imagine how thrilled and amazed we were to have them actually in our little garden in a town!!
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I would have been thrilled too. Much like seeing a life bird! I’d be out there rummaging around in my onsies too if I had one…to get a better glimpse. 🙂
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How lucky you are to get both of these lovely mammals in your garden 🦔 lovely photos of the Mr Badger 🦡
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Yes. But sadly we no longer get them. No idea why not.
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Oh that’s sad 😢 fingers crossed they make a return one day soon
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Yes, we are. It is so exciting and such a privilege. But sadly, they don’t seem to come any more – we have no idea why not. Some neighbours aren’t enamoured of them and try to keep them out, which we can’t understand!
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I’m not sure whether badgers cause much damage to the gardens but I can’t imagine hedgehogs do. Sad that others don’t like to embrace our beautiful wildlife 🦔 🦡
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Badgers do a lot of digging! At one time, they were digging up our raspberries. They can also ruin lawns in a night worse than any moles although they have never dug up our lawn. I’ve seen photos of a nearby cricket field completely ruined by badgers!
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Now I can see why your neighbours disapprove of your nighttime visitors!
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Yes, we used to keep very quiet about them!
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