The badger
It’s dim. Though the days are getting longer the spring light is fading fast and I will soon be staring into darkness. I need to look to my right but I daren’t move my head, so I move only my eyes as I peer into the forest. I can feel two or three midges crawling across my forehead – hardly a plague but their insistent marching across my skin feels like an army.
Normally I’d rub the midges away with an unconscious reflex swipe of the hand, but I can’t do that. All I can do is sit motionless and suffer the creepy crawling of midgey legs on my head. They’re biting now but still I can’t do anything about it because if I so much as blink, the badger I’m watching will surely notice me and will flee back to its sett.
It’s right in front of me! If I reach out I could probably touch it. It’s so close I can hear every sniff and snort of its nose as it forages in the forest litter. But now my forehead is itching. Oh please, not itching! Pleeeeeease not now! I really want to scratch but ….but…..the badger! Aaarrghh!
Well worth sitting still & quiet for – a badger emerging from its sett in West Lothian.
Such was my dilemma just a few weeks ago in West Lothian when a solo badger watch got me closer to a live badger than I’d ever been before. It was so wonderfully intimate that I certainly wasn’t about to bring it to a premature end by doing something as stupid as trying to make myself comfortable. So there I sat, holding my breath and holding back my urge to scratch my forehead.
The experience is, I imagine, fairly typical of the extremes that some folk will go to in the pursuit of a memorable wildlife encounter. Sacrificing comfort and sometimes dignity if it means getting to spend some time with some of nature’s more elusive and skittish creatures.
Such creatures have a habit of inhabiting inaccessible places like remote highland glens, far flung cliff faces and islands, dark moody forests or inaccessible beaches. Or they inhabit inaccessible times of the day, emerging only at dusk and vanishing again at dawn. And so, depending on how adventurous you are, even getting to within spotting distance of these creatures can seem like a challenge. But I’d argue an even greater challenge awaits you thereafter, one that I’ve seen defeat a great many people over the years.
That challenge, should you accept it, is to remain still……and quiet.
It’s difficult because it’s an unnatural state of being. We are continually bombarded by stimuli that demand our attention but we also get bored easily and are prone to fidgeting. Or, as my badger experience shows, when we’re doing our best statue impressions we are likely to experience all the wonderful symptoms of the human condition – itches, cramps, coughs, sneezes and any number of other bodily functions or reactions that make sitting still and quiet almost impossible.
Most of those things can be controlled, muffled or ignored, but it takes a degree of will power to do so and often it can involve discomfort or inconvenience as a result. I accept such things as part of wildlife watching but I do still ask myself sometimes…..how much discomfort or inconvenience is a wildlife encounter worth?
The seal
A common seal hauls out not five metres from me. Time to freeze like a statue!
Truth be told, the badger watch wasn’t that bad. My close encounter lasted for just a couple of minutes while the badger snuffled right outside the hide, so while it seemed an eternity when I had an itch I couldn’t scratch, it was irritating rather than painful. But I did, however, suffer something approaching pain recently while watching seals basking on rocks near Kirkcaldy in Fife.
There were perhaps two dozen seals hauled out across 50m of coastline, so I sat down on some rocks across the water from them and watched for their reactions. If they didn’t seem to mind then I’d move a little closer, and after perhaps ten minutes of slow motion rock-hopping I found myself sat as close as I dared to get without disturbing them.
The rock I found myself on was jagged and covered in rough barnacles, so I started to adjust my position to make myself comfortable. Just as I’d tucked my right foot underneath myself and committed to rolling up onto my right knee, a shiny black object emerged from the water, not five metres away, and proceeded to haul itself up onto the sloping slab of rock directly in front of me.
I froze. It was a small common seal, clearly very young, dripping with water as it wriggled its way up the rock in an ungainly manner. It rested a few metres out of the water, closed its eyes and let out a dog-like sigh after its exertion. I heard it clearly.
Its demeanour was relaxed, perhaps because I was already there when it hauled itself out of the water and I hadn’t moved one inch since. Did it know I was there? I had no idea. But so long as I remained still it was sure to remain relaxed. So….I remained still.
After a few minutes I felt the rock cutting into my ankle and I shifted to lift the weight off it as slowly as I could manage. The best I could manage was something akin to an advanced yoga position, which would probably be fine for a sprightly young 20-something but for someone now into their fourth decade…..well, let’s just say I’m not as limber as I used to be.
At that point I could have, perhaps should have, simply got up and walked away. But the experience of sitting there in close quarters, watching this relaxed seal’s nose sniffing the air and its whiskers twitching was just too rare and precious to miss. Moreover, I didn’t feel I had the right to disturb the seals no matter how uncomfortable it was going to end up being for me personally. After all, I’d intruded upon them and they’d graciously allowed me into their world….but that didn’t mean they’d not be alarmed if I started moving about.
So I sat there….for a very long time until mercifully, after about an hour some other coastal walkers came blundering around the rocks, chatting loudly. My seal’s eyes flashed open and it hurriedly dived back into the water.
I was released and made my escape, albeit slowly seeing as other seals nearby were still basking on the rocks. When I finally got back to the coastal path I had a bit of a limp for the first hundred metres or so, as the circulation appeared to have stopped in my leg. But how could I complain? I’d gone to Kirkcaldy to see seals from a distance but quite unexpectedly ended up having my closest encounter to date. Any discomfort I’d experienced was a minor inconvenience on what was my day off in the sunshine, sat on the beautiful Fife coast. Hardly a hardship. But while that might be one of my more painful encounters, it certainly isn’t the longest that I’ve wilfully inconvenienced myself for wildlife.
The hare
Beseiged in my own home by a sleeping hare, I put my plans for the morning on hold.
Last year I came downstairs one morning, opened the kitchen blinds and was greeted by a brown hare washing itself on the front steps. I watched for a few minutes and was then amazed to see it settle down and close its eyes. It’s certainly not unusual to see hares in the garden but it’s very unusual to see them settle down to sleep in the open like that, as they understandably tend to favour the cover afforded to them by long grass.
They’re flighty and easily spooked, their wide-eyed stare and eternally twitching ears revealing they have much to fear from predators. As a result I always imagine that hares must lead quite stressful lives, so when they finally find some peace……well, they deserve a break, surely?
To disturb the hare from its slumber suddenly seemed a bit heartless and inconsiderate. So I stayed indoors, stayed away from the windows and went about my business as quietly as I could. I then postponed any plans that involved opening the front door, as that would surely scare the hare away. That inevitably meant I was voluntarily beseiged in my own home. By a hare for goodness sake!
Typing this now I’m chuckling at the insanity of it all but I’m also perfectly happy with my decisions. I’d do the same again. But while it’s one thing to put your plans on hold for an hour or so it’s something else to delay them a whole morning. For that is how long the hare slumbered until again, mercifully, salvation arrived at the hands of a third party. This time the postman in his van, whose breakneck entry onto the driveway sent the hare packing and released me from my prison.
Hiding in plain sight
A weasel’s impromptu appearance while I was sat watching a pair of dunnocks feed their young. An example of waiting for one thing but seeing so much more.
Pondering these encounters now, I do wonder what would have become of me if there hadn’t been other people around to disturb the wildlife I was watching? I’d probably still be sat out in the wilds somewhere. And while that might seem rather extreme, the reality is that much of our wildlife has a hard time finding respite from the incessant motion, din and encroaching development of the human world. Even while I was sat watching the seals, a jet ski tore past just metres from the rocks and sent half a dozen panicked seals into the water.
Whether we’re aware of it or not, we have an impact on wildlife through almost everything we do, so the least we can do when we want to get close and gawp at it is sit still and not disturb it. You could argue it would be better to simply not approach these creatures at all, to not risk disturbing them in the first place. But it really shouldn’t be a problem provided you are considerate, respectful and you don’t put your own needs in front of theirs. Encounters have to be on their terms, not yours.
To that end, it’s actually surprisingly easy to hide in plain sight. The secret is to remain so still and so quiet that you become a benign feature in the landscape rather than a threat, and the longer you spend doing that the more likely it is that animals will pass right by you.
It doesn’t work for every animal of course, especially the ones that trust their sense of smell more than their sense of sight. But keeping still and quiet really is the key to accessing some of the most intimate and memorable wildlife encounters you can have, both because you might see the creature you intended to see, and because you might see others that you didn’t. You’re only really limited in that endeavour by your own personal tolerance and determination – some people will happily be a statue for hours, others for only a few minutes.
Don’t worry though, you don’t need to go to the extremes I’ve highlighted in this article in order to see how the natural world behaves when it doesn’t know you’re there. Nor do you have to go to remote or inaccessible places to see something remarkable.
People have told me I’m incredibly lucky to have seen the things I’ve seen, and in some cases that’s certainly true, but the vast majority of my wildlife encounters occur because when I’m walking along a path and I see something darting for cover, or when I hear something rustling or squeaking as I pass by, instead of walking on and wondering what it was I stop with the intention of finding out. I lean up against a tree or perhaps sit down on the ground nearby…..and I wait.
Most of the time, whatever it was that I fleetingly saw or heard re-emerges surprisingly quickly, especially the smaller animals of this world such as mice, voles, shrews, weasels, stoats, red squirrels and all manner of birds. After I’ve hidden in plain sight I’ve seen all of those emerge from cover, take a look around to see if the coast is clear, and then carry on going about their business.
A mouse in a wall at Beecraigs Country Park. An example of waiting for an animal to re-emerge from cover shortly after you’ve inadvertently spooked it.
So the next time you see something dashing into a verge in the corner of your eye, just stop, take a few steps away, wait…..and watch. I promise you, your eyes will be opened to a whole other world you were barely aware of. Yes, in extreme cases it may well involve a dead leg, a numb backside, feeling cold or a morning besieged in your home by a hare, but for the most part the only inconvenience you are likely to suffer is a few extra minutes added to your journey.
As for the question I asked earlier about how much discomfort or inconvenience a wildlife encounter is worth…..well, once I have settled down and have vanished in plain sight, once I have totally immersed myself in the natural world and am watching something secretive and special unfold before me, once I am experiencing wildlife on its own terms then quite frankly, inconvenience and discomfort are the furthest things from my mind.