Folly Farm and its Badgers

After several very hot days and nights, we were so lucky that the temperature was lower on the evening we went around Folly Farm, the 250 acre AWT nature reserve near Bishop Sutton. Alex Preston, the AWT Nature Reserves Manager, met us there for a tour around the farm which would end up at the badger sett entrance.

There were 22 of us, including some very well-behaved children, and we started out by going through ancient woodland and then the SSSI meadows, which were full of summer wild flowers eg betony, oxeye daisies, black knapweed, ladies bedstraw, meadow vetchling and devils-bit scabious. We didn’t notice any orchids as they had flowered earlier in the year.

The grassland meadows were also full of old anthills, which showed that they hadn’t been cultivated for many years – wildlife doesn’t need flat surfaces! We were lucky to come across 5 lovely Exmoor ponies, who ignored us and carried on eating the pesticide-free grass, their contribution to the SSSI status of the site. We were able to walk straight past them on our way round the farm!

A noisy pheasant and roe deer distracted us for a few minutes, until the twilight brought out several soprano pipistrelle bats (identified by a bat monitor brought by one of our members).

Once we had arrived at the badger sett we spent a (fairly) quiet half hour watching and whispering, however we thought that if we stayed any longer we might trip up on the unlit path back to the car park!

Our thanks go to Alex for being so patient with all of our questions, and finding an alternative route to the badger sett when a fallen tree was discovered on our original path!