Photo by Adele Brand.

Mr Badger is not here. As a child, he was a favourite character in the Wind in the Willows and The Animals of Farthing Wood, but tonight the story is stolen by his real cousins – social, lively and hungry. In the torchlight, I can see that the fox scavenging scraps under the birdfeeder is wary; her eyes darken, her ears flatten and she steals away. A big fox weighs 4kg, and a big badger 14kg, and while they often tolerate each other, there is a hierarchy, with the badger firmly on top. One badger becomes six, and the peanuts vanish.

Britain boasts more badgers than foxes, yet many people will never glimpse one. Any woodland walk will yield evidence of their lives: broad tracks with five toes and a kidney-shaped heel pad, communal latrines serving as territory boundary markers, beaten trails patrolled by the dominant boars. Sometimes, too, there are shallow diggings of earthworms, their favourite prey – and a reminder that if badgers share our country, they also share our discomfort at endless rain. It drowns their earthworms and can even cause their setts to collapse. I have footage of a sow badger furiously digging a tiny cub out of a crumbled chamber.

And unlike Mr Badger, they are social, and not only to each other. Wood mice and rabbits lodge within setts, and foxes often breed there too – some compensation for the rivalry over the peanuts.

To view my nature blog go to http://foxescrossing.wordpress.com