My animals are friends

I beleive animals are a lot more intelligent than we give them credit for. I learned this from a man many years ago. He used to take a fox for a walk on a lead . I was very young at the time and learned that he had rescued it from a hunt where its parents had been killed. He had taken it home and brought it up with a couple of dogs where it had learned the ways of man. It behaved just like a dog.

This cat has a home a few yards away from my garden and the cat is often around when Junior calls. So they have got to know each other and as you can see its not that they tolerate each other they really are friends.
 

Juniors grown up

Junior has been comming to my garden for more than three years now. He first came with his mum and dad but they have now gone and he has a lady friend who often visits with him. I haven't seen her for a couple of weeks, at this time of the year she may have something else to keep her busy. Junior when he visits collects mouthfuls of biscuits and goes off and comes back in a while and sits down and tucks into whats left. 

        

He is always alert, although he seems to get on well with the other animals.

In this picture you can see the eyes of next doors cat glowing in the background.
 

After the storms the badger returns

After a week of severe weather in which all the animals failed to turn up for meal times the skies cleared and the evenings were mild and quiet the badger arrived and tucked in to a good meal. The storms stopped me from doing any photography, the wind turned our garden upside down.

I am not sure whether this one is male or female. It looks pregnant to me. Time will tell.

These were taken while I was asleep so I am not sure whether its the same animal. I will just have to wait and see.

Its a healthy animal except for a few what appears to be battle scars around its tail which can be clearly seen in the first picture.
 

Suprise suprise!

I had a good night with the animals yesterday. I managed to set the IR camera up perfectly and there was no rain or frost to mess up the lenses. The badger settled down to feed and I got these two pictures.

He moved into the best spot of all right infront of the lens.

While I was posting this blog tonight I heard a scuffling outside my room window. I drew the curtains slowly and to my amazement there was the badger sitting there looking at me. I was able to get a camera quickly and get this shot before he wandered off. Sorry about the quality but I never had time to focus before the security light went out.
 

Junior and friend

Junior arrived by himself , had a look round, had a bite to eat and when his friend turned up a few minutes later they decided to have a little game

They played for about ten minutes then Junior found some more food and decided that was more important and that was the end of that.

He then tucked into the food and left his friend to watch. I am longing to know the sex of his friend. If its a female I could end up with a garden full of foxes.