Making an impression...

The wet winter is not seen by many as a positive thing, but one positive that has come out of it is the soft ground which is ideal for spotting wildlife tracks, like this set of badger footprints (left).  Badgers have quite distinctive footprints with one main kidney shaped pad, 5 toe prints and often also 5 claw marks above these as you can see here.  You can see there are two footprints here, badgers tend to step their back foot close to where their front foot was so often footprints are very close together. 


Badgers also do a lot of digging and there is plenty evidence of this around the loch.  These diggings are mainly for foraging as they love earthworms but some could be territorial markings where they dig latrine holes as badgers scent mark their territories.