First, there is the bedding – here of straw, bundled into hay by broad powerful paws. However busy harvest time might be for farmers, busier still are badgers. After the wheat is cut, the stubble is theirs for the gathering.
For those unfamiliar with badger habits: they like their setts lined with bedding material, and not being equipped with shopping trolleys, they carry it backwards in the style of a reversing rabbit. I doubt many humans could walk backwards on a winding path without mishap, but badgers hop round corners, past brambles and over dips with apparently little problem.
But sometimes the story becomes stranger. A bundle of bedding abandoned mid-path by a badger has a second life: a scent post for badgers and foxes alike.
Yes, that fox did roll in badger urine or dung. Dogs that throw themselves into fox scat are the horror of their owners but this is the first time that I’ve observed a fox attempting similar behaviour. There is a fairly significant advantage in smelling like the local land – territory owners tend to win arguments with trespassers. That said, it is more conventional for foxes to achieve this by scent marking everywhere at nose height.
Elsewhere in the wood, bedding is a matter of hazel leaves and stripped honeysuckle bark.
If you look very closely, you might see a ginger nose in there. An older version of these:
Dormice have a few more weeks before they will weave hibernation nests on the woodland floor. Until then, these babies can sleep alongside their mother in the hazel leaves, oblivious to the antics of more wakeful woodland creatures.
A Walk with Wildlife 
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