198
CARNIVORA OF EPPING FOREST.
NOTES ON THE CARNIVORA OF EPPING
FOREST.
T
HE following interesting article appeared in the Pall Mall
Gazette of December 7th, 1899. The author evidently
writes with knowledge of the forest, and some of his remarks are
confirmatory of our own observations :—
" During the past twelve months the Epping Forest Badgers have been
developing a great deal of activity. No longer content with their earths close
to the keeper's lodge near the Wake Arms, where they share their homes with
rabbits and foxes, they have made new excavations and formed a colony at a
point nearly two miles nearer town, that is to say, in the old Loughton camp
on a rising at the back of the Robin Hood. A favourite path goes within a
yard or two, and close to the openings is a fallen tree trunk on which 'talking
age and whispering lovers' have long been used to rest, but the badgers
pay no heed to what goes on by day, and have the place all to themselves
at night. They have made a considerable number of new earths, so that
they appear to have come in force. Some naturalists hold that when the
stronghold gets too crowded, the tough old parents set upon their offspring
and drive them away. At times, too, they get weary of their house-mates,
the foxes, and once or twice dead cubs have been found outside the
earth. They do not seem to molest the rabbits, except during the breed-
ing season, when they esteem the young an irresistible dainty. As is well
known, the doe rabbit does not make her nest in the family burrow, but
scoops out a 'stop' or small hole near the surface not much longer than a
man's arm. The badger is able to judge the position of this with great
accuracy, and instead of laboriously digging the nest out in all its hori-
zontal length, pierces it with a tiny perpendicular shaft. In spring, the
present writer, in company with a very accomplished naturalist, found
several of these harried stops in the open space below Fair Mead.
There was the mouth of the stop, the hole out of which the badger had
drawn the tiny rabbit with his paw, and lying about the 'fluck' which
the mother uses for her nest. Those who know what a common resort
this green open space is will wonder no less that the doe should make
choice of it than that badgers prowl about there by night, stumbling as
they must over empty lemonade bottles and seeing sandwich papers lying
about. But there is the most certain evidence, not only of this, but that
on Chingford Plain—home of merry-go-round and highflier—the Roedeer and
Fallow-deer, the Fox, Badger, and Rabbit roam at night.
"The importation of badgers has been so pronounced a success that
attempts have been made to introduce other animals that seem to be grow-
ing extinct elsewhere. The most interesting of these is that beautiful
creature the Pine-martin. One was shot near Loughton in 1853,1 and that
was the last killed in Essex, although as late as 1883 2 a trustworthy observer
reported that he had seen one. At present they seem to be less nearly
extinct in Cumberland than elsewhere, and it having become known that a
1 See J. E. Harting, Trans. Essex Field Club, vol. i., p. 95.—Ed.
2 The writer evidently refers to the late Mr. English's observation of one seen in the
Forest, near Ambresbury Banks, on July 20th, 1883. See Journ. of Proc. Essex F. C, vol. iv.
p. lxiv.—Ed.