Country diary: concrete threat to badger lifted for now

Tempsford, Bedfordshire: To us the entrance hole to the sett it is unfathomably small, for in our imaginations we big up the badger into a creature with the dimensions of a stripy bear

On a disused airfield where planes once lifted off on secret night missions to occupied Europe, animals roam the runways under cover of darkness. At one corner, badgers have mined a thicket of thorns with pickaxe claws and shovels for feet. Their sett is lodged among the bushes, its tunnels and chambers shored up and secured by pillars and rafters of roots. It has spread to the point where the mouth of the newest hole gapes out over the open airfield. A portal between day and night, a D-shape on its side, it slumbers in the sun, while, deep inside, curled-up animals dream of dusk, their babies still a couple of months away from emergence. The hole breathes out no sounds, no smells, nothing.

The entrance hole to the sett would represent a canyon to a rabbit, but to us it is unfathomably small, for in our imaginations we big up the badger into a creature with the dimensions of a stripy bear.