The secret garden filming wildlife firsts

When wildlife expert Kate MacRae set up more than 20 hidden cameras in a garden, she did not expect to be potentially the first to record on video a badger giving birth in the wild.

At Yew View, on the banks of the River Severn in Worcestershire, creatures that call the secret garden their home include the likes of coots, moorhens, sparrowhawks and bats, as well as tawny owls, foxes, polecats, muntjac deer and otters.

MacRae, also known as WildlifeKate, was hired to make a nine-acre private site more attractive for some of the county's most rarely seen animals, and installed high-definition and infrared cameras so that its owners and the public could see what was happening in the garden.

She later went on to build an artificial badger sett, with the hope of being able to film them in their own environment.

It took two years before the badgers used it properly, with other animals, including foxes, polecats, rats and a domestic cat checking it out first.

But eventually, some of the nearby badgers started using it occasionally, opting to sleep in it for a quick nap here and there.

In 2022, a female badger brought lots of bedding into the sett and in what MacRae thinks could be a world first, the cameras caught the first recorded video of a badger giving birth in the wild. Other badgers have given birth on video before, but in captivity.

The video was featured on BBC Springwatch at the time.

"I think the thing that surprised us was just how noisy badger cubs were," MacRae said.

The badger gave birth to three cubs, but abandoned one in another chamber, where it died.

"We'll never know why she chose that [sett] but we're very pleased that she did," she added.

"I filmed the whole thing from when they were tiny... without their stripes, right up until she took them back to the main sett in the nearby woods."

For over a decade, MacRae has worked with the owners of the large, private wildlife haven in Worcestershire.

She has helped develop the site for nature by creating habitats and installing nest boxes and feeding stations.

A tawny owl that has been using the site for the past eight years laid three eggs this year, but two broke and the third looked unhealthy, so she abandoned the nest.

"There can be some amazing experiences of seeing a species you didn't know were here for example, or what's more common is interactions," the nature enthusiast said of Yew View.

"Watching behaviour or seeing interactions that you would never usually see."

MacRae said the badger sett she created had seen both "death and birth".

An old badger is thought to have died in the burrow, but the cameras that would have captured it were not working at the time due to a power cut.

When they came back on a few hours later, the badger had already been buried in the chamber. Some badgers are thought to bury their dead to keep the smell down and so they do not attract predators.

"One evening she [the badger] came in there and just lay in all the straw, she looked really comfy and she died in the sett," MacRae said.

"When I finally got the cameras back on, her body was completely buried in soil."

For MacRae, otters were a "real highlight" of the garden, but she has also seen many species of birds, such as kingfishers, blue tits, wrens, house sparrows and buzzards.

The site has a number of small waterholes, where birds regularly drink and bathe.

Some of the feeding station live cameras can be seen on the cameras page of her website.

On one occasion, she said a sparrowhawk landed on a post with something in its talons - it turned out to be a Daubenton's bat.

"The sparrowhawk stayed on that post for about five minutes and ate the whole thing," she said.

MacRae has also lost a number of her cameras in the past due to river flooding, but the footage she gathers allows her to study animal behaviour and habitat use, and to share the moments with a wider audience.

"That's the joy of trail cameras and wide cameras, they're inobtrusive," she said.

"They're just sitting there, watching 24/7 and the wildlife aren't worried by them at all."

Follow BBC Hereford & Worcester on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.