Life can be a boar (or two) on a frosty morning

A lot of care goes into making sure protected species are not disturbed while work is taking place to connect new sources of electricity to the transmission network.

A Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks environmental team on site last week to remove measures in place to protect badgers got an unexpected surprise when they encountered some wild boar piglets along the way.

Wild boars once roamed Scotland, but were hunted to extinction around 800 years ago. The size of the wild population today is not known, but is thought to have arisen from animals escaping from captivity. They are mainly nocturnal and so are relatively rarely seen.

It was thought that the introduced population might struggle to survive harsh Scottish winters, but – for better or worse – neither sub-zero temperatures nor transmission project activity seem to be a problem.

The two wild boar piglets foraging in the frost