Tracking on a strollTracking on a stroll

I have always enjoyed just going for a stroll through the woods. As a mite even when I knew very little about the world around me I used to wonder at the noises, smells, colours, shapes and always be asking why.

I loved learning as a child and my thirst for knowledge has developed and grown deeper. Many of my friends at school would argue that knowing the name of the sepals, stigma and stamen, reduced their innate loveliness. I argued the opposite. The more we understand, the deeper we are able to look and the more we look, the more there is to know and cherish.

Tracking for me is a perfect example of this. As something that I knew very little about just two years ago, I can really feel how much even my limited knowledge adds to walks and journeys that I make. Those gaps in the bottom of hedges made by the regular pass of an animal (called “smeuses” as recorded by Roger MacFarlane in Landscapes), are no longer always just made by ‘an animal’. My new tracking knowledge has given me the spur and confidence to do more than just wonder, now I pause and look closer. Is there some barbed wire that may have caught some hair in it? Is there a trail trap (a posh term for a substrate that will record the track, in the parts of the UK I work this is usually wet mud) slightly further up the path?

Sometimes I don’t get anything, as the ground is hard, there are no obvious feeding signs or droppings nearby and there’s no well placed stick or thorn to collect any hairs as the animal has tripped over or squeezed under.

But other times I find what I’m looking for, and I spot the grazing sign of deer, the badger hair caught under the barbed wire, or a fox scat sitting prominently on top of a small rise. And my understanding of the creatures that are currently hidden from me but sharing the space with me grows. As my understanding grows, my connection grows.

I feel for the fox that diligently goes around the garden and places new marker scat on a mound nearby where the visiting dog pooed the day before. I walk though my woods crunching through the beech leaves underfoot, knowing that I am unlikely to see much as being stealthy with such a deep layer of crunchy leaf litter makes the combination of stealth and forward motion impractical. And I smile at the tenacity of the roe deer that has scratched out a sleeping area right to bare ground through the thick bed of bluebells that coats the woods at this time of year.

I spot the badger set and the paths leading off it, that they follow on a regular basis, but knowing more I spot they have hit a clay layer in recent excavations, and can see a front right print perfectly formed and baked hard as the clay dried. I also spot where the badger has worked to clean its claws, scratching into the bark of a tree to wipe its claws clean again.

Walking from my house to the woods I pass a badger set and a rabbit warren. The rabbits rarely cross the road, but the road is crisscrossed with badger trails. One I pause to look closer at, it’s a very steep bank for such a short animal could it be deer instead? As I look closer I spot a skid mark, sliding back down the steep clay bank, over 20cm (8inches) in length with a clear badger print and claws at the bottom. Definitely a badger trail then, but maybe one that’s got steeper over the centuries as the road has been used and started to become a Holloway.