Course Description

This 1 day course will introduce you to the concepts of animal tracking and leave you with a greater awareness of your surroundings and the animals that are inhabiting or passing through.

During the day you will learn about different animal paw / hoof prints, their gait patterns and how to interpret them.

We will cover the different sign each animal can give to show their presence and ways of recording them from plaster cast to drawing and photography. Sign can include scat, feeding, hair fibres etc.

We know we have two different type of deer, badger, fox and squirrel in the woodland so we will find track and sign we can follow and interpret. You will leave with a greater understanding of your environment and with your senses much more tuned into your surroundings.

WARNING: You may get hooked on it!

Subjects Covered:

• Awareness: we will look at ways to tune into your environment to become more aware of your surroundings by better using the senses of sight, hearing and smell.

• Differences: we will look at the difference in animal foot prints between animals of the same species and alternate species and how the ‘feet’ have adapted to the animals requirements.

• Evidence: we will look at ways to gather evidence of an animals presence from track traps to nature cameras, from physical ‘sign’ such as feeding or rubbing points to scat.

• Examples: with nature nothing is guaranteed, however over the years we have gathered a fair selection of resources which can be used, if nature doesn’t play ball. Key ID features of feathers, foot prints, scull and scat will all be covered.

• Recording: using suitable tracks we will look at ways of recording your finds from photographs to sketching to taking plaster casts.

Suitable for:

This course is aimed at adults and accompanied mid / late teens.