Locating different animals.

Most of us only get to visit our local park or woodland during the day. The problem is a lot of British wildlife is nocturnal. So how can we tell what is going on in our woods when we are tucked up in bed? There are clues everywhere, first of all you can look for one of the most obvious ones, an animal trail. This could be a deer print in the mud which are called slots or a badger footprint. When you are looking you will probably come across domesticated animal prints as well(sheep,cows etc). What you really want is a number of different clues, then put them all together and you should know what you are trailing. Keep a look out for animal poo, some times (scat) animal excrement is hard to identify. Badgers are quite easy to recognise as they dig a little pit called a latrine and poo in the middle of it. Some poo has a characteristic smell.The smell is normally diagnostic of the animal, otter spraint smells like violets, pine martins smeel quite sweet and badgers poo normally smells woody. If you identify a badger set, look out for badger runs and you may be lucky enough to find a footprint. Once you have found all of the clues you should then be able to follow a trail, you can then see what the animal has been doing at night. I followed a badger trail the other night, first of all it trotted along sniffing from side to side, it stopped at a mole hill to have a root around or to eat an earth worm. It then carried on along the path until it went under a barbed wire fence, catching some hairs on it as it passed underneath. If you do find lots of signs from a certain animal, it may be a good idea to stake the area out at night time. You can then see if there is any activity while yoy are there, wait for a dark night when there isn`t a full moon.