This beginner course is a great place to start for those looking to improve their ability to identify a range of wildlife tracks and signs.
You will learn skills to confidently identify a variety of mammal and bird activity including the physical appearance and ID features of a tracks, feeding signs, homes, and droppings. You will also have plenty of time exploring outdoors to put your new found knowledge into practice, leaving you with a solid introduction to the world of tracking.
Wildlife tracking is an ancient science and art – one that humans once relied upon for survival. Tracking involves a range of skills such as identifying the animal that left the clue, working out what it was doing and when, and even finding the animal itself. Tracking is a great way to hone our ability to observe details around us and to build our knowledge of wildlife, specifically their presence, movements and feeding ecology. This place-based training course from the Field Studies Council includes a balance of classroom-led and outdoor learning opportunities focusing on building introductory knowledge of wildlife tracks and signs, and the identification/ understanding of some examples of these. It will introduce Master Listing as a concept to help objectively interpret what we find in the field.
