MANY of the wild mammals that live in our countryside are nocturnal and even species that are active in daylight, such as squirrels and deer, are extremely shy.
This means people who are interested in mammals often have to infer their presence from tracks and signs rather than actually seeing the animals themselves.
Signs include droppings, damage to tree bark by deer or squirrels, discarded nut shells or cones and pathways made by hares or badgers. But footprints or tracks are one of the most satisfying ways of monitoring the movements of shy mammals. And that’s why I always get a bit excited when we have a fall of snow.
We’ve had a bit of snow around here for about 10 days now. It generally melts during the day, though a bit lingers on in shady spots, and then there’s another sprinkling during the night to give a thin crust in the morning. No animal can move without leaving clear traces of its presence.
You may not have been as lucky as I was but animals can leave clear footprints in firm mud even during the summer, so it’s useful to be able to identify the tracks of some of our commoner wild mammals.
First a couple of tracker’s tips: when snow melts, and re-freezes, footprints can increase in size. I once thought I’d found the paw print of a bear in Co Kildare. It turned out to be an enlarged footprint of a badger. And this phenomenon almost certainly explains the myth of the yeti or abominable snowman in the Himalayas.
Some prints can be a bit tricky to identify in the field so it’s useful to take a picture with a digital camera or a camera phone to bring back and compare with an illustration from a book or website. Place something like a coin in the picture to give a measurement scale.
It’s fairly easy, for example, to recognise the print of a deer’s hoof. About the only thing you might confuse it with is a sheep. But it’s much more difficult to decide whether it was a red, fallow or sika deer and that’s where accurate measurement and use of a reference book is vital.
Badgers are fairly easy because they have five pads and five claws and they are almost level with each other at the tips. When they’re walking, as opposed to running, the prints of the hind feet fall almost on top of those of the fore feet.
Otters are even easier because a good print will clearly show that they have webbed feet. Their tails normally drag on the ground and leave a mark in mud or snow. On land they usually progress by bounding rather than walking. Foxes will at times also leave a tail print. Their footprints can be difficult to tell apart from a dog but tend to be narrower, longer and more compact.
Rabbits and hares are very easy because the hind legs leave a long, narrow print — the entire ‘shin’ of the animal touches the ground — while the fore feet leave a normal oval mark, though without much detail, because the sole of the foot is very furry. When a rabbit or hare is running fast the hind prints are in front of the fore prints, when they’re sitting or hopping slowly the fore prints are in front.
The difference between a rabbit print and a hare print is largely a matter of size — hare prints are twice as big. The hind prints of hares are also longer compared to the fore prints than is the case with rabbits.
* dick.warner@examiner.ie
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, February 16, 2009
