B and I enjoy being ‘nature detectives’ outside. It starts in February with a possibly misguided attempt to track bird and animal tracks in the garden. Spring brings lots more options and we apply our skills in a rural garden, tracking deer at Margam Park and following footprints on the beach. In summer, we test how deep the rabbit holes in our garden are and go on a night time nature walk.

42 – Spotting tracks from the garden pond

Thursday 20 November. Clear skies. 3°C

One of my favourite challenges of the whole year this. We’re getting breakfast and notice watery marks by the pond so we go to investigate. It’s definitely feet. More precisely it’s the marks made by a fairly large animal who has suddenly found themselves in a pond and is scrambling to get out.

B wonders if it’s a frog. She’d like a frog. I’m 99% certain it’s a fox. It could be the bigger of our two cats but he’s had enough encounters with the pond to attempt to go in when it’s close to freezing.

We look at the size of the paws and the distance between them and decide it’s probably quite a young fox. There’s a route over the fence on one side to the fence on the other which it was clearly taking… It’s paws must have been very cold.

We keep an eye on the water to see if it dries… it’s too cold to dry quickly. It finally disappears mid afternoon, so it could easily have happened in the early hours.

93 – Night time nature walk

Sunday 28 September. Clear skies. 16°C

B and I are going on an evening nature walk. We’re both hoping to see a hedgehog. We’ve had one go already, walking round the local park in the dark, but got nowhere so we’re going to branch out and try the local country park instead. I reckon there’ll be a few people about, even at night. I’m wrong. We get there as the last people leave and find ourselves entirely alone apart from a few cars going past. I’ll be honest, as it got darker, I found it quite scary. It reminded me of all those film and tv shows where something sinister comes out of the dark. B hasn’t seen any of those yet, so she was fine and I pretended I was too.

With our torches we went for a walk through the woods that we’d done back in June. We were looking for things with four legs but found crows instead. Lots of them, very loud, cawing away. Maybe the dark made them louder? Then, in the middle of the cawing, came another cry. It sounded young and a bit silly and was followed by the hooting of an owl. B and I are sure it was a baby owl and mum. She hooted to them and the mum hooted back and we heard the younger cry again.

We didn’t find our hedgehog but the owls were fine. We walked on a bit and sat in the woodland glade for a bit, listening to the noise of conkers and other nuts falling off trees in the distance. Moths danced in our torchlight. We felt more alert than I can ever remember feeling but it was a relief to get back to the car. Next time, I think we’ll try somewhere more populated.

124 – How deep is the rabbit hole?

Wednesday 27 August. Cloudy and bit rainy. 21°C

All B this. She’s got intrigued by the rabbit holes in the garden. It’s not a big garden but we’ve had two generations of rabbits now and there are two surviving holes -one massive one which the local fox keeps visiting at night, and a small one about two metres away at a different angle. B’s wondering how deep they are. She’s got a stick to stick down and measure it with but it’s clearly not long enough.

I dig out some secateurs and suggests she cuts a bit of the willow. There’s some bits that are close to 3m high and should do the trick. She cuts it, pulls the leaves off and heads back out with purpose. She marks how far she can put it in the hole and then measures it against her height chart. 138cm. I’m impressed. The first rabbit hole was only as long as the rabbit… they’ve been improving.

B moves round to measure the smaller hole but the end of the willow breaks off and she gets diverted. We’re wondering if the two holes link up. The willow’s clearly not going to tell us so she hits on the simple idea of putting a bunny down one hole and seeing if it comes out from the other.

The bunnies are NOT impressed with this idea. They are not performing monkeys and are very good at NOT being caught. Thankfully we have a nosy kitten who is more helpful. B puts her down and she disappears… then reappears where she left… we try and put her down the other hole but it smells of fox and she won’t go near it. Results… inconclusive.

241 – Tracking deer at Margam Park

Monday 5 May. Cloudy. 14°C

It’s the final day of the bank holiday weekend and we’re going to Margam Park. Last time we went B had very little legs and got tired walking. Now they’re a lot longer and I’ve remembered there are deer that we can potentially track.

In my head this is a large open space and the deer could be anywhere and I’m a bit worried B is going to get bored and frustrated. I am totally wrong. It’s a large open but ultimately contained space and the map at the entrance helpfully points us in the right direction. B gets to do the map reading too which since our February wayfinding challenges has been appreciated.

We have a list of things to look for. Poo is the big one and helpfully it is very much in evidence. We’re both amused that there’s as much poo outside the ‘enclosed deer area’ as in. They’re either good at escaping or there’s wild ones coming to visit a lot.

I’m on the lookout for fur too but B is a bit scathing about this. Probably rightly. I think I find some but she says it’s dandelion fluff.

Foot prints are the other thing on the list but its been so dry I’m presuming we won’t see any. I’m totally wrong. There are muddy ditches where little streams seem to run through and it’s clearly the deer crossing point. We’re both excited by that one. We also find a tree which is missing quite a lot of it’s bark, which is all over the floor, and we conclude it’s been used as an antler rub.

Finally we see them. B is very bouncy (“there’s LOTS. I thought we’d just see one or two”). No teeny babies but lots of different types and they’re tame enough that we can watch them for a while. We work out which are male and female and B names some as babies (though they might be last years). We both feel really chuffed. Nature detecting is a lot of fun!

244 – Tracking footprints on the beach

Friday 2 May. Sunny. 18°C

We’re off to the beach today. It’s a beautiful spring day but we decide against attempting to swim. I reckon it’s more paddling weather. Following on from being nature detectives a few weeks earlier we have a plan for a new game. We’re going to try a sort of hide and seek where you have to follow the footprints to find where the other person’s gone. We’re quite excited.

It’s a lot of fun but we work out that’s only the half of it. There’s working out which footprints are the ones you’re following, disguising your tracks by going in the water and making different sorts of footprints. I have a go at painstakingly making some with a stone. B just uses her heels which is easier and more effective.

It’s a really good start to a day of beach fun. We go to make up games and chase the waves but the footprints are definitely what start us off. Will do this one again! Sadly there were only human footprints at the beach… but I suspect we’ll find some other types as the summer progresses.

265 – Being nature detectives in a rural garden

Thursday 10 April. Sunny. 9°C

We’re trying something new today. We’ve been living for five days in a big house in the middle of the country. The garden is surrounded by fields and we’ve seen hares and pheasants out in them. One of the family mention seeing hares in the garden early in the morning (they might be rabbits but we have all decided they’re hares as they look longer, leaner and with bigger ears than our pet rabbits at home) so B and I head out to see if we can find evidence they’ve been there.

Once outside we immediately find an interloper. A little black cat is hiding behind some flowers (we wonder what it was watching before we turned up). It’s friendly and open to stroking. Once it’s left, we start our hunt. It’s not hard to see traces of hares. The grass is covered with droppings. We (well I, B’s not getting her hands dirty) pick some up to make a 265. I wonder how they’ve got in and we make our way round the edge of the garden looking at the fence. There are a few little gaps and then we find a big hole at the back.

We also find some tunnels – too small for hares but possibly belonging to moles. There’s no mole hills but there are a few places where a mole hill might have been stamped down. We find a dead pigeon in a corner of the outhouse and try and work out how it died (from a distance). It’s perfectly preserved and we give up. Pretty sure the little black cat couldn’t have done it.

We really enjoy ourselves and after heading back in (and washing our hands) I resolve to try this one again. It would be a good one for a woodland walk maybe?

321 – Looking for bird and animal tracks in the mud

Friday 14 February.  Cloudy. 5°C

Time for a new idea.  I’m trying to think of something we haven’t done yet and plough through google looking for suggestions.  The only thing that comes up which doesn’t involve snow (we are desperate for snow!) and we haven’t already done is looking for tracks in the earth of different creatures.  At first, I dismiss it.  It’s been dry and cold for over a week and the earth is generally pretty hard.  Short of going down to the beach (which we haven’t the time or the energy for today) it doesn’t seem likely that we’d find anywhere to do it.  Then I think again.

We have quite a lot of muddy earth in the garden – thanks to our pet rabbits who ate all the grass years ago.  It’s dried out, hard and has the roots and ends of weeds sticking out but maybe we can do something about that.  For possibly the first time in our little neglected garden, B’s garden rake is about it have its moment.

We rake the patch (it’s about 1m²) firmly then realise we’re going to need to flatten it back down to make a smooth surface.  I find a big plastic tub that should do the trick.  By dragging it along we can make a smooth muddy surface which should take prints ok.  Then we scatter some seeds over it – putting fabulous welly patterns in as we do – we rake and flatten it again.  Then B heads off to school making me promise I won’t look at it until she comes back.

I keep my promise.  There’s a pigeon hopping about and I hope he finds the patch.  When B comes home we go to examine it.   It’s a bit like looking for secret messages…  we agonise over each different mark trying to work out what could have cause it.  Our conclusion is that the bunnies have definitely made an impact but we’re not sure there’s anything else. I think there might be a pigeon foot but B disagrees.  The mud is thick and not fine at all.  We clearly need better resources for this one.  Gets us thinking though…

A few weeks later and we find ourselves in the beach, in nice weather, actually finding some proper tracks! Bird ones still elusive but I think we’ll keep returning to this one.