No Business Like "Tracking in the Snow" Business

Britain has come to a stand still this last week as snow has enveloped most of the country. Media hype hit again as reports of "chaos" swamped the news channels.

I will merely note that this is the heaviest snowfall for about 18 years, and since last Sunday, we've had about 1 foot of the stuff. I'm not going to get sucked in to the arguments as to why this great nation grinds to a halt when the slightest barrier is put in front of it. Having said that, my armchair observations have noticed a sprinkling of the Dunkirk spirit, and Mrs P poignantly reported that for the first time for along time, she could hear children laughing in the street. 

I managed to snap a couple of pics of the garden for prosperity...

Of course, snow is the tracker's great friend. Fine details of individual tracks may be lost and you may have to rely more on identifying the overall compression shape especially once the track has started to age (or melt). 

Snow will also help you in other ways such as identifying various gaits. When does the walking gait change into trotting and why is it changing? Where is the animal going? Why is it going there? You should also be able to add a few more bits to your jig-saw puzzle on the day-to-day life of the creature you are tracking. This sometimes offers some rewarding "Eureka" moments (like Badgerwatchingman's post). Although you may still never see the completed picture, snow may offer a chance to add a couple more pieces to it.

There was an interesting discovery waiting for me as I was taken to the local fields by Mrs P  last Monday. Unfortunately, it had been snowing all day, so fresh snow fall had covered up the tracks of the previous night.

Nevertheless, I spotted this fox trail (poor quality pics because of the time of day). Nothing unusual about that you might say, but what was unusual (and one I would not have noticed without the snow) was that it came out from a badger sett entrance. The tracks could only have been about 30 minutes old. It really had me scratching my head, but I had to accept what I saw. Now, I've heard of badgers and foxes sharing dens and setts but I never thought it would happen at my local sett. I believe that it's only when food is in contention would things get a bit nasty between the two tenants.

I wish I could have got out of the Land Rover Discovery and studied the tracks more closely. But it was plain to see, that the fox had came out of this lower entrance, wandered up to one of the top sett entrances, walked back down the embankment and trotted along the path parallel with the embankment. He had then crossed the path to go under a fence and into an area where there's a small water reservoir.

I've certainly shed some interesting light on where the foxes are at the moment and also (from looking at the tracks pictured below which were taken yesterday in the melting snow) the route the badgers and foxes take getting from the field where the sett/den is to other areas. In the summer I'll be able to sit at a spot near these tracks and hopefully watch them passing by.