Becoming a detective
"I have, as you know, devoted some attention to this, and written a little monograph on the ashes of 140 different varieties of pipe, cigar, and cigarette tobacco."
Sherlock Holmes, in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"
This week I’m talking detection, and what better way to introduce the subject, than by quoting the most famous and celebrated sleuth in literature, the great Sherlock Holmes. However, I am not trying to persuade you all to produce a compendium of 140 pipe, cigar and cigarette tobacco ashes, although you are more than welcome to try, but instead I’m going to suggest a different and very satisfying way to view the countryside; becoming a nature detective.
This is something which all too often gets put into the category of “things to do with children” and therefore not something which us adults ought to bother ourselves with unless the kids, grandkids or other errant child pester us to look into it. How short sighted! Try looking at it from this angle – as an activity which keeps young people entertained for days at a time, think of the fun you will have focussing your mind and gathering evidence in the natural crime scene on your doorstep. If its good enough for the under nines, its good enough for me!
Signs, fieldcraft, detection, call it what you like, the simple fact is that most of the interesting things which happen in the wild, occur when we aren’t looking. Therefore to be able to fathom who dunnit, you have to be able to piece together the clues that are left behind. This monograph can’t hope to be Holmes-like in its comprehensiveness, but it will hopefully give you a few easily recognisable clues to look out for and get you started witnessing the world from an entirely new perspective.
This time of year is a suitable season to look for tracks, the most immediate and easily pieced together bit of detection one can engage in. Learning a few of the common footprints will instantly get you checking every bit of wet mud and gateway for miles around.
When you are first learning your skill, give yourself a break. Don’t make things any harder for yourself than necessary and start off somewhere with a controlled animal policy. Specifically, go somewhere that doesn’t allow dogs, and hasn’t got sheep or cattle roaming about and you can be pretty sure what has made your track has come from the wild. Telling fox prints from dog prints is pretty easy once you get your eye in, but if you start off in the busiest dog walking spot in the southwest, you will never progress. Fox tracks are small, little bigger than a jack russell print, and they are very oval in their shape, more so than any dog - which tend to be rounder.
Bader prints are easily recognised by their five forward pointing toes, each tipped with a long claw, longer at the front than the back. They have a wide, fat hardworking shape, reflecting the continual digging they are used for.
Collecting prints couldn’t be easier, you don’t need to faff with cardboard sleeves and moulds. Just mix up some plaster of Paris to the consistency of double cream, pour it over the print enough to cover and leave it to set. Once dry you can pick it up and clean the mud from the bottom, after which you can paint the print to highlight the cast. A handsome collection in any naturalist’s arsenal.
Otter prints are beautiful, again five toed, and arranged like flower petals around a central round-ish pad. When you see these on a riverbank its time to look for your second sign – poo. Don’t be under the impression I am particularly keen on poo, its just that my job brings me into contact with the stuff a little more than average. But there’s poo and there’s poo.
Badgers are tidy-minded animals and will dig (again, the digging) a little latrine into which they make their deposit. In autumn, look out for badger poo taking on a vivid purple hue from the glut of blackberries they will be eating. Fox poo is long, thin and tapered, often matted with fur, frequently left on raised ground to broadcast its musty scent. Otter poo (you may notice a pattern here) is beautiful. Seriously, it’s jet black and slightly glistening when fresh, packed full of fish bones and has the scent of jasmine tea and olive oil mixed together. Great stuff! Be really cautious when investigating droppings however, as an easy mix up with something left by a dog or mink will turn your stomach and put you off nature detection for a good while. And remember to wash your hands after this activity!
Finally, scenes of carnage; real detective work. If you spend time in the countryside, you will inevitably come across the remains of something that has been eaten, or partially eaten, by something else. Here’s a few things to look out for.
A pile of feathers is a good sign that a bird has snuffed it. But look more closely at the flight feathers as they contain clues to the culprit. If the feathers look like they have been torn off, with a ragged tip, then this meal was consumed by a fox. They use their back teeth to shear the feathers off the carcass, a bit like scissors.
If the larger feathers look perfect all the way to the tip, perhaps with the faintest kink towards the end, then these have been pulled out by the beak of a raptor. Look around you for clues as to which one it might have been, but the most common avian predator of other birds will be sparrowhawks. You can go further too: If the meal is something small, up to the size of a starling, then the hawk was a male and this will be a scarce find in the open, as the timid males tend to take their quarry off to a quiet spot to eat. If the prey is up to the size of a woodpigeon, it’s a female... or a goshawk! This is only a broad generalisation, I wouldn’t publish an academic paper based on these findings, but it’s a good conversation point when out and about.
So, keep you eyes peeled next time you are in the countryside and see if you can piece together the clues to help you unravel nocturnal goings on around you.