Jon Hawkins Surrey Hills Photography
Most of our mammals are active when we are not – during the hours of darkness. This makes them frustratingly difficult to observe.
However, a little knowledge and a bit of detective work will let you discover which animals have been visiting. And this is one of the best times of year to do it. Muddy paths and snow-covered lawns readily betray their visitors in the form of their footprints and tracks. Here are a few to get you started:
The footprints of foxes are very like those of dogs; four, forward-facing toes with visible claws (cats retract their claws when walking), and a triangular palm pad.
Fox print close up, note the cross pattern (right), and fox tracks (left).
However, there are a couple of points that readily separate the two. Are the prints solitary, with no human tracks running beside them? Are they in a straight, purposeful line, and not meandering around? Can you see a clear “X” running through the centre of the print? If the answer to all of these is “yes”, you are looking at the tracks made by a fox.
We have six different species of deer in the UK, three of which are fairly common in Essex. They all make quite similar footprints, consisting of two “slots”, in wet ground, so you will need to look closely to work out which one is which.
Fallow deer
Thought to have been introduced to the UK by the Normans following their conquest in 1066, fallow deer are quite common in north Essex nowadays, often gathering in herds of 50-100 individuals. Their footprints are large (4-6cm long) and well defined, as they are big, heavy animals. As they live together in herds, you will often find a lot of footprints in one place, frequently pointing in all directions.
Fallow deer track
Roe deer
Whilst the slots produced by roe deer are a similar size to those of the fallow deer (around 4.5cm), they are more sharply pointed and often splay outwards a little. Also, small holes can sometimes be seen behind the slots where the animal’s dew claws on the heel of each foot have stuck into the soft ground.
Roe deer tracks.
Muntjac deer
These footprints are very much smaller than the other two, and are quite dainty, by comparison. Muntjac are also usually solitary animals, so you will likely only find one, purposeful line of prints, as we did with the fox.
Muntjac deer tracks.
Rabbits and hares make distinctive, but very similar, tracks with very odd and uneven spacing of the paw prints. This is as a result of their hopping gait.
The only way to tell them apart is by their size; prints of a hare are quite a bit bigger than those of a rabbit, and the distance between each set of prints can also be longer, especially when moving at speed.
Hare (left) and rabbit (right) tracks.
The prints left by the back feet can appear quite long and slipper-like, especially in snow, and are bigger than those made by the smaller, front feet. When travelling normally, the forefeet imprint in front of the hind feet, as in the picture on the right. But when moving quickly, the back feet land in front of the forefeet, as in the picture on the left.
These are the tracks that you are most likely to find in the Essex countryside at this time of year, but look out for those made by badgers, hedgehogs and squirrels in the spring. Check out the Wildlife Trust’s guide here for further information visit https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/how-identify/identify-tracks.
Sue Huggett
Campaigns Volunteer
