SIGNS OF LIFE

Many of our best-loved animals can be tricky to observe in the flesh. Mammals are often most active after dark, and although some have managed to adapt to urban life, those in rural areas tend to keep their distance from humans, for good reasons.

Badgers are a case in point. They are surprisingly common across much of the country but, unless you make a special effort, it’s easy to go years at a time without seeing a live one. Some people have never seen a living Badger, or at best have glimpsed one in the car headlights as it shuffles across the road late at night. They have their distinctive setts of course; there can be few country dwellers who have never stumbled across one when out walking. And because they stick to familiar, well-used routes when travelling from place to place, they also leave evidence of their movements.

With practice, Badger paths are easy to find, showing as narrow strips of flattened soil or vegetation, connecting their setts and the places they go to find food. In our local fields these paths are suddenly revealed in spectacular detail when the grass is cut for silage. As the grass in a field grows up, the leaves close to the ground become faded and yellow, due to a lack of light - an effect that is all too obvious if you cut your lawn after a few weeks of letting it grow. But along the Badger paths, the grass has been trodden down and sunlight floods in, allowing new leaves to flourish. Then, when the field is cut, these paths show as a network of dark green lines, winding across a pale-yellow backdrop. It’s pleasing to be able to see the routes they take - brockways if you will - with such clarity, though in an area dominated by dairy farming, advertising presence in this way is not necessarily a good idea; a programme of Badger culling is currently in progress to try to reduce tuberculosis outbreaks in cattle.

In woods much visited by people it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between human and animal pathways, but follow a path for long enough and all becomes clear. A Badger or Fox will pass underneath fallen trees and branches if there is space, whereas people are forced to go around or over the top. The same is true for fence lines at the edge of the wood, and here barbed wire brings an added bonus: tufts of hair can be found snagged on the lower strand, revealing the animal that passed through. Badger hairs are particularly distinctive, being stiff and wiry, with alternating bands of black and white. They may be more familiar to half the population through their use in shaving brushes - mostly synthetic these days, though the real thing is apparently still imported from China.

Animals leave tell-tale prints as another giveaway of their presence. Suitable muddy surfaces tend to be few and far between, so the evidence is patchy and hard to find. But snow changes everything. It primes the landscape in brilliant white, providing a surface that reveals every movement. After a good snowfall I tend to walk the fields closest to home, relishing the chance to learn more about animals that come by after dark but usually pass through unnoticed. After snow, they are caught in the act. By following their trails, I can find out where they have come from, whether or not they entered the garden and, if so, which direction they went next. For a wild animal, rural gardens are just another part of the territory rather than being in any way separate from the rest of the countryside.

Following a trail in snow offers much more information than can easily be gleaned from watching the animal itself. Even if you have night vision equipment, keeping in close contact with a Fox or Badger for any length of time is almost impossible. Sooner or later it will become aware of your presence and slip quietly away, or cease to behave naturally.

Fox trails are especially good fun to trace because this is such an adaptable and flexible creature; a trail could lead almost anywhere. They also leave plenty of clues along the route as to what they have been up to. A typical feature in grassland is an abrupt end to the line of footprints, a gap of two feet or so of pure, untouched snow, and then an explosion of powder with a hole in the middle. This is a Fox pausing, having picked up the sound of a small mammal moving about beneath the snow. It has then leapt forward with all four paws (and muzzle) landing in the same spot, punching a hole through to its potential meal.

If there are spots of bright red sullying the snow, then you’ll know it was successful.

Badgers leave highly distinctive prints with four or five large pads aligned in a shallow semi-circle. I’ve yet to find any inside our garden but the snow has shown that they visit the adjacent fields, and have walked by just the other side of the fence.

Camera traps now offer a simple and reliable way of revealing nocturnal visitors to gardens, but they lack the magic of tracking and at best provide a snapshot rather than the whole story. They are no substitute for a few hours of detective work.

The mammal that is most evident in this part of Devon, both in the flesh and from the signs it leaves behind, is the Red Deer. This is Britain’s largest land mammal and it moves around the local fields and woods in groups of thirty or more. The large, rounded droppings are very obvious and I sometimes find patches of flattened grass or Bracken where they have clearly been resting. A cast antler is a rare (and highly coveted) find, but small trees with the bark stripped are a common sight, especially after the rut; the testosterone-fuelled stags show off their strength to the hinds by thrashing their antlers against the tree stems.

When they pass through hedge-banks along the lanes, there are ‘up and overs’. The deer use the same routes repeatedly and the hooves of such a heavy animal cut deeply into the soil. They turn these crossing points to mud in winter, spilling stones onto the lane below and pushing their way through what was once a secure, stockproof barrier. The local farmers resort to shoving wooden palettes into the gaps or even tying short sections of electric-fence wire across the holes. The wire is no obstacle to the deer but cattle know from experience what it looks (and feels) like and, unlike deer, they don’t have the dexterity to leap over. They also lack the common sense to work out that there is no battery nearby. It seems to work well enough.

The Red Deer is the one wild animal that makes trails useful for humans and I often follow one when trying to pick out a route across unfamiliar terrain. They avoid the boggiest ground, push narrow gaps through dense bushes, and converge on the weak points in hedges and fence lines; there is no point in jumping a fence if a fallen branch has flattened it a little further ahead. The deer conserve their energy and I’m happy to follow suit.

Frequent muddy wallows are another regular feature of woodland where Red Deer are common. I retain an unfulfilled ambition to see a deer actually using one, and I guess this must happen mostly after dark when they feel more secure. But the results are all too obvious.

Deer leave their long hairs on all three strands of a typical barbed-wire fence. This is because, if they are under no pressure, they will casually step through between the wires when passing from one side to the other. If they are in more of a hurry they will leap over the top, usually with nonchalant ease, although occasionally they come unstuck.

One mammal, above all others, is known for the signs it leaves. It is not one I’ve ever thought to look out for in mid-Devon, but that all changed a few months ago. Early one morning, I was approaching an isolated pond in a remote spot on a private estate. I’d been here a few times before but today it looked different somehow. I couldn’t put my finger on it but perhaps it was a little more open than before, with fewer trees and bushes. The landowner must have cleared some vegetation to make the pond more accessible, I decided. I walked closer and all became clear. The landowner had indeed made some changes, but rather than felling the trees himself he had brought in something to do it for him.

What was once a fringe of birches and willows was now a ruin of criss-crossed, horizontal trunks. The largest trees, up to a foot or more in diameter, were still works in progress, but sufficient inroads had been made to suggest they too would succumb in the end. White flakes of wood littered the ground and I picked one up instinctively - evidence for any non-believers when I came to tell the story later. On the far side of the pond, where it once drained into a small stream, sticks and mud had been piled up at least two metres high, raising the level of the water. Having got over my surprise I sat quietly against one of the few surviving trees and waited. Sure enough, after a few minutes, a low shape appeared at the surface. It swam from one side of the pond to the other, before slipping quietly under the water as it neared the dam.

I’d seen my first ever Beaver in the wild in Britain, but I came away with mixed feelings about the experience.

Birds are usually easier to watch than mammals but the signs they leave behind are still invaluable. I’ve seen Goshawks close to the house many times, as we are lucky enough to have a nest site in the adjacent wood. I’ve watched them hunt and occasionally seen them attempt to catch something. But I’ve yet to see them make a kill and were it not for the remains they leave behind, I’d have no idea what they eat. An autumn visit to the nest, after the young have fledged and moved away, is especially instructive. Bones and feathers litter the ground below, showing that Tawny Owl, Jay, Woodpigeon, Pheasant, Grey Squirrel and Rabbit have all been on the menu.

Owls go one better. They leave a near complete record of everything they eat. Prey is usually swallowed whole, digested and then the hard parts along with the fur and feathers are coughed up in a pellet. I regularly walk by an old cobb-walled farm, long since abandoned and now under siege from brambles. This open-fronted building often has pellets and moulted feathers lying on the dusty floor below. I occasionally collect a few pellets and wash out the skulls and bones to see what the owls have been eating. I was about to do just that one day and was looking down at the floor when a grey cylinder suddenly landed right in front of me and settled in the dust. As I looked up, a Barn Owl, now just a little lighter, raised its wings, and then lifted from the ancient wooden rafters and headed off into the daylight.

Raptor pellets are a handy, non-invasive way of surveying small mammals that are otherwise difficult to detect. As expected, our local Barn Owls eat mainly Field Voles, but I’ve also found the skulls of Common Shrew, Bank Vole, Wood Mouse and young Brown Rat. In Ireland, a mammal previously unknown to these islands was recently discovered from remains found in a Barn Owl pellet. The Greater White-toothed Shrew turned out to be quite common locally but until that point it had gone unnoticed by humans, if not by the local birds of prey.

We humans, of course, leave far more traces of our presence than any other animal. A feature of even the more remote woods in this area is the old dumps along the edges, some of them miles from the nearest building. Before the days of organised refuse collections, each local farm would have had a place where rubbish was disposed of. Carting it to the edge of the nearest wood and slinging it over the fence at least kept it out of sight. These dumps are now overgrown with vegetation and much has been swallowed by the soil. But a little poking around offers a glimpse into the past: I’ve found rusty buckets, tin baths, coal scuttles, cast-iron kettles, a decaying Rover 10 sports tourer from before the war, and wonderful, old metal milk churns from a time before lorries with huge tanks made them redundant. I sometimes manage to retrieve a glass bottle or two and have built up a little collection of old ink pots, milk bottles, Marmite jars, and the distinctive blue glass bottles once used for poisons.

My best bottle find to date was a complete surprise. I was walking the dog along the lane near home and there it was, lying out in the open at the base of the hedge: a green glass codd bottle, complete with the marble that once helped seal in the drink. It must be at least a century old and yet it looked as if it had been tossed from a passing car that morning. These bottles carried a deposit and would be returned to the shop to be reused. Presumably it had been left in the hedge by mistake, perhaps by a farm worker; maybe it was forgotten as he moved along the bank, methodically cutting and laying the woody stems. It would no doubt have quickly been covered by leaves, new growth and then soil. Erosion had now revealed it once again, and out it rolled, down the bank and onto the verge. I picked it up and wiped away a little dirt: ‘B H BREARLEY’ of ‘SOUTH MOLTON'; and he was still not going to get his bottle back.

Trying to read signs in the landscape is a reminder of the natural and anthropogenic processes operating all around us, on vastly different timescales: hedges planted centuries ago and maintained over generations; deer that have, down the years, managed to breach them as they move from place to place, following their routes and routines; a fresh fall of earth and stones from the hedge bank where the deer passed through just last night - and perhaps dislodged the bottle of a hedge-layer, long dead. It has become popular to seek time in nature in the mindful present; to appreciate birds singing, the rustle of leaves underfoot and the breeze stirring among the branches. But the context of history is always informative, whether that is over the last few hours, years, decades or centuries.