One of the activities that our Field Guide students really enjoy is “getting on the right track” with the track and sign module. It is a nature-based detective story complete with characters, clues and a moment of revelation! It is this ‘mystery solving’ element which also makes it an ideal long weekend course to attend.
Below is a list of tracks and signs our current group of students were fortunate to see
Porcupine spoor
Honey badger spoor
Elephant spoor, droppings and feeding signs
Black and White rhino spoor, dung and feeding signs
Lion spoor
Leopard spoor
Spotted Hyaea spoor
Kudu, Nyala, Impala, Zebra and Wildebeest spoor and droppings
Buffalo spoor and droppings
Slender mongoose spoor and droppings
Crocodile spoor
Puff adder trail
Warthog spoor, droppings and feeding signs
Genet spoor and droppings
Vervet monkey spoor
Jackal spoor and droppings (both the side striped and the black backed jackals occur on the reserve)
A variety of bird tracks including starlings, doves, hornbills, thick-knees, guinea fowl, spurfowls and francolins, owls and Egyptian geese
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words so I will go along with received wisdom and create the rest of the blog from photos!
Let’s see if we can figure this out!
Fresh porcupine feeding sign
A focused stare on a tracking assessment!
Working out detail on antelope spoor
Right back foot of most likely a lioness (difficult to be 100% sure due to lack of scale)
Checking out a rhino midden
Remaining evidence of what looked like a raid on a Harlequin quail nest by a Slender mongoose
Puff Adder trail