« BACK Animal Tracking

© US Fish and Wildlife Service.

You may think, especially if you live in a town, that your garden or the area around where you live doesn't have much in the way of wildlife. Set this simple and harmless trap and discover if anything creeps around outside once you've gone to bed.

You will need: Small bucket of sand. A little water.

Step-by-step: Spread out a layer of sand on the ground, in a place where you think there might be most wildlife. Dampen the sand a little then carefully smooth it over to make an absolutely flat, clear surface. Leave it overnight. Check in the morning for tracks.

The Morning After: What did you find? Can you identify any of the tracks? If there weren't many tracks on your trap, try again in a different place, perhaps next to a hedge or a tree. See if you can identify any of the tracks, using wildlife books or the Internet. Perhaps you could set the trap each night for a week and write a 'visitors book' of your findings, recording the different tracks.