It can be frustrating to go on nature walks without seeing a single wild animal. By becoming an animal detective, you will learn to look for signs of animals.
What Animals Live in Your Area?
You will need to do a bit of research, looking through either online or printed field guides to learn what animals live in your area. Look at the map or the description of the range of an animal to find out what animals live near you. Then, read about the animal’s habitat, seeking specific information about where an animal spends its life.
Avoid limiting yourself looking for mammals. Birds, amphibians, reptiles, and insects all live in the natural surroundings around you. Keep a nature notebook, listing the animals in your area along with their habitats. This list will be useful when you come across an interesting bird or insect because you will have already narrowed the identification process.
When Should You Look for Animals?
Many animals move during the crepuscule time of day, the time between dusk and dawn. Field guides provide you with this information. This information should eliminate your frustration during an afternoon walk when nature is quiet. You’ll also be more prepared for a camping trip that has you outdoors at night.
Although you may not see animals on your walks, you can look for signs they left behind that show their presence during their active times.
How Should You Look for Signs of Animals?
You can practice being an animal detective in your own backyard. Even if you live in the city instead of near a forest, you can still look for urban wildlife.
Practice moving quietly through nature so you don’t frighten away animals. That doesn’t mean that you have to tiptoe along nature trails. Try not talking loudly or scuffing your feet over the ground. If you and a friend or two are learning to be animal detectives together, it will be more difficult to be quiet.
Walk slowly. You don’t need to move a snail’s pace, but you want to move at a pace that allows you to look up, down, left, and right as well as straight ahead. Moving slowly will make it easier for you to reduce the noise you make.
What Signs Should You Look For?
Unfortunately, looking for signs of animals has nothing to do with looking for posters or metal signs that say, “Animals Live Here”.
Look for holes in trees and in the ground. If there is mud or snow on the ground, look for footprints. Look for animal droppings. Check out shrubs and small trees for chewed twigs. Look for nests made by birds, tree squirrels, or hornets and wasps. In fields, look for grass that has been bent into tunnels by small rodents. Look for chewed leaves.
The information you learned about the animals in your area will help you to look at these chewed twigs and holes in the ground as clues. Consider what you know about the behavior of different animals and try making a guess about the different animals were doing.
Being an animal detective means that you know what animals could be in the environment around you and using what you learn about their behavior to create a story about what the animal was doing even though you didn’t get to see the creature.
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