Bird Tracks E-Book

John Rhyder

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 155

Beschreibung

"A wonderful book that shares rare knowledge in a clear and focused way. I love it." - Tristan Gooley Bird Tracks: A Field Guide to British Species explores and enhances the ability to identify a diversity of birds using just their tracks and trails. John Rhyder and David Wege approach this subject from the perspective of both the tracker and the birdwatcher. They have examined and described 139 species, each richly illustrated with a mixture of photographs and drawings of their unique tracks and trails. Bird Tracks is a comprehensive guide for trackers and birdwatchers interested in studying species found around the British Isles, and will also be of great use across northwestern Europe. Written by experts in their respective fields, this work represents several years of research collated into the most in-depth study of British bird tracks published to date.

Leseprobe

‘A wonderful book that shares rare knowledge in a clear and focused way. I love it.’

– Tristan Gooley, author and natural navigator.

First published 2024

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Text © John Rhyder, 2024

Text and illustrations © David Wege, 2024

The right of John Rhyder to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 624 0

Typesetting and origination by The History Press.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Foreword

Photo Credits

Acknowledgements

About the Authors

Dedication

Introduction

Bird Tracks of the British Isles: Life-Sized Drawings

Classic Bird Tracks

Small Passerines

Syndactyl Birds

Pigeons and Doves

Crows

Birds of Prey

Zygodactyl Bird Tracks

Owls

Woodpeckers and Parakeet

Gamebird Tracks

Wader Tracks

Water Bird Tracks

Web-Footed Bird Tracks

Swans, Geese and Ducks

Gulls and Terns

Totipalmate

References and Resources

FOREWORD BY NICK BAKER

Everything leaves a trace, from beetles to badgers. It’s not just about footprints, either. It can be hair, feathers, eggshells, strands of silk, feeding signs, droppings or even scent.

Birds are no exception. In some ways, they make life ‘easy’ for the naturalist – they leave distinctive, quite specific, and relatively large clues. Evidence of their lives can take the form of nests, feathers (for which there are several excellent field guides), pellets, droppings, feeding signs and eggshell fragments. This makes them much more user-friendly than mammals and invertebrates in many respects.

However, when it comes to their tracks and footprints, things start to get confusing. Other than their size, bird tracks can seem decidedly ‘samey’ to the untrained eye.

Compounding the difficulty in interpreting bird tracks are their wings! Due to the power of flight, bird tracks can turn up seemingly randomly. The bird can plop down and lift off again, leaving the tracker with a clue that is often disconnected from any other! Then, even if you get a good impression – a neatly registered track that shows precise detail – there is the problem of a distinct lack of reference books and field guides that are brave enough to tackle such things. Until now.

This book is an essential compendium for any serious naturalist – I love it. It represents an almost forensic analysis of the details of every British bird’s footprints, some of which are the common and likely culprits of those starry indentations in a mud puddle or snow. Then there are those so unlikely to be encountered that you might question their inclusion in the book, such as the Great Bustard, Kingfisher, and even Gyrfalcon! That said, unlikely doesn’t mean impossible, and somewhere in that sentence, along with the joyous minutia contained in these pages, lies the very magic of tracking, not to mention a sense of reassurance that comes with such a completest approach – this can only be achieved by those that know their stuff.

An almost pathological obsession with detail is exactly what you need to really get the most out of tracking. By assimilating physical clues you tell a part of a story, and in doing so, the tracker develops an even more intimate and satisfying relationship with the natural world around them.

What you have in your hand is a comprehensive bible of information you never really thought you needed, but you do, and you will use it. I guarantee you will find yourself scrutinizing the edges of puddles and river banks with a renewed interest – just looking for opportunities to put this book through its paces.

This is a deliciously unique book and a labour of love. It will sit on my shelf, an essential compendium of its kind and a testimony to the lengths the passionate will go to share their love of their subject.

– Nick Baker, 2024

PHOTO CREDITS

Our sincere thanks to everyone who helped us with track photos, all of which were used to draw the track illustrations and write our species descriptions, and some of which are included here in the book. Those that are used here are identified by the photographer’s initials as follows:

Richard Andrews, RA

Robin Bowman, RB

Gavin Chambers, GC

Ian Dawson, ID

Judi Dunn, JD

Anja Eger, AE

Martin Gebhardt, MG

Stani Groeneweg, SG

Hein van Grouw, HVG

Howard Houlston, HH

Mimi Kessler, MK

Suzanne Kynaston, SK

Giny Kasemir, GK

Karen MacKelvie, KM

René Nauta, RN

Andrew Nightingale, AN

Paul Nightingale, PN

Antonio Pardo, AP

Aaldrik Pot, APt

Dan Puplett, DP

Mila Saunders, MSr

Miriam Schulz, MS

Liz Smith, LS

Paul Wernicke, PW

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In addition to the photo contributors listed above, we would like to extend our thanks to all of the wonderful people who have helped us – often in diverse ways – with our research and pulling this book together. Thanks go to: Richard Andrews, Matt Binstead (British Wildlife Centre), Robin Bowman, Rob Brumfitt, Cambridge Animal Behaviour Lab, Gavin Chambers, Judi Dunn (Wildwood Trust), Anja Eger, Angel Javier España, Lea Eyre, Steve Fletcher, Martin Gebhardt, Stani Groeneweg, Hein van Grouw (The Natural History Museum), Hawk Conservancy Andover, Alex and Emma Hill (British Bird of Prey Centre), Howard Houlston, Mimi Kessler (Eurasian Bustard Alliance), Suzanne Kynaston (Wildwood Trust), Date Lutterop, Karen MacKelvie, Tony Martin, René Nauta, Paul Nightingale, Antonio Pardo, Aaldrik Pot, Dan Puplett, Isa Rössner, Mila Saunders, Miriam Schulz, Gabriel Sierra, Liz Smith, Kirsty Swinnerton (Kent Wildlife Trust), Hollie Weatherill (Wildwood Trust), Paul Wernicke.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

John Rhyder is a tracker, naturalist, author and woodsman. He is certified as a Senior Tracker through CyberTracker conservation. He is also an evaluator for CyberTracker and both trains and assesses wildlife trackers in track and sign identification and trailing or following animals using their tracks. He is fascinated by the natural world and in traditional knowledge and, together with wildlife tracking, his work is centred around the skills that support interaction with and connection to nature. For more information about John’s work and writing visit www.woodcraftschool.co.uk

David Wege developed a passion for birds, birdwatching and all things ‘nature’ in childhood – a passion that led to thirty-year career in international bird and biodiversity conservation with BirdLife International. More recently, and under the expert mentorship of his co-author, David has rediscovered tracking: learning to read and interpret the tracks and signs left by animals as they pass across the landscape. He has quickly reached Professional level in interpreting tracks and signs, and now teaches to share this engaging and connective art and science with as many people as possible. David is also a keen wildlife photographer and illustrator. For more information about his work, visit www.davidwegenature.uk

DEDICATION

For my part, I, John, would like to dedicate this book to my family, friends and fellow naturalists who, together with the natural world, make life so interesting. Also huge thanks to my co-author David for his patience and for forging ahead during the moments when I couldn’t devote as much time to this project as I would have liked.

I, David, would like to thank the amazing sharing tracking community for exchanging ideas, discoveries and track photos, and helping us make this book rich with detail. For encouraging me to start illustrating tracks I would like to thank my Wildniswind (wildniswind.de) team, and especially Miriam Schulz for her encouragement throughout.

INTRODUCTION

BIRD TRACKS FOR TRACKERS AND BIRDWATCHERS

Collared Dove tracks.

As naturalists and trackers, we stare at a lot of mud and sand and dust, picking out the tracks to tell the stories of (most often) the mammals that passed by. This gives us an intimate understanding of their day-to-day lives even when the animal is long gone. Birds leave their tracks in these same places and – naturally – we want to be able to read their stories too. However, what we found with the bird tracks we were seeing was that we always came away with questions. Either we couldn’t identify a track because the available books didn’t help, or we were looking at a track we thought we knew – like Blackbird or Carrion Crow – and wondering what the difference was between this track and that of a Song Thrush or Rook, and again the books couldn’t help.

So, this book came about principally to try and answer a question. What birds can be identified accurately to species level using only their tracks? Various publications in a number of countries have looked at bird tracks, and they have all helped to reveal the answers for some species, but none of them – in our view – have looked at the full range of birds of the British Isles and northern Europe in the kind of detail that we needed, and which we have attempted to present here.

Unlike our other mammalian friends, birds are easy to see and call or sing frequently, so the best way to discover which birds are in an area is by watching and listening, and that will always be the case. But, birds do leave tracks (and signs, such as feeding signs, feathers, nests and egg shells) that sometimes show us new things about the species (how it moves, what it’s eating, where it’s moulting and nesting), and occasionally give away their presence when we haven’t seen or heard them. For example, the tracks of nocturnally active birds (such as Owls, Woodcock, Stone-curlew, etc.) can reveal their occurrence, feeding habits and ecology during daylight when they are no longer active or even present. Waders in particular often use different sites to forage during the night, to roost at high tide or as traditional moulting areas (see Burton and Armitage, 2005, as an example), and tracking can help us discover those sites.

Tawny Owl tracks.

In addition to seeing and hearing birds, bird tracks are part of the evidence picture (along with other signs) and in this respect they enrich our understanding of what a species is doing, how it is living, and therefore also help strengthen our appreciation of that bird. It seems that within the birdwatching and ornithological community there is very little use of bird tracks and signs, and we feel that some might be missing out on an integral part of the story.

Stone-curlew museum specimens.

As trackers, we know that obvious features of the feet of certain birds allow us to make an accurate, species-level identification, but we wanted to see how far this concept could be taken. Would it be possible, for example, to tell Great Tit tracks from Nuthatch tracks, or House Sparrow from Chaffinch. With this question in mind, we also recognise that many species rarely spend much time on the ground, and still more are so small and light that they seldom leave tracks when they do venture down. Therefore we can ask the question: if a certain species only leaves infrequent, very hard-to-identify tracks, how useful is that knowledge in the real world? However, in exploring how far we can take bird track identification, we have looked for minute differences between tracks and studied their morphology in detail and feel we have shed some light on what is possible, what is not, and what may (or may not) have utility in the field. We are firm believers that tracking is about finding wildlife not just tracks, so utility is key!

COLLECTING TRACKS AND GATHERING DATA

We started this bird track journey with lots of questions that the available literature could not answer for us. It was clear that we needed to gather first-hand data and find tracks for which we were 100 per cent positive of their identification. This meant taking a number of approaches.

Firstly, we did a lot of birdwatching! Watching birds along rivers, at puddles, on beaches and then searching for their tracks. Where there were birds but no tracking substrate, we set out track traps of sand (mostly of children’s play sand, which is preferred because it is non-toxic), clay or anything really that would take the tracks of a bird. We placed track traps under bird feeders in gardens, out in the woods, by lakes – indeed, anywhere where we thought we had a chance of witnessing a bird landing. We then sat, watched and waited for birds to land, at which point we would rush out immediately before the tracks spoiled or got confused with another species.

We were lucky enough to gain access to some captive birds including Birds of Prey, Owls and Waterfowl. Waterfowl, in a private collection, were enticed across sand with the promise of food – the trick here being to try and do it one species at a time! In the case of the Birds of Prey and Owls, these were encouraged by their handlers to land on and move across track traps. The tracks were then photographed. We have also spent some time making plaster casts of the tracks, which gives yet another medium to study the accuracy of our findings.

We looked at and photographed the feet of birds in the hand (mistnetted under license for the purpose of ringing), and also the feet of museum specimens (at the British Natural History Museum in Tring). The museum specimens were useful in helping interpret what we were seeing in the tracks, determining the proportional length of toes, toe pad arrangements, length of nails, etc. They were also helpful for answering questions such as which species (Waders, Ducks, Gulls, etc.) have a Hallux and which do not? Is webbing present or not? Where does the webbing start and finish? That said, the dried-out feet of dead birds can’t be used to anticipate what a track from the living bird would look like, so we have only used this information to interpret or confirm what we were seeing in the field.

Little Tern museum specimens

A variety of track casts

Track traps

Comparing a track cast and its impression.

Studying the feet of a captive White-tailed Eagle

Sand and clay around bird feeders to capture tracks

Track traps

Captive Birds of Prey helping us with track research.

We have referred to all the available published sources, a selection of which are shown below. Occasionally the photos published therein have proven very helpful, and some of them are reproduced (with permission) here. Where we have struggled to find the tracks of certain species (primarily those that are more common in mainland Europe than here in Britain) we have requested track photos from other trackers, all of whom we would like to thank wholeheartedly for their generosity (and all of whom are listed in the Acknowledgements).

Blue Tit in the hand.

Bird tracks literature.

TRACK DRAWINGS

All the drawings in this book have been drawn electronically on a tablet using the free app Sketchbook. Essentially, they have been traced from track photos – following their features and shadows precisely. The app allows for multiple photos to be used (in separate layers), so each drawing is (most often) a composite of features from multiple track photos. One single track photo rarely shows all the features that we ideally want to illustrate, so merging features from multiple photos has hopefully created an accurate ‘average’ representation of a particular species’ track. What becomes clear when tracing track photos is that even tracks from the same individual bird in the same substrate can present differently, with toe angles varying dramatically and features (such as nails, toe ends, Hallux, Metatarsal pad) showing and not showing. In spite of this, we have tried to show the most common presentation in the track drawings. It’s worth keeping in mind, however, that the fewer photos we have had to work from, the greater the chance that the drawing might not be the perfect average we were striving for.

Perfect image of a Blackbird track.

A few brief words about track photos. If you ever decide to draw animal tracks from photos you will quickly find that the quality of the photo is paramount. A good track photo requires a good track – a track that is in substrate that holds the details and is not too deep. The photograph needs to be taken from directly above the track, ideally in neutral light (with not too much strong shadow). And a scale of some sort in the photo (ideally a ruler) is essential.

ANALYSING BIRD TRACKS

CONTEXT

Before getting too absorbed by the actual features of the track you’ve found, it is worth zooming out to a landscape level and refining your list of suspects that are likely in your location, the habitat you’re in and the time of year. Many species are very specific in their preferences, and this may vary regionally and seasonally. For example, Curlew tracks are frequently encountered in upland areas and also can be found both on the coast and in fields. Where John grew up in north-east England, he frequently spotted Curlews on boggy farmland, not somewhere he expects to find them now in his adopted south coast county of Sussex. Many species are also migratory and may not even be in the country at the time you encounter a track. Bird tracking is no different to any form of tracking in that the more you know of the animals around you and their habits, the more accurate you will be with your identification and interpretation.

SUBSTRATE AND THE TRACK FLOOR

The medium that catches a track has a significant influence on the appearance of that track. Loose sand, for example, may blur the edges of a track, which in turn may make it look bigger than it really is. Conversely, the sand may also back-fill the track, making it look smaller than it really is. Substrates that allow the foot to sink deeply into the surface generally give the track a much bigger appearance than the foot that made it. Very hard substrates may make a track appear much more delicate than it really is and may not register all the track to the level of detail that would be most helpful.