A sand tracking plot in your own garden

Normal garden soil is usually too hard, too dry or too overgrown to show tracks. Lawn springs back, soil with small stones shows hardly any detail. A strip of fine, even material, by contrast, works like a blank sheet: every step leaves a clear print, with toes, pads and sometimes claws.

The big advantage over tracks in the wild is that you know the time. If you smoothed the plot at 8 pm, every track in the morning is at most that old. This is called the maximum age of a track. It also makes the plot a good place to practise how prints age and what trail patterns of different animals look like.

The plot does not change the animals' behaviour. There is no food, no scent and nothing that could hold an animal. Prepared strips of sand or soil are therefore a method used in tracking courses and nature education to make animal movements visible without capture or disturbance.

Choose a narrow spot that animals pass anyway: a gap under the fence, an opening in the hedge or the edge of a flower bed. Animals like to use the same routes. If you have already seen tracks, flattened grass or a small path somewhere, that is a good place.

Lay a strip there about one stride wide, of fine sand or sieved soil, a few centimetres thick. Moisten it slightly – damp sand holds the shape of a print much better than dry sand, which trickles together at once. Sand that is too coarse shows hardly any detail.

In the evening, smooth the strip with a board or rake and note the time. In the morning, check it, ideally in low light: early in the morning when the sun is low, or with a torch held to the side. The small shadows make the prints stand out clearly. Then photograph, work out the pattern, take notes and smooth the plot again.

Sand that animals have walked on can contain germs or parasite eggs. So do not use it as a sandpit for children. After working on the plot, wash your hands thoroughly, especially before eating anything.

Cats like to use loose sand as a toilet. If you find droppings in the plot, remove them only with gloves or a shovel, never with bare hands. If this happens often, a different spot or slightly damper, firmer soil instead of sand may help.

And very important: do not put out food or scents to attract animals. That changes their behaviour, can spread disease and goes against the principle of not feeding wildlife. The plot is meant to show what happens anyway.

A tracking plot is ideal for families and children. It costs almost nothing, needs no electronics and delivers a small surprise every morning. It is excellent for practising trail patterns, watching tracks age or making a plaster cast. Together with a wildlife camera you can even check which animal left which print.

Only lay the plot on your own land or with the owner's consent, not on public land and not in protected areas. Rain blurs the tracks, and at spots animals avoid you will of course find nothing.

After fresh snow you do not need a plot at all: then the whole garden is a tracking plot. Shortly after the snowfall, all tracks are younger than the snow – a perfect moment to practise.

Over weeks a picture emerges of which animals use your garden and when. Perhaps a hedgehog always comes after midnight, perhaps some tracks disappear completely in winter. Write your finds in a tracking journal – that way single morning discoveries turn into real observations.

Identifying individual species remains demanding all the same. Cats and small dogs, or different birds, can look alike. A regional field guide helps, and it is perfectly fine to note a find as “uncertain”.