Tracking animals in the snow is not the only way to find signs of animals in the countryside. There are many other signs that reveal the secrets of animals and help us to play “nature detective”. Tracks can be found in other coverings such as mud or sand on the sides of rivers and burns. This is a good place to find tracks of otters and the tracks of their fore footprint is almost circular which gives them away. Low water after a spate will give bare banks of sand and mud where the tracks can easily be found. The other tell-tale signs of otters are their droppings, called spraints, and these are often on rocks especially where two water courses join. When fresh otter spraints are tarry, black and slimy with a long lasting oily smell.
Cones on various types of conifers attract animals and a few birds and when they attack them on the trees the cones often fall to the ground and can readily be examined. I regularly visit a group of tall, old Scots pines at the east end of Loch Farr in Strathnairn to look at the cones. Red squirrels attack the cones with some vigour and only leave the core with a tell-tale bulge of scales at the end. A cautionary note here as wood mice do the same but the end result of their activities has a much smoother appearance. The red squirrels will often gather the cones together on a feeding point such as the old stump of a felled tree where a pile of cones can sometimes be found. At the Loch Farr trees there is also the added bonus of crossbills but they leave the cones looking almost whole with just the scales opened up for the birds to reach the seed with their crossed beaks specially designed for this.
If you are fortunate enough to come across hazel trees that have nuts on them there are various ways to tell which animals have attacked these to get into the kernels. Red squirrels find them very attractive and in one or two places it has led to their downfall. One example is on the south side of Loch Ness running south from Dores. Most of the hazel trees are on the loch side of the road right along the banks of the water edge. To get at this food source means the red squirrels have to cross the busy road and risk collision with traffic. There have been two ways in which this has been partly solved. One is the signs on the sides of the road warning drivers that there may be red squirrels crossing the road. Another is ropes slung between the overhanging trees so that the animals can walk or scamper across. Both methods have been partly successful but there are still a few red squirrels that meet their fate on this road. There is one interesting record from there in that one day someone watched a buzzard try to take a red squirrel off one of the overhanging ropes although apparently it did not succeed. The red squirrels use their lower teeth to gnaw into the tip of the hazel nut and then insert the upper teeth downwards so that the nut splits open. In contrast wood mice will gnaw a neat hole in the side of the nut to get at the kernel. All signs to help the “nature detective”.