Track And Sign Intensive

Overview

Step into the world of wildlife tracking and discover the hidden stories written across the landscape. This course is all about sharpening your eye for detail and building confidence in identifying land vertebrates through both sightings and the signs they leave behind. The focus is always on finding and interpreting real-world examples in the field, from the smallest rodent scat to the largest footprint, helping you to piece together clues that reveal how animals live, feed, and move through their habitats. To support and reinforce what you encounter outdoors, we also make use of our vast teaching collections and along the way, you’ll gain hands-on experience with camera traps, ink traps, and small rodent live traps, giving you the chance to observe creatures up close and confirm your discoveries. While the focus is on the rich variety of wildlife in our fixed locations, we’ll also take field trips to other areas to expand your experience. By the end, you’ll walk away with a deep understanding of wildlife identification and the skills to confidently read the tracks and signs of many species.

View our Mammal Tracking video.

Course Content

We will immerse you in the fascinating study of birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, learning how to identify them in the field. Study areas include feathers (to understand their form, function, and role in species recognition), track identification, deciphering gaits and patterns to spotting the subtle differences between species. Through wilderness exploration, you will investigate kill sites, scat, feeding signs, dens, and resting places, always with the aim of discovering and interpreting genuine examples in nature.

To back up this fieldwork, you’ll also have access to our extensive teaching collections. These include a wide range of skulls and bones, a dedicated scat collection, and plaster casts of both mammal and bird tracks. Handling and comparing these specimens reinforces the lessons learned outdoors, giving you the chance to study details that may be harder to come across in the wild. Alongside this, you will dive into animal ecology and behaviour, learning how all of these signs connect to the bigger picture of the natural world. Every outing will bring opportunities to gather and interpret evidence, ensuring that you leave the course with a well-rounded and practical set of skills that will stay with you long after the programme ends. As part of these workshops, we will spend time outdoors on field trips, this may involve walking for extended periods on uneven ground and being in areas without regular toilet facilities, so a reasonable level of fitness and preparedness is recommended. If you have any questions or would like to discuss this further, please feel free to get in touch.

Fees

The cost of this programme is £1200 which can be spread over 4 equal payments.

Related programmes.

• CyberTracker Certification
• Combined workshop and evaluation

Dates

• To be Confirmed, please contact us if you would like to be informed of the next date for this course.
• The course runs for 12 days over 4 modules

Booking

Please read the following information before booking:

• Terms & Conditions – by booking on to our courses you agree to our Terms & Conditions
• The Course Kit List

Please note these are self catered courses, we are not always working from our usual site for our tracking events and so do not normally offer camping. there are some excellent campsites close by which are reasonably priced.

You need to be over 18 years of age to attend this programme.

Course dates 2026

If these courses are full please contact us to be placed on a waiting list for cancellations. Should enough people express an interest we may run extra dates.