A wonderful set of Fox tracks

         Sometimes it's worth braving minus temperatures to get tracks like this...

and this was what the fox had been stalking!

Do you know what left these?..I do..

Something very special in the snow

Davy and I went out for a scout around our new permission today just to get an idea of what it's like and plan a place for camps in the future, while we were there we noticed lots of fresh tracks in the snow, the usual, fox, mice, squirrel and rabbit but then a track that had us fooled for a bit..

A number of slides in the snow..

                                             Then some distinctive tail drags..

                                                  Then some unusual prints.

                                          Then the thing that gave it all away.....

It smelt of fish oil with a slightly aromatic aroma, unusual but by no means unpleasant, also contained a few fine bones and scales... we had discovered an Otter on our permission!!!, so plans are already underway to maybe get some pics of it in the summer or autumn next year if we are lucky enough..We are so chuffed to have such diversity on this site..We followed the tracks for a bit and found where that elusive character had went back to it's watery domain..

A Thankyou to the Woodland Trust

I would just like to say a big thankyou to all those involved with the Woodland Trust in Northern Ireland, you are a credit to the natural history of our island, and also a sincere personal thanks from myself and Davy..

Feathersticks..

Everybody uses them, don't they?..Well Davy and I only very rarely use them ,but nonetheless it's a good skill to practise if for nothing else than helping you achieve good knife control..We often hear people telling us how we should use feathersticks when it's wet to help us light a fire. Davy and I have went out in the pouring rain to try just this, we had no shelter, it was twilight and we needed a fire fast, so we cut some nice dead ash and split it with our leuku's and started making feather sticks, after about 10 minutes, not only were we soaked but so were the feathersticks resulting in a non starter for the fire..We quickly gathered some birch bark and had flame in less than 15 seconds!! Lesson learned, if you want a fire quickly, forget feather sticks, go straight for natures own firelighter...
However if you do want to make them, a few things to remember, use a wood with a long straight grain, no knots and use light knife pressure, also small feather sticks work better than large ones, and remember to make each feather different sizes, you can see in the picture below I have carved  some thin and also some thick as this will help your flame establish.
One last thing you don't have to shave the wood to feathers, you can just keep splitting the wood into long thin strips as thick as a matchstick or thinner and use these, they are just as good as feathersticks, long thin wood strips are called fire-splinters or fiddlesticks!

( Update 25.12.2010, with regard to the fire splinters/fiddlesticks mentioned above,  I have just watched the Desert Breakdown episode of Dual survival and noticed Dave Canterbury making these, see, we are not the only ones who like them!!))

A-ha O-ho,Tracks in the snow...

Found the rear print of a rabbit in the snow and was quite easy to follow and find more. There were also some fox tracks but none of them were good enough to warrant a picture, but at least I know they're out there and they should be a bit easier to track now I know where they are..

                                                  Rear foot print

A Text book set of rabbit prints

Pretty clear evidence here

Signature Bird

 As I left the hill today after the forage, I heard our Signature bird call far above my head, my camera is no where near good enough to capture him that far away but it's nice to know he's shadowing me when I'm out in his domain.

Winter Wild Edibles

I went for a quick walk today just to see what wild edibles are still available at this time of year. Of course our ancestors would have stored foodstuffs away, but if you were caught out at this time of year, what is there to help you survive in this part of the world?..
                                        
                    Good old faithful Haws, but beware the dreaded cyanide seeds!!

                                                 
                                         The last of Autumns Blackberries..

Rosehips

                                  Some new winter nettle growth coming through

Dandelion Leaves

                                          Vast amounts of opposite leaf saxifrage

And a few manky walnuts

All in all not a bad find for an Hours forage, but in a survival situation these stocks would be depleted very quickly and would provide very little calorific value anyway, hunting and fishing and trapping as well as the stores you would have laid away for the lean  months are what we would rely on more at this time of year.