How to Identify Tracks and Signs of Coastal Mammals

Reading the Coastal Edge

Britain's coastline is arguably the finest place in the country to learn mammal tracking. Sand, silt and estuarine mud hold an impression far better than wet grass or leaf litter, and many of our shyest mammals — otters, badgers, bats, seals — leave their business in plain view along the strandline, the dunes and the creeks.

Timing is everything. A few hours either side of low tide on an estuary gives you fresh, unwashed mud. Early mornings, before dogs and wind have scuffed the surface, are best. Damp sand within a day of rain takes a crisp impression; dry, blown sand holds almost nothing. Shelter matters too, so look in dune slacks, on the landward side of sand bars, and along the quiet edges of tidal creeks where footprints last.

• Soft sand and estuarine mud are your best canvases
• Go early, and go within a day of rain
• Tidal creeks, dune slacks and the lee of sand bars hold prints longest
• A low winter sun makes shallow depressions far easier to spot

Otters: Spraint and Wide Five-Toed Prints

Estuaries, rias and saltmarsh creeks are otter country, and the easiest sign to find is spraint. Look for it on flat-topped rocks, the ends of fallen branches, bridge ledges, tussocks of grass and the small promontories where a stream meets the tide. Fresh spraint is black and greasy; older deposits dry grey and crumbly. It is often placed in a tidy heap rather than scattered, and the smell — when fresh — is sweetish and not unpleasant, faintly of hay, jasmine or weak tea rather than fox.

Break a sample apart with a stick and you should find fish bones, scales and otoliths, sometimes crab shell and frog remains. The prints are distinctive: broad, rounded and roughly 6–7 cm across, with a wide kidney-shaped pad and five clear toes, often joined by a hint of webbing. A tail drag between prints is a giveaway. Check for otter runs — flattened, low tunnels through long grass leading down a bank — and smooth slides where they enter the water.

Badger Tracks in the Sand Dunes

Badgers forage the fixed dunes and the grassy hinterland behind beaches, rooting for insects and earthworms. Their front footprints are broad and unmistakable: roughly 4–5 cm wide, with a wide kidney-shaped pad, five toes arranged in a gentle arc, and stout claw marks sitting in front of the toes. Badger prints are typically wider than they are long — carry a small tape measure and check this, because a dog print has four toes and no such width.

Hind prints are narrower and longer, and their claws often barely register. Look also for latrines: shallow scraped pits in the sand, often in a row along a path or dune edge, with dark, sometimes shiny droppings inside. Their snuffle holes — shallow conical pits dug for grubs — pockmark dune turf, and coarse guard hairs caught on a fence strand are a reliable confirmation.

Bat Droppings and Roost Clues

Coastal bats are easily overlooked. Soprano pipistrelles hunt the dune edge, Daubenton's skim the estuary surface, lesser horseshoes use sea caves and old stone buildings, and migrating Nathusius' pipistrelles follow the coast in autumn. Droppings gather directly beneath a roost, often on a windowsill, porch or cave floor, and look like dark grains of rice. Crumble one with a stick: bat droppings are soft and glitter with shiny fragments of insect wing and leg. Mouse droppings are hard, uniform and pointed, and crumble to dull, even powder.

Old urine stains on stone — brownish and slightly greasy — along with accumulated moth wings below a crevice, are good secondary clues. Remember that bats and their roosts are legally protected, so never disturb a roost. Note the location carefully and pass it on to a local bat group or records centre.

Seals, Foxes and Other Coastal Neighbours

• Grey and common seals: at a haul-out site, look for broad, banana-shaped body drags across the sand, plus scattered fishy scat and the shallow hollows where they have shuffled along on their bellies.
• Foxes: neat four-toed prints about 4–5 cm long with a narrow triangular pad, plus twisted, tapering scat containing fur, feathers and berry pips.
• Rabbits: small prints with four toes and a thatch of fur impressions around the pad, with round fibrous droppings in piles on close-cropped dune turf.
• Water voles in brackish creeks: burrow entrances just above the waterline, small latrines, and vegetation nibbled off at a neat 45-degree angle.
• Deer: cloven slot prints in dune slacks and coastal woodland, with droppings like dark, glossy pellets.

Confirming a Find with a Field Guide

No one identifies tracks reliably from memory. Invest in a good printed field guide to British mammal tracks and signs and use it every time, comparing measurements as well as shapes. Measure the length and width of each print, sketch it, and photograph it with a coin or ruler laid alongside for scale. Note the substrate, the direction of travel, the weather and the grid reference. A phone with a map application and a pencil and notebook will serve you better than anything else in your bag.

Never handle droppings with bare hands — use a stick or gloves, and wash or sanitise afterwards. Keep dogs on a lead around haul-out sites, roosts and latrines, and follow the Countryside Code by leaving everything as you found it. Best of all, send your records to your county mammal recorder or local records centre. Your notes on an otter spraint or a badger latrine become real conservation data, helping to protect the very mammals whose tracks you set out to read.