How to Find Your Way Using Horse Dung
For thousands of years humans have been riding horses (possibly as much as 5,500 years). This of course means that horse tracks and dung can…
Tag: animals
Why Do Animals Stop Moving and Freeze?
This morning I was walking into wind and surprised a deer. After a couple of quick hops away it then froze and stood motionless. This…
Predicting Animal Behaviour
It is much easier to predict animal behaviour when we learn certain simple patterns. Most animals see the world in terms of basic things like:…
Fish Frenzy at Water Surface – Predator Sign
Early this morning I saw an interesting sign in the water, a clue that fish were trying to defy a predator. At about 6am, I…
Wind Against Tide – A Sign of Choppy Water
The yacht is on a ‘swing mooring’ and will swing with the tide. This shows us that the water is flowing from right to left.…
Analysing Deer Behaviour: Flight, Refuge and Jink
I was looking over one of the local hills from the cover of some undergrowth, when I spooked a herd of fallow deer. They were…
Sounds Make a Map
A Guide to Exploring Soundscapes Sounds make a map. Here is an easy exercise to help you hone your understanding of sound maps. It is…
Weather, navigation and hunting in Oregon
An interesting email exchange with Gary from Oregon, shared with permission: Tristan, I am very much enjoying your new book, “The Secret World of Weather”. …
Animal Weather Signs in Montana
My thanks to Dean for this very interesting pair of emails from dry cow country, Montana, USA: Tristan, I’m getting to the last fifty pages…
Nature’s Clues & Signs 2 – Brockenhurst, New Forest
Recently I visited the town of Brockenhurst, in the New Forest, Hampshire, England. The New Forest is famous for its unique landscapes of ‘forest pasture’…
It’s Publication Day!
It’s publication day for The Secret World of Weather! Happy weather sign hunting!
How to See Wildlife in Woodlands
The key to seeing wildlife anywhere isn’t magic, it’s understanding probabilities. There are so many techniques for improving your chances, many of them listed in…
Snow Tells Tales About Trails
There are many different kinds of snow, as the Inuit know only too well. You are probably familiar with how easy it is to track…
Finding Direction through Bird Nests in Termite Mounds
A guest blog post from Brazil, by Pedro and Gersony C.Jovchelevich. Termites are insects belonging to the order Isoptera, also known here in Brazil as…
The Fish Cliff Clue
When John Pahl and I were sailing around Iceland, we noticed that you could use the puffins to indicate the direction of land very reliably,…
Some Observations from Search and Rescue
My thanks to a helicopter pilot for this fascinating email and for permission to share it. And for adding the ‘ptarmigan altimeter’ to my collection!…
The Meaning of Missing Moss
Moss is important in natural navigation, but not the quick easy method that many seem to think. I’ve written about the challenge of using moss…
Courses Update
My thanks to everyone who has joined the online course. The cornerstone of the course is the 12 ‘Chapters’ – twelve instructional videos: The Senses,…
Clues in the Classics
Welcome to a new guest column – Clues in the Classics – where Siobhan Machin explores classic works, always on the search for buried outdoor…
Fast Recognition and Optical Illusions in Nature
Our brains are pattern-recognising machines. This is true everywhere, but not least in nature, where it honed these skills over millions of years. Bird calls,…
Natural Navigation in Brazil
A guest article by Pedro Jovchelevich Natural navigation in tropical biomes – My experience in the southeastern region of Brazil First of all I would…