Page:Scouting for girls, adapted from Girl guiding.djvu/84

70 every little track and every little sign, and it is this studying of tracks and following them out and finding out their meaning which we include under the name of stalking. For instance, if you want to find a bird's-nest you have to stalk. That is to say, you watch a bird flying into a bush and guess where its nest is, and follow it up and find the nest. With some birds it is a most difficult thing to find their nests; take, for instance, the skylark or the snipe. But those who know the birds, especially the snipe, will recognise their call. The snipe when she is alarmed gives quite a different call from when she is happy and flying about. She has a particular call when she has young ones about. So that those who have watched and listened and know her call when they hear it know pretty well where the young ones are or where the nest is and so on.

Tracking.—The native hunters in most wild countries follow their game by watching for tracks on the ground, and they become so expert at seeing the slightest

A few tracks which you may see some day.

sign of a footmark on the ground that they can follow up their prey when an ordinary civilized man can see no sign whatever. But the great reason for looking