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Branford Land Trust Animal Tracking Classes

The Branford Land Trust's NATURE EXPLORER PROGRAM is pleased to offer two animal tracking classes on Saturday, January 28, and Saturday, February 25, at 9:30 AM. Each class will be for about 90 minutes and take place outdoors in the wilds of the Lake Saltonstall forest in western Branford. Open to all ages and free of charge!

Hope for snow but it will be fun even without it.

Learn how to recognize animal and bird footprints and other signs of their passage through the woods. We will focus on opening our eyes, ears, noses and other senses to absorb what was, is and will be going on around us.

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 Tracking experts Tom Cleveland and Jim Fox will lead the class. Jim is a graduate of Suzanne Morse's Keeping Track School in Vermont, and Tom has taken tracking with John Stokes's Tracking Project in New Mexico. Both men have lived in Connecticut forever and would delight in your presence!

Please be prepared. Wear hiking boots and warm clothes. The terrain is relatively flat and will not challenge those with moderate limits to their mobility. We will be bending over and looking at the ground more than rushing along for great distances. Expected course will be less than one mile.

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Great reading before or after the class would be: Tracking and the Art of Seeing, by Paul Rezendes, and Mammal Tracks and Sign of the Northeast, by Diane K. Gibbons.

We’ll meet at the Regional Water Authority Parking lot on the north side of Hosley Avenue, at its eastern end about 1/3 of a mile before Hosley joins Brushy Plain Road. Directions from Exit 54 of I-95: Go north up Brushy Plain Road for 1.3 miles. Take a left onto Hosely Avenue (right before you get to the large water tower at the top of the hill). Go 0.3 miles and take a right into parking lot.

For more information, please feel free to call Tom Cleveland at 203-981-9040, email tgcleve@yahoo.com, or Larry Wheeler at 203-499-7659, email larrrywheeler2@att.net, or visit the Branford Land Trust website, www.branfordlandtrust.org.

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