“Long before Scotland Yard or the FBI, Nature fingerprinted her numerous family,” writes Ellsworth Jaeger in his remarkable book about a little-known field. “Tracks may take us back to the Earth's beginnings or give us a complete autobiography of a living animal from day to day.”

Charmingly illustrated throughout, Tracks and Trailcraft presents a wealth of lore. In the crisp, direct style that helped make him a widely read author of classics on Native American lore and camping, Ellsworth Jaeger tells how to read nature's signs written in mud, brush, and even water and sky. It's packed with projects for both adults and children, nature lovers and amateur archaeologists—whether they want to follow the trail of a dinosaur that lumbered through the desert eons ago or the opossum that scurried through the backyard last night. By providing the tools of identification, this book will turn anyone into a “nature detective.”