"Why did the mink go under the bridge?" December Tracking Club

Kelly Staples inspecting an insect trail.

About 20 folks braved a cold and foggy day in the Snoqualmie Valley for Tracking Club today. After a careful inspection of Chinook Bend Park which yielded several elk trails but not much else, station guides settled on holding the day under one of the valley's bridges.

Species encountered under the bridge included:

• Bobcat tracks
• Deer mouse tracks
• Opposum tracks
• Salamder tracks
• Several insects trails
• Racoon tracks
• Beaver feeding sign
• Bat scat
• Perching bird tracks
• 2 American robin nests

Jenn Wolfe explains the key features of Mink tracks.

• Mink tracks
• Muskrat tracks
• Eastern Cottontail
• Barn owl pellets
• Frog tracks
• Weasel tracks
• Rat tracks
• the mandible of a vole
• some mystery scats I believe were from rock doves (though Jonathan Goff remained skeptical).

Mink (Neovison vison) tracks from the edge of the Snoqualmie River.

Station Guide Chris Byrd, explains the ins and outs of insect feeding sign on a dogwood bush.

Elk trailing on the East Slope of the Cascades

Morning temperature of 13 degrees F did not deter our class from an  excellent weekend of elk trailing along Clockum Ridge.

On Saturday, after searching for a fresh trail along a roadless ridgeline with amazing views of Mount Stuart without success (though we did discover sign of a mountain lion that had been on a similar mission), we finally picked up the trail of a large herd of elk moving through a meadow system further east and trailed them all afternoon through a maze of feeding sign and bedding areas. A few of us were distracted by the fresh trail of a black bear we discovered in a light dusting of snow.

Brian McConnell waxes philosophically on the

 finer points of trailing elk on the east slopes of the Cascades

Cybertracker Senior Tracker Brian McConnell joined us as a guest instructor and graced us with his keen insights during the day as well as some awesome stories around the fire in the evening.

On Sunday we picked up the tracks of a heard of elk and followed them for several miles through shrub-steppe and open pine forests in the sunshine. On the long hike back to our vehicles at the end of the day, I think we were all impressed at both the terrain the herd had covered as well as the fact that we had followed them through all of it.

Brian cutting for elk tracks along a ridge in the eastern Cascades

A new species Spotted at the Oregon Dunes

Thanks to Guest Instructor Laura Gunion for the following post and photos:


Foggy morning on the Dunes. Air is wet and cool. Walking along I see acrystal clear fresh perfect trail of a small animal bounding across the damp sand. The following are some of the thoughts in my head. Probably good for my ego that I kept them to myself.


"Whoa! These tracks are perfect! Plaster cast for sure! People always say they see squirrel tracks and I've never seen them here before. I can't believe a squirrel is running from the forest all of the way out to the Tree Island.  Why? This is pretty cool. Wow, they look *really* weird in the sand.  It's going so fast that the front feet aren't even beside each other. The toes are so round. Huh, is this a different kind of squirrel?! The proximal pads are kinda small for a Douglas Squirrel.  Hmmm. This is weird....Wait.. What??! The front feet have 5 toes!! and the back feet have proximal pads -  What?! those look like back feet, but they can't be!  What the #!*% is going on?!"

 My total confusion lasted several more seconds before I started to piece together a new story
of who this critter actually was.  As far as I know, this was the first time that tracks of this species has been spotted at the Dunes.  Interestingly, we trailed this animal the following 2 days.

Do you know who this was?

Have you ever seen one running across sand dunes?

Post your thoughts here. We will put up ours in a couple of weeks!

October Tracking Club: Now with Bears and Salmon!

Second Tracking Club of the season: Bears! Salmon! The sandy beaches were littered with carcasses of spent salmon spreading their nutritious rotting selves over the landscape, and live ones splashing in the shallows. The tracks of two black bears made their way through the sandy cottonwood forest down to the river’s edge. The trails made for a great tracking club.

This time we split our ranks and simultaneously conducted a tracking assessment for members of WAS’s Tracking Intensive course. This meant we explored two separate sand bars during the morning finding everything from jumping mouse tracks to beaver scat to the hefty black bear. The mustelids and the cats stayed home, but many of the other usual suspects were present. My favorite station was a dead salmon with it’s brains chewed out. Our question was “who did this?” There were large flat compressions in the grass leading away from the fish, a ragged hole in the head, and three evenly spaced slices over an inch long near it’s tail. There were signs of bears eating salmon all up and down the shore.

A black bear retrieves a salmon from a stream on the British Columbia Coast. Photo © David Moskowitz

Oregon Dunes Weekend

My seventh visit to Eel Creek campground resulted in the same conclusion as the previous six—tracking is cool. It’s hard work, it’s rewarding, it’s fascinating and eye-opening. And hey, we saw peregrine falcons, so the trip was totally worthwhile!

Back to mammals, we got some insight into aging tracks as the rain poured down on us for most of the weekend. You’d think that sand would drain well, but an impressive pond formed in the kitchen on Saturday night as we told stories of our day’s adventures. Plaster casts of mysterious creatures decorated the kitchen table. We got to ponder questions like: Do ravens have a different number of toe joints than crows do, resulting in a different number of dots in their tracks? Do any squirrels have five toes in both front and rear? How unerringly can I tell the difference between gray and red fox tracks? And where the heck did that red fox go after one group scared it up out of its day bed?

Despite the rain, sinuous sand dunes held lines of tracks stretching from oasis to oasis. Monday morning had some people out in the early light, trailing animals using the guidelines Dave had inspired us with the night before. From the perspective of ancient hominids, debating claw angle and number of toes doesn’t get you any closer to actually seeing (and perhaps eating) the animal. I thoroughly enjoyed blending the skills of the modern naturalist and the ancient scout, solving mysteries with as many parts of my brain as I could muster.

There’s still plenty of grit in my clothes and beds to remind me of the Dunes. “Sand time” is an inspiring start to a year of solid dirt time.

Alexia inspecting the trail of a species of mammal we were quite surprised to find roaming the dunes. Stay tuned for a forthcoming post on it!

Hardy Pacific Northwest trackers diligently studying the same trail in the rain.

Snipe

Pieter Van Winkle discovered this rarely seen critter while exploring a marsh on the edge of the Umpqua Dunes during our second weekend of the year. Good spot Pieter and nice photo!

Wilson's snipe amongst pond lilies. Umpqua Dunes, Oregon Coast. Photo by Pieter Van Winkle

DM

Puma concolor or Canis lupus domesticus, you decide!

Here are a couple of photographs of one of the questions from the opening weekend's field trip to the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River. Post your thoughts about the maker and why. We'll share our thoughts in a week or so!

Tracks were found on the muddy bank of a slough feeding into the river.

 

DM