This Winter Deneen and I found a Northern Water Snake in the stream apparently dead. We went back there about a month ago and within feet of where we found the first snake was this beautiful, living, Northern Water Snake.
I do not think it was the same individual, though its presence speaks of the habitats ability to support these snakes.
Deneen and I put our camera trap out trying for River Otter over a month ago. I went out to check it today. Here is a video I shot while out, it contains the results from the trap.
Durring WMCC’s BioBlitz Deneen and I were focused on mammals though not so focused that we didn’t stop to notice all the turtle tracks, sign and living turtles that seemed to be everywhere we went. Especially on the golf course whose property is part of the White Memorial Foundation. Above and below is a painted turtle covering up the eggs she just laid.
Turtle tracks were in many of the muddy and sandy places we checked. The image above shows just the claw marks. The claws of the front foot leaves an angled crecent of holes on the left side of each group while the hind foot leaves a row of holes perpendicular to the trail.
Turtle trails in golf course sand pits.
A Painted Turtle hiding from us.
At the end of the day we returned to the turtles nest. I had seen snapping turtle eggs several times before but never these elongated painted turtle eggs. They where buried quite deeper than we had expected and were large compared to the little turtle that laid them. They must have taken up a lot of room in that shell.
Deneen and I had the opportunity to put our tracking to good use for the Mammal Team at White Memorials BioBlitz over the weekend. For 24 hours a large team of scientists, experts and volunteers counted every living species on White Memorials 4000+ acres of very diverse habitat. The final count was 931 species. The Mammal Team counted 31 species, many of which were identified by tracks or sign. There were also direct observations, live traps, and audio monitoring for bats.
Here was the Mammal team’s list and how they were identified.
Human direct observation
Domestic Dog tracks and direct observation
Domestic Cat tracks and direct observation
Coyote scat
Domestic Horse scat, tracks, direct observation
Domestic Cow direct observation
Red Fox tracks
Raccoon tracks, scat
Opossum tracks
River Otter scat
Long-tailed Weasel tracks
Striped Skunk scent
Woodchuck direct observation
Porcupine feeding sign on trees
Muskrat scat, tracks, direct observation
Beaver tracks, feeding sign, dam and lodges, direct observation
Bobcat tracks
Jumping Mouse spp tracks
Grey Squirrel tracks, direct observation
Red Squirrel track
Chipmunk tracks, direct observation
White-footed Mouse (the Mammal Team leader found evidence, I forgot to ask him what kind)
Meadow Vole caught in live trap
Mole spp tunnels
Little Brown Bat audio monitoring
Big Brown Bat direct observation, audio monitoring
Silver Haired Bat audio monitoring
Red Bat audio monitoring
Hoary Bat audio monitoring
Eastern Cottontail direct observation ( I could not completely rule out New England Cottontail which are know to be on the property in a different location)
White-tailed Deer tracks, scat, direct observation
I also share some images from our time on the land. At the top of the page are Red Fox tracks.
Above Long-tailed Weasel tracks, below a painted turtle laying here eggs.
Above the Litchfield Country Club Golf Course at dawn (the clubs land is part of the White Memorial Foundation).
Below a spider in its web (sp unknown)
Above turtle tracks, below a beaver trail.
Above Raccoon tracks along with bird tracks (possibly Killdeer or similar).
Below Muskrat tracks.
Above Osprey pestered by a Red-winged Black Bird, Below nest and eggs of a Northern Water Thrush located under bank of a small stream (one of the Bird Team identified it for us).
Above Jumping Mouse sp tracks, below old Porcupine feeding sign (missing patches of bark)
Otter scat.
We spent all of the second half of the 24 hours searching for just a few more species, we already counted all but 2 or 3 of the final number by early morning (the time went from 3:13p on Friday till 3:13 p on Saturday). Several species we knew were there eluding us including Mink, Fisher, Bear, Shrews, more mice and voles.
There is a steep rocky ridge near Mt Agamenticus in southern Maine where the Hemlock trees are thin and the Porcupines are thick. Above and below you can see obvious sign of the damage Porcupines can cause as they feed on the bark of trees by nipping off branches to get at the tender ends.
I came here knowing I might run into the creatures and hoping to see other creatures as well. After wandering around for a few hours and seeing a lot of porky tracks and not much more I returned to the rocky ridge hoping for some bobcat sign. This spot is known for bobcat. They like to den and lay up in the same bouldery places as porcupines.
By now I had been out for quite some time and my body had relaxed and slowed. I climbed up the jumbled boulders toward a likely spot. I have been told it is better to hold no agenda in the wild, that it can be sensed by other animals and cause them to flee or that an agenda narrows one’s focus and other things can be missed. I had an agenda to get to a certain spot likely for Bobcat sign. Maybe I held it loosely enough because as I moved up I was a bit startled by this sleeping Porcupine beside me, napping on the porch of its den.
Porcupine, I soppose can afford to sleep more soundly than other animals having quills to protect them. I managed to maneuver around a little and take many pictures with a noisy shutter without waking it.
Eventually I got greedy and disturbed this cool creature. A good tracker gets in and out without the animals knowing, I have some learning still to do here. It clicked its teeth and moved slowly back to the deepest gap between rocks. I left slowly too, as not to disturb further.
The first day of spring brought me great tracking snow. I have been out often over the last few days and have a back log of great tracking to share with you. For now I will share something that happened to me today.
As I was walking up an old road in the woods I startled this Coopers Hawk out of the bush along the road and onto this tree branch. It had in its talons a chipmunk.
Right on the side of the road, just feet from me where the tracks of the capture. If you look carefully you can see Chippy’s tracks going from the middle left toward the rock on upper right as well as the wing and tail impressions of the hawk and some very fresh blood.
Above is some plucked fur on the snow and below the perch that I drove the hawk from as it fed. There is fur and some meat present.
I identified it as a Coopers by the size (too big to be a Sharpy), the slate grey color and rusty banded breast, rounded tail tip and darker cap that can be seen in the picture below.
Every time a go out with no agenda other than curiosity I am rewarded with something amazing. It wasn’t always like that and what I find is not always so dramatic as a hawk with its prey. The time I have spent looking seems to have broadened my idea of what is amazing and taught me where to look. In this case I was in the right place at the right time. Most days, anywhere but the couch turns out to be the right place at the right time.
Three Red Trees lead a tracking walk at White Memorial Conservation Center a few days ago. I had gone ahead to scout and found these tracks pictured here. They were quite small and covered some distance in the open. They were beautiful and I was excited. I thought they were Longtailed Weasel and told the group so when they came later. I even convinced Deneen. We both thought on first seeing them that they were skunk but they were so small, much smaller looking that all the other skunk tracks we had been seeing recently that I called it wrong. It was not until I got home and looked at these pictures without the pressure of an audience, that I saw that the foot morphology was all wrong for weasel and all right for skunk.
In my defense the first bit of track I came across was this confusing section below that I mistook for some sort of 3 by 4 bound. I still don’t know what was going on there.
I struggle with differentiating mouse from vole tracks when behavioral clues are not obvious. Voles, at least the commonest of souther New England, baseline movement (sometime known as harmonic gate) is a trot while mice move in a bound most of the time. Of course they are each capable of both gates as well as others. There are distinctions in the foot morphology but I have not looked at enough clear tracks of these species to reliably see these differences with confidence.
The creature in these pictures moved in a protected area close to cover most likely exploring the cracks and holes in the frozen sand at the bottom of a big eroded drainage. All kinds of things blow in there from the sand barren-like wild blueberry fields above.
The measurements I took fit into several mouse and vole species. Some of the morphology is apparent but not consistent. In some sets the right foot looks different than the left.
If I have it right the toes of voles show more connection to the pads giving them a finger like appearance. I don’t really see that in these tracks. These do however walk a great deal like a vole is more likely to do.
There were a few bounds mixed in as well.
Every time I think I got this tracking thing licked I find something else to learn.
This poor animal was hit and killed by a car. Tragic and unnecessary though this death was (there are plenty of ways for a young animal to die with out us adding speeding vehicle to the list) a Naturalist lets no opportunity for learning go by. Studying the feet of animals take us a long way in the journey of tracking. Drawing the structure and textures, where fur is present, the overall shape of a foot all are important.
Above is the front foot of a female Eastern Coyote, below the hind foot. I did not have the opportunity to measure this animal but she was not large. The feet are so symmetrical that I have lost track of whether they are right or left. Being early in the winter there is a lot more fur between the toes than there might be the rest of the year, but nothing like a Red Fox has.
Some people may say good riddance to the coyote but I find their presence here rewarding. They live as families just like us.
Some days ago while looking at the tracks that made it into some of my previous posts, my wife Deneen and I flushed this Great Horned Owl out of a tree above us. As if flew to its new perch pictured here, the startled chickadees alarmed with their “chick o dee dee dee” call. The alarm raised was only brief. Deneen and I were hoping to see the big bird get mobbed by the little guys but it didn’t happen. At the bird language class we took at White Pine Programs we had learned that the littler raptors are more likely to get a mobbing response as they are the ones that routinely eat little birds.
Yesterday I did see a little bird predator in the shape of a Coopers hawk. It was perched in a tree that was a favorite roost for a flock of starlings. The starlings came by to occupy the tree but made a swift change in direction. My friend said it looked like people crossing to the other side of the street when an unsavory character appears in front of you.
