Today in Wild Ways, we dove headlong into wildlife tracking! Many mammals can be elusive—so much so that a person may be inclined to think that there are not a whole lot of animals traversing the landscape. Not so! As soon as the snows come, we get a glimpse of how widespread these creatures are! Turns out, they are all over the place, right under our noses, hunting, avoiding being hunted, eating, sleeping, scent-marking, and so much more!
After beginning our day with some target practice with our throwing sticks, a morning circle and a game, we sat down for snack and a didactic lesson on wildlife track morphology—how to look at an animals tracks and figure out what category of animal it belongs to. Good stuff! We went over a variety of tracking information to front-load our forays into the field.
We broke into two groups for a morning of tracking—and oh what a fantastic day it was. The conditions were such that many animals were leaving imprints in the fine dusting of yesterdays snow, atop a crusty layer of older snow. Clear toes and pads were revealed and it was a great trek, following these animals and seeing such definition. Animals followed included:
- Deer
- Coyote
- Bobcat
- Turkey
- Short-tailed Weasel
- Cottontail
- Mouse
- Red and Grey Squirrels
- Mink
- Fisher
A word about the Bobcat (which was a highlight of both groups’ day): This animal led us through the Beaver marsh, twisting and turning, taking us through thickets, following Cottontail trails and leading us up and over Beaver Dams. What a gift to follow in the footsteps of such a creature. We envisioned how it moved, how it paused, how it used the landscape to conceal itself on its hunt. It was difficult to pull the students off the trail at the end! We even found a place where it peed on an upturned root ball.
Both groups ended up separately on this trails, so it was a source of much storytelling over lunch. We kindled a fire, ate, shared stories from our outings, and wrapped up with a fun game of Werewolf around the fire and a batch of maple syrup snow candy.
—Josh and Raven, February 8, 2021