Tracking Weekd

Tracking class met on the east side (of the cascades) over the weekend. The first day we went to pot holes which is a cool area with lots of great opportunites for a naturalist.


While trailing a deer Dan found the turtle shell he is holding. In the background is one of many Russian olive trees that had been severely chewed on by porcupine, it seemed to be there preferred food in the area. After seeing how much they went after it, I'm surprised I haven't seen more evidence of them in southern Idaho where Russian olive has invaded many riparian areas.


This heron had been killed within the past day or so. I was surprised at finding a bird as large and aware as a heron like that. The people who discussed it seemed to think either an otter or a bobcat had killed it, though we saw neither otter or bobcat tracks while there.


Parts of three people are visible in this photo (and I'm there taking the picture). This is inside a dried up beaver lodge. It was pretty impressive - large and sturdy. It didn't appear that any beavers had been living there too recently, but the floor had an abundance of porcupine scat (as did a different dried up lodge we found) which lent a pleasant earthy farm smell.

The second day we went over to Hanford Reach. It has a fairly similar ecology to potholes - mainly shrub steppe. The water was less plentiful than at potholes, with the exception of the river winding through the canyon below.


We spent a fair bit of time working on identifying small rodent tracks. They were not too difficult to find, though it was hard to find ones that were very clear. Near the end of our time we found some very nice tracks in the mud down by the river. This image shows a fairly clear hind track and one of the clearest front tracks I saw all trip. Some things that we learned to look for in identifying mice tracks are whether the front and rear tracks are similar in size (in this image the hind tracks are the ones nearest the pencil, the front tracks are back near the middle of the image), how symmetric the front tracks are (here the outer toes of the clearest front track do not seem symmetric at all) and the size and placement of the hind inner toe. These characteristics are often difficult to tell without the clearest of tracks, and even then there can be variation between sets of tracks. Habitat is another important clue to help determine species.