While up at the pass last weekend I saw a bunch of interesting animal sign. We were exploring a creek drainage and while most of the trees around were alder, I noticed some large Red Cedar (Thuja plicata) trees near the edge. Upon examination, many of them had been marked by bear claws. This tree had some of that, but it also appeared to have some very active insects. That is a pretty good sized pile of wood on top of the recent snow. Now that I think about it, I wish I had dug in a bit to see if I could figure anything out about the insects.
There were also red-breasted sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius) holes in many of the trees. I thought it was interesting how on this tree there are a lot of holes within 8 inches or so of the insect filled crevice, but not nearly as many further out.
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