Track of the Week 1: Analysis

Thanks to everyone who participated this week. It was fun for me to read and join in on the discussion. I should be posting the next track of the week later on Monday.

The facts as I remember them:
This was taken along the beach in southeast Alaska (in an area with no black bears) in mid April, I think at the hind end of the herring spawn (there were quite a few herring eggs lower on the beach). The bear trails went into and out of the woods at various points, I saw nothing to suggest that there was more than one bear making the trails, but didn't spend a lot of time examining them so it is possible. We did not see any bear tracks that were of significantly different size. I did not see evidence of where it had eaten, but again we did not spend a lot of time following the tracks very far, particularly as the snow disappeared in the woods and made trailing a lot more difficult. I also do not recall noticing any fresh bear scat along the beach.




The answers to the "official" questions:

2. Which foot?

I'll start with the second question. I think it is pretty clear this is a bear track due to its size and general shape, so with that understanding, this is the front left foot. The heel pad in a hind bear track will generally register much longer than in the front (the difference can clearly be seen in the second photograph). Additionally claws in the hind foot are generally shorter than what can be seen here.

On bear tracks the inner toe is the smallest (sometimes not registering in the track), here the left-most toe is bigger than the right-most (and all five toes are showing) so it should be the left track. Additional verification can be seen by examining the second picture and seeing that that foot is on the left side of the trail.


1. What species?

This is a brown bear track. One thing to note is that the claws are quite long, sticking pretty far beyond the toes. This is a common trait in brown bears, black bears generally have much shorter claws. From what I've seen long claws on the front feet are a common characteristic for many animals that do a lot of digging. This happens to be a coastal brown bear and I haven't noticed them doing a ton of digging (might be more my poor observation skills than anything else) but apparently the inland brown bears (grizzlies) do a fair bit of it.

Another trait to notice is that if a straight line is drawn from the bottom of the outer toe across the top of the heel pad the innermost toe will generally fall at least halfway above the line. A black bear's line of toes is usually more curved and its inner most toe will fall more below such a line.




Now, in response to the discussion in the comments:

I would like to note that I am excited to have such advanced discussion going on, I was definitely not expecting it. Some of it is beyond my ability to analyze at this point, so I will mostly leave that alone. What I will do is give my best interpretation of the tracks with the understanding that I am no great expert and my opinion isn't necessarily likely to be more correct than yours.

I'm not sure of the gait here, but I think that the bear was moving slowly, stopped and looked to the right. The positioning of the right front foot so far out on the left edge of the picture as well as the way there are two right hinds between the right fronts and the way the left front is closely surrounded by hinds, but there is not another left front a similar distance back all contribute to me thinking that.

I thought it was interesting that there seemed to be consensus for some things commenters seemed to be relying on pressure releases for, but disagreement in others. The most commonly agreed upon thing (of the things that I can't verify) is that it was a female, which I am still curious to know more about the reasoning on.

Grouse

These birds certainly earned their nickname of "fool hen". The first one I saw on the wolf tracking was silhouetted against the road a couple hundred feet in front of us. It stayed there in plain sight until we were within a few feet when it finally moved off the road towards its chicks. Of course we would never have known the chicks were there if it had just faded into the woods after it had seen us initially.

Two more times that trip I was alerted to their presence by either the hen or one of the chicks moving or clucking as I got close to them. That seems a bit more forgiveable since they were at least in the woods and difficult to see. They probably would have been better off if they were still and silent there though. It makes me wonder how they manage to survive, and also if they are more successful than I realize - perhaps I passed near many more grouse families without ever realizing it.



I was out in the cascades last week and we saw a couple sets of grouse there, the young seemed to be nearly full-sized, but had a bit of fuzziness on their heads still. Unfortunately I was unable to get any pictures as my camera battery had run down by that point.

I'm not certain as to which species of grouse this is, most of the pictures I found of various species that would be around here did not look quite the same, but my best guess at the moment is Spruce Grouse (Dendragapus canadensis).

Track of the Week 1

I thought it might be fun to start a weekly tracking mystery segment on this blog. I'll post a picture and ask a question or three about it. Hopefully people will post their thoughts and questions in the comments. My intention is to post one every Monday.

This week's mystery:



Questions:
1. What species?
2. Which foot?

Additional information:
There has been a lot of great discussion in the comments, so I thought it would be helpful to include this picture with an expanded view of the trail.

Note: If you haven't looked at the comments yet and want to try and come up with an answer yourself, you might want to do so before checking out the comments. They quickly jumped beyond my questions, so I definitely recommend checking them out and posting your own thoughts and questions after you have taken whatever time you want pondering things yourself.

Elk

There were a lot of elk where we were at in Idaho. Often while driving along the meadows in the early morning or late evening we would see large herds, some probably numbering more than a hundred.

One morning we stopped along the road to watch a small herd of elk in a meadow. Shortly they decided they wanted to move on and most of them ran off, but there was one young elk that was moving with a limp and seemed unable to move quickly. Not long after we saw it we noticed another young elk had come back and seemed to be keeping company with the lame one. A friend or sibling? We wondered if he would help protect the other until he recovered or if the injured one was destined to become somebody's dinner.



One evening a few of us took a break and went out scouting. On our way back this elk and another were out at the road looking at us. He ran off and came back a couple of times as we sat and watched. Often as he went to and fro he would have his head tilted up like this, I wonder if to help his sense of smell or as some sort of posturing? Eventually he went back to the main herd and we watched him run around. Most of the elk were calmly standing around grazing, but he would run back and forth between them full of playful energy. The ADHD elk of the herd.

Common Nighthawk with Babies

While Mallory and I were exploring our first day in camp she happened upon some common nighthawk chicks and their ma. They're cute little tykes and are well camouflaged. Can you pick them out below?



There mom was pretty well camouflaged too.



I was impressed by how wide she could open her mouth, particularly considering how small her mouth looked when it was closed.



She was clearly trying to distract me from the chicks but didn't seem to be working at it too hard. Perhaps she had somewhat given up since we obviously knew where they were. She stayed about 20 feet away from me and would move further away and act like her wing was damaged when I moved towards her.