One of the groups I had today really got into the stories and finds on the trails...even to the point of getting down and sniffing red fox urine!
For those of you who don't know, red fox urine is very skunky - if it is really fresh, the smell is quite strong, as in dead-skunk-in-the-road strong. If you have an active red fox den nearby, you will likely smell it long before you see it.
And right now it is breeding season for red foxes, so scent marking is going on all around. It's very exciting.
Y'see, tracking is more than just looking at footprints. It's looking at how the animal moves, figuring out what it was doing, trying to get inside the animal's mind. It's looking for scat, for browse, for hair (we found fox hair on the trail!!!), for scratches, for kill sites. It's detective work at its finest - CSI eat your heart out.
Something else we have in common: both nurse and naturalist sniff pee and poke poop for information! How great to see that little girl really getting into the spirit of tracking.
ReplyDeleteOne summer we discovered a whole family of foxes at the Saratoga Spa golf course and would hide in tall grass and observe them. Nothing cuter than baby foxes frolicking. And so fierce when mom fox brought a woodchuck home for dinner!