More Tracking Books

Following the enthusiastic advice of my blogging pal Squirrel, I ordered a couple new tracking books. I've been eagerly awaiting their arrival - what tracking bibliophile wouldn't? They arrived today - hooray!



I was uncertain at first about getting this book, Stories in Tracks and Sign, but after reading it, I'm glad it did. The author, Diane Gibbons, presents a wide variety of photographs of animal tracks from all over North America, and each is followed by a painting that shows the animal in the process of making those tracks. This is very helpful in learning how to use your imagination to picture how the tracks you see were made (which can often be quite a challenge). Her subjects range from easy (deer trails) to challenging (mole crabs on the beach). A good book to add to one's tracking library (or to borrow from someone else's tracking library).



This book is put out by Stackpole books, the same folks who published Mark Elbroch's mammal and bird tracking books (which is why it looks a lot like them). I can already tell that Tracks & Signs of Insects and Other Invertebrates is going to be a well-thumbed book in my field pack. Not only does it include insect (and invertebrate) footprints where appropriate, but it also includes other insecty (and invertebratey) things, such as eggs, cocoons, and feeding sites. Every curious naturalist should add a copy of this to his or her stash.

Thanks for the tip, Squirrel!

I Never Listen to Myself

I woke to a beautiful morning - the sun was rising, the sky was blue. I couldn't wait to walk the dog. While putting on my coat and getting Toby leashed up, I said to myself "take the camera - you'll regret it if you don't." And I answered myself "the last several times I've taken it, I haven't used it." So, I left it home. And of course, we found some great tracks. So, Toby got a very short walk, as I dashed back home, fed the dog, and headed off to work early, camera in hand to stop and photograph the tracks we encountered.

The first thing one might think when seeing these tracks is that a fox came along, gathered itself up and then jumped up on the snowbank.


A closer look should give you pause, however. Are these really fox tracks?



Consider: are there any claw marks? Is the overall shape of the track round or oval? Does the negative space between the toes and the footpad form an "X" or an "H", or is it more curved? The answers are no, round, and curved. This was a cat. We have had a bumper crop of feral cats this year, thanks to some neighbors, and many patrol the neighborhood. It's no surprise at all that Fluffy would be hunting up along this area, for it is now a field (of sorts) and no doubt great hunting for mice and voles.

Oops! The deer came bounding over the snowbank and woo-hoo! There's ice under that snow and deer don't really have non-skid pads on their feet.

A nice straight line of nice neat footprints - could only be a wild canid (unless it was a deer, and there's no way these are deer tracks). The feet were small, so it must be a fox.

Looking closely at the footprints in this trail, you can see claw marks, which gives us a clue that this is not a cat.

This next set of photos (three) are of a great set of tracks, which I'm not 100% sure I've deciphered. Here's my story: a grey fox came trotting along from the bottom left side of the photo. Then "something" happened, after which the fox lept forward, then turned and rapidly left the scene.

Looking closely at the "something," we see definite footprints, then what looks like feet skidding left and right on the ice.

A real close look at the "something" shows that this fox left a couple drops of urine behind. Yes, I got down on my belly and took a sniff; I couldn't detect a thing (a clue that it wasn't a red fox); this combined with the fact that I've only ever seen grey foxes in this area, tells me that these are grey fox tracks. Like the fox tracks from Vince's class, the urine drops are placed behind the feet, which says that this was a female. Was she just marking her territory and then slipped on the ice? I saw nothing that suggested this was two foxes and that mating took place (besides, it is still a bit early for foxes to be breeding, although they may be forming up pairs now - there were certainly plenty of tracks in the area, so there could be a potential mate hanging around).

Oops! There's ice underneath that snow!

This next pair of photos show a couple important characteristics of grey fox tracks. With the front foot, the negative space between the toes and footpad forms an "H"...

...whereas on the hind foot, this same space forms an "X":

On red foxes and coyotes, both feet would show an "X" in this negative space.


Last weekend while leading a tracking walk on the VIC trails, I was asked where all the scat was. We rarely see scats on our trails, so when I do find some, I'm always very excited. When I saw a dark spot on the snow this morning, I was thrilled - it had to be a scat. Sure enough, there it was: a nice tidy scat pile, left by the fox. Full of hairs, the ends tapered and twisted - no doubt at all who left it.

I loved this pair of tracks. We have a fox going left, and a cat going right. But, to the undiscerning eye, this is a strange animal that walks with extremely pronated feet.

Shameless Advertising

If you are interested in learning some tracking techniques, and if you are willing to travel to Newcomb, I will be teaching "Tracking 101 for Adults" on Saturday, 23 January 2010.

The program begins at 1:00 PM. We'll be indoors for the first part of the program, learning footprint and gait patterns, scat ID, et al. These are the basics you need to get you prepared to identify what you see.

Then we'll strap on snowshoes and hit the trail. At the moment there are lots of great tracks on our property, so hopefully this will continue through next weekend.

Bring water with you, and a snack, but be sure to eat your lunch before you come. And you'll want to bring appropriate outdoor gear (hats, fleeces, mittens, etc.), although we have snowshoes to lend if you need them.

If you want to come and play with us, give us a call - program is pre-registration. Our number is 518-582-2000.

Always Something New to Learn

This last Saturday I went to a tracking workshop down at the Wilton Preserve near Saratoga. It was led by Vince Walsh, a tracker and outdoor enthusiast who is the founder of Kawing Krow Awareness Center in Greenfield. I participated in a tracking class with him last year at the Paul Smiths VIC and knew that I would learn something new if I did it again.

Fellow nature bloggers Jackie and Sue were also there, so it was a nice little reunion for us. We started off indoors with a quick overview of tracking, and then headed outside where the tracks were. There wasn't a lot of snow, but we all strapped on our snowshoes anyway. And then we were off.



The first thing Vince did when we headed out was to make a couple prints in the snow: his mitten and a snowshoe. We were to note how they looked and compare them to what they would look like later after the sun had had a chance to work on them. So, looking at them in the first photo, when they are fresh, we can see that the edges of each track are very sharp and distinct.

Here they are about an hour and a half later. Note that already the edges are softer, rounder in appearance, melted by the sun. Even the definition in the bottom is not as sharp.

This is how one learns to age tracks. You make a track and record how it looks. Check it again in an hour, note the changes, and make a fresh one next to the first. Come back in another hour and check both tracks. Note the differences and make a third track. Etc. Do this in the rain, in the wind, in the cold, in the heat. At night, in the morning dew...the possibilities are endless. I've never really had the patience to do this; someday, maybe.

Our first set of non-human tracks were found along the parking lot. Many participants thought they must be deer tracks. I was leaning towards Rover (we were at the parking lot, there was pee on the signposts, and we could see other visitors with their pooches heading out onto the trails). Vince dug through the snow to first determine how deep the snow was and what the snow layers were like.

The snow was about 8" deep, with an icy layer about 2" down, formed when we had all that rain a couple weeks ago.

Next he dug out the snow around the track, to determine just how deep the track went. It only went as far as the icy layer. So, this animal wasn't too heavy (a deer, with it's greater weight and sharper hooves would've easily punched through this frozen layer). Using gentle movements, Vince felt in the track to see if he could feel any toe-prints. The final analysis: domestic dog.

I was very surprised to come across this deceased honey bee on top of the snow. Why had it been flying about in the winter? Where was its hive? Is this a trait of the "colony collapse" honey bees are suffering - like bats with white-nose syndrome flying around outside their caves in the winter?

We found a set of mink tracks down by the bridge, where the pond drained into a small stream. Here Vince is pointing out the classic 2x2 footprints of the weasel family.

On the little overlook by the pond, the discussion probed techniques for aging the fox tracks that crossed the ice. The tracks were dusted on the inside with snow, so the animal had to have passed this way while it was still snowing. The consensus view was that it was snowing lightly between 4:00 and 7:30 the night before, so the animal must've crossed the pond sometime in the early evening. Because there wasn't a lot of snow in the tracks, the group decided it must've been there about 7:00 PM.

The following set of tracks confounded the group for quite some time. Several folks thought it was a porcupine trail, possibly influenced by the fisher tracks they had just been discussing. Whatever this animal was, it apparently had shortish legs, as evidence by the feet dragging through the snow as it climbed the hill.

I was leaning more toward raccoon, mostly because I didn't see any of the classic tail-swishes in the trail (although the snow wasn't very deep, so perhaps the tail would've have dragged). There were also no quills to be found, and no yellow smear of urine. What I did see that made me think raccoon was a larger footprint next to a smaller footprint - classic 'coon tracks (hindfoot landing next to front foot as the animal walks along).

We followed the tracks as far as they went, which was the cabin you see at the top of the photo. Here they disappeared. Vince crawled under the cabin, determining that this would be a good place for an animal (like a raccoon, or a skunk) to hole up on a chilly day. Final conclusion: raccoon.

Fox tracks also went up the hill. We found a really nice scent post, which everyone was encouraged to sniff. It was musky and skunkish - red fox.

There were squirrel tracks a-plenty. Because these are old hat to me, I didn't take any pictures of them, but perhaps I should've done because there was a nice comparison of grey vs red squirrels. I did get a shot of a rather impressive midden pile the squirrels had made by a pile of logs.

We found a beautiful set of fox tracks that told a great story. The fox was trotting along when it suddenly veered off to the right, stopping at the stems you see between Vince's legs here. I had seen these earlier, and my interpretation was that the fox smelled or heard something to the right that caught its attention. Just beyond this spot (behind Vince) was a cluster of white pine seedlings, and scattered across the snow all around them were mouse tracks. I figured the fox was checking out the hunting potential, and, determining it wasn't worthwhile, it returned to its original path and continued trotting southward (off the left side of the photo).

What Vince saw, however, was that the fox came along, suddenly veered to the right, and plunged its snout into the snow, using its highly sensitive whiskers to detect of there were any critters moving about under the snow that might make a nice snack. Not detecting any, it returned to its original mission and exited the scene.

The difference is that what Vince saw as a face plant in the snow I took as a footprint. The clue he saw was the distinct "V" shape made in the snow by the fox's lower jawbones (the print at the top of this photo).

Here is the face plant close up. Note the upside-down "V".

We continued following this fox. Trying to ascend a very steep slope reinforced for me the importance of using snowshoes that have teeth on the bottom ("Slip Slidin' Away" quickly became my theme song, for I was wearing my old wood and rawhide 'shoes). We followed our fox into a clearing where it went up on a small rise (a stump or rock buried under the snow) and left a scent post.

This scent post was most revealing, for now we knew we were following a female fox. How? It took some work, but we finally teased out all the clues. First, we know the fox was travelling towards the left of this picture. It stepped up on this object and squatted to make the scent post. Now, contrary to popular belief, male and females will both squat at times to pee, so the fact that the animal squatted wasn't the big clue. What was, though, was the position of the urine in relation to the feet: it is behind the feet. Had this been a male, the urine would've been squirted forward of the feet. (Isn't it amazing how simple these clues can be once you know what to look for?)

For me, this and the face plant were the highlights of our tracking adventure. It was now headed for 3:00 and the sun was already getting low in the sky. The program had run overtime (as tracking programs will do), so the group began to disperse - places to go, things to do. It would've been fun to follow this fox further, to see what else she might do, but our time was up.

Vince will be doing another tracking program on 6 March at the Paul Smiths VIC. I know I will be there - "dirt time" with an expert tracker is always a good way to spend a day. The program requires pre-registration, so if you are in the area and would like to participate, give 'em a call: 518-327-3000.

The Tracker's Library

More than one person has asked me for book recommendations on the subject of animal tracking. So, I thought I'd take a moment to share some of the books in my arsenal, and give you my opinion of each, for what it's worth.

These are two of my favorite books, both by Mark Elbroch. These are heavy books, for they are printed on good-quality paper and full of color photographs. The mammal book covers not only tracks, but also scats, dens, and feeding signs. If you find a clump of feathers, signs of a bird kill, this book can help you determine if it was a bobcat or a coyote that plucked the bird. Lots and lots of good information. The bird book is likewise filled with good info, but I have found that for me, at least at this point in my tracking skills, bird track ID is difficult. Sure, crow tracks are easy to ID, and turkey and grouse, but to tell a chickadee from a goldfinch, that is much more challenging. But, if you want to become expert at this, then this is the book for you.

Tucked into the pages of my copy of Mammal Tracks and Signs is a yellow ruler. This is a hinged ruler, that opens up into two rulers, one for vertical and one for horizontal measurements. This ruler is ideal for anyone who is recording tracks photographically, for it measures length and width simultaneously, and if you are making a record of tracks, a ruler is much better for measuring than your foot, your thumb, your lens cap, or a quarter. I got this ruler from Keeping Track (see below), but a carpenter's ruler (the ones that fold up) will work just as well.

The first real tracking course I took was with Jim Bruchac (he runs the Ndakina Education Center in Greenfield Center, NY; see his website here). Jim, who is part Abenaki, used to do Native American storytelling as part of an overnight school program we have here, so I was familiar with his interests and his teaching style. A few years ago I signed up for his weekend-long tracking class and learned an awful lot. Much of his training was with James Halfpenny, who is a tracking instructor out west.

One of the difficulties with learning tracking is that just about every book out there teaches it differently. While teaching techniques are not in question, terminology is. For example, one instructor may define "stride" as the distance from one foot print to the next (left or right, front or hind - it doesn't make any difference), while another will measure it from where, say, the left hind foot lands to where it lands the next time, and a third instructor measures "stride" as this funky diagonal length. One of Halfpenny's goals it to get everyone on the same page, so that when someone refers to the "stride length" as, say, 17 inches, everyone knows exactly what this measurement is. His is a rather scientific approach to tracking.

In his video training set (seen above), you learn exactly how the animals move, and thus how each track pattern is made. This becomes immensely important in learning how to read tracks. Halfpenny and Bruchac teamed up to write a series of pocket guides for animal tracking, each booklet specific to a specific region of the States (e.g. Tracks and Scats of the Northeast). There were some errors in the first editions, but hopefully they've been corrected in subsequent ones.

Paul Rezendes' Tracking and the Art of Seeing is one of the classics in tracking literature. Every tracker should have this book, for it has lots of photos and lots of background information. It covers behavior as well as movement. And, one of the best bits, it also covers scats - very important to trackers. The downside (in my humble opinion) is the confusing way he measures tracks - see my notes above regarding James Halfpenny. The Field Guide to Tracking Animals in the Snow is a book that resides in our library here at work. I don't know if I've ever read it or not. But, looking through it now I see that it has some good info in it, much of which coincides with Halfpenny's teachings (gaits and movements). Just flipping through it I think I would recommend this book, too (I will now be adding it to my reading list this winter).

Olaus Murie's book is part of the Peterson Field Guide series. Murie was quite famous for his natural history studies. The book gives some good basic information for ID, but as far as a teaching tool goes, I'd recommend something else first. The Stokes Nature Guides are always chocked full of interesting information. The number of animals covered may be limited, but they give you lots of good background and natural history. This is one I would recommend for filling in the gaps.

Jon Young is the founder of the Wilderness Awareness School out in Washington State. I've taken two of their courses: Kamana I and Kamana II. These are their naturalist-training classes (it goes up to level four). For the average person who has little or no knowledge about the natural world, these courses are likely to be highly worthwhile. For me, I found most of it to be old hat - I wasn't learning much. I signed up for the programs to hopefully learn more about tracking, but I don't think they really get into serious tracking info until the third and fourth levels, and financially, those are a bit beyond me at this point. That said, Animal Tracking Basics is just what it says: a basic book for learning tracking. It has a lot of good information, although I did find a couple errors. One of the best things about Jon Young's publications is his knowledge of using bird behaviors to enhance one's tracking skills. They are covered in this book, but he also has an audio series for learning bird language (not bird songs, per se, but reading bird behavior). You can find these books and CDs here.

Keeping Track is a non-profit tracking organization in Vermont, established by Susan Morris, who is quite well-known for her tracking prowess. I've taken a couple courses with Susan and she does indeed know her stuff (bobcats are one of her specialties). One of the goals of Keeping Track is to teach people how to monitor local wildlife populations in order to make better planning decisions for their communities. This book gives the reader tips on how to photograph tracks. It has some good info in it, but most people could probably live without it. You can learn more about Keeping Track here.

The SAS Guide to Tracking is great if you become a hard-core tracker. This is for people who want to learn how to age tracks, and how to read all the minute nuances that tracks can tell. If you want to track something across a dry creek bed, this is the book for you. For most of us, this book is over the top, but for those few who become totally obsessed with tracking, it's a good one to have. Along with this I would add John Brown's tracking books - he, too, gets into the wee little details that most of us will never be able to see.

Ultimately, the best thing you can do is take a class with a good tracker. Any class that is less than half a day long is not likely to be worthwhile... not if you really want to get to know how to track things. The best classes (for those who are serious about learning tracking) are multiple day courses, and ones that actually get you outside following tracks.

Here at the Newcomb VIC, I offer tracking classes throughout the winter, mostly for school groups, but also for the public. Because most people are not as obsessed with tracking as I am, my classes usually run about two hours - more than that and people get bored. I spend about an hour or so inside review tracks and gaits, and then we go outside looking for tracks to ID and to see if we can learn what stories they have to tell.

A really close second to signing up for a good course is to just get out there and do it yourself! At first you may find all you can do is simply identify footprints, but, as with all things, practice makes perfect. In order to make the most of this, you also need to learn a) what animals are in your area, and b) what their behaviors are. For example, if you live in Tennessee, you probably won't be tracking martens, no matter what the tracks look like. And if you are following a track that goes from tree to tree, odds are it's not a deer (they don't climb trees).

For me, the best bit about tracking are the stories. When you get good at reading tracks, you can pretty much tell what the animal was doing. Was it simply going from point A to point B, or was it stalking something? Is it a female in heat? Did the animal hear something and change its gait to take advantage of this (to find food or avoid being eaten)? When did the coyote first see the hare and begin chasing it? Did the owl catch the mouse?

I hope this bibliographic review has been helpful. I'd suggest looking at more than one book - what works for me, may not work for you. Talk to other trackers and see what they recommend. Then get out there and observe - there's no substitute for it.

If you live in the Saratoga region, you might want to keep your eyes open for tracking classes with Vince Walsh, founder of Kawing Crow Awareness Center. I took a class with him last winter at the Paul Smiths VIC and will be going to another one in a couple weeks (9 Jan) at the Wilton Preserve. Vince is an enthusiastic tracker and a good teacher - I recommend his programs. He will be at the Paul Smiths VIC 6 March (9:30 - 2:30); pre-registration required.