A Good Morning

Boy do I love tracking. I went out this morning not expecting to find anything crazy and ended up seeing so much cool stuff. I found the spot where a hawk killed a Blue Jay, which I recognized from the scat spray- a thing that only hawks do. I found the tracks of a mother red fox bringing her pups down to a pool to drink. I caught an American toad and got it to make tracks for me. Found some nice Raven tracks and some really nice duck tracks. I thought they were grouse tracks which was very exciting for me because grouse is one of the last species whose tracks I need to find for the Apprenticeship but it turns out that the tracks were from some weird duck wandering around in the forest.

I also got to trail a Coyote, Gray fox, deer and Moose for a long distance in the sand.

Here is the blue jay kill site. The white stuff is scat sprayed out by a hawk. Could be a Buteo (Red Tail, Red Shoulder etc) or an Accipter (Sharp shinned, Cooper's). Its most likely an accipiter kill, since blue jays are hard for a Buteo to catch. Owls don't make the scat spray.

Size reference on the toad:

Forest duck and toad tracks.


Red fox puppy. This is known by the size (which might suggest Gray fox) and the caloused ridge at the base of the heel.

Collection of Tracking Quotes

Here are a few of my favorite quotes about tracking. Hope you like them.

Tracking is like dancing, because your body is happy. It is telling you the hunting will be good. You feel it in the dance. It tells you when you love tracking and dancing, you are talking with God.
- !Ngate Xgamxebe, Bushman Tracker, from the documentary The Great Dance.

Never forget the trail, look ever for the track in the snow; it is the priceless, unimpechable record of the creature's life and thought, in the oldest writing known on earth.
-Ernest Thompson Seton

The tragedy in life is not what men suffer, but what they miss.

-Thomas Carlyle

Jungle lore is not a science that can be learnt from textbooks; it can, however, be absorbed, a little at a time, and the absorption process can go on indefinitely, for the book of nature has no beginning as it has no end.
-Jim Corbett, Jungle Lore

I'll add more as I come across them...

Small Island Ecology

For this past Tracking weekend we took a ferry out to Ragged Island about 16 miles off of the coast of Maine. The only mammals on the island are Snowshoe Hare, Muskrat, and Norway Rats. So we studied their tracks and sign closely and also did a lot of bird tracking. We found Bald Eagle tracks, crow, pheasant, seagull and many other bird tracks. It was a great weekend spent on a very unique and beautiful island. Here are some pictures: