An Adirondack Naturalist in Central New York: fox

Showing posts with label fox. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Early Morning Tracks

I was the first person in to work yesterday morning, and after two days of being closed, the only tracks on the driveway were those left by animals passing in the night. What a treat to see such beautiful clear footprints in the frozen slush.

Fox and raccoon - a nice combination.

I'm always delighted to see raccoon tracks. Around here, where the winters can be brutally cold at times, raccoons only come out when the weather turns mild. When we have a warm night (warm, of course, being a relative term) we pretty much know that the raccoons will be out and about.

Raccoon tracks are always so easy to identify: they look like tiny human hand prints. Five toes, front and back. And when they walk, they place a hind foot next to a front foot, leaving a perfect impression of each, side-by-side.

This raccoon was headed toward the building, so I followed its tracks to see where it went. I suspected it was headed to the back deck and the suet (we bring the birdfeeders in at night, but the suet stays out). I was surprised to find the suet still in tact. It seems the raccoon had other things on its mind, for it made a beeline past the building and down the hill.

This is about the time of year raccoon mate, so we speculated that perhaps this was a male going in search of a female. Whatever its mission, it was nice to see its tracks.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

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.

Friday, January 15, 2010

CSI

One of our staff came in yesterday afternoon from a quick jaunt around the Rich Lake Trail to tell me I should go out and investigate the scene of a crime. "Piles of fur," she said. So, I grabbed radio, camera and snowshoes and went to check it out.

There were three locations with piles of hair, and lots of tracks all around.

Fur/hair was scattered about at each of the three locations indicated above.

A close inspection of the fur/hair proved that it was indeed deer hair. Deer hair is very coarse, especially in winter. This is because the hairs of the winter coat are hollow, the air inside providing additional insulation.

Looking closely at the ends of the hairs, I could see they were neatly severed, like someone had cut them off with a sharp knife. There were no tooth marks, or signs of shredding.

As you can see, the perpetrators were all over the place. There were no signs of blood, no signs of a struggle, no signs of dragging. All of this leads me to suspect that these animals were lugging along a portion of an already deceased deer. I wonder if it was part of the same deer whose skull the girls brought in a couple weeks ago.

There were two spots where the animals left scent posts. I sniffed each, trying to ascertain whodunnit (I suspected coyotes). The pee was slightly musky with an overall sweet aroma. This was new to me. As I've mentioned before, red fox is skunky, so it was easy to eliminate that. I've never seen a grey fox on this property, and the tracks were simply too big for grey fox anyway. I've smelled what I thought was coyote urine before, but it was only musky, not sweet at all. I've sent an email to Vince to get his opinion - will keep you posted.

There were several sets of tracks coming across the ice of the bay. You could see where the coyotes had been walking in-line, and then split up. Because the sun was getting quite low in the sky (it was after 4:00), the light was getting dim.

I love this one, for it seems the coyote stepped up on this snowy stump to take a look (or maybe a sniff) around.

The coyotes came ashore here - their tracks were all over the place.

Here we see where a canid came along, gathered itself up, and leapt onto the boardwalk. I'm always amazed when they do this, for they must leap between the cables, which is a space of maybe 8". This leads me to think this animal was a fox, not a coyote. Plus, I know foxes routinely use this route, then head up the hill towards our birdfeeders - good mousing up there.

Because it was so mild, the snowfleas were out! I didn't see any actually hopping about, but apparently the migration was on.

So, questions remain. In a perfect world, I'd scout the shoreline and look for the rest of this deer. But, I don't trust the ice on this lake. There are springs underneath and in some areas the water is always on the move, making ice crossings potentially dangerous. Perhaps more clues will show up as the season progresses.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Weasel Wanderings

This morning was rather dark and dismal outside. It had tried to rain overnight, so there was a coating of ice on the car and the snow had a light crust. I was running late, so Toby got a short walk. For a change of pace, we detoured up to an abandoned property where kids ride dirt bikes in the summer and snowmobiles in the winter. I'm glad we did for I found this wonderful weasel trail, which included a slide:

I came back afterwards with the camera because I don't have any weasel tracks in my photo collection yet. I suspect this is a long-tailed weasel because they are the most common. If we were in England, this would be a stoat (short-tailed weasels are also stoats, apparently; to them a "weasel" is the least weasel, which you'd have to go up to Canada to find here).

The slide measures about 2" across.

Here's a shot looking up the slope. You can see where the weasel came from the woods and apparently did a little investigating.

After it slid down the wee slope, it bounded across the road, leaving these 2x2 tracks behind, which are typical of the weasels. The tracks were filled with snow, so they weren't too fresh. This animal may have come by sometime in the early night (it snowed a bit after it rained), or the tracks could've been from the previous night. I'm leaning more towards that because of the amount of snow in the tracks. It snowed quite hard a couple times during the day yesterday, resulting in about a half inch of new snow, which looks about right in these tracks.

A fox had passed by last night, too. Because I've seen grey foxes here, I'm pretty sure this is a grey fox trail. The tracks to the right show the typical "C" or rotary gallop, curving to the left. The tracks on the left are mine.

For comparison, here are my dog's tracks:

I can tell you he was pacing (a type of trot, where both the left feet move at the same time, then the right, then the left - like pacers at the race track) because that's his basic gait. Pacing is not a normal gait for most animals. Camels come by it naturally, and horses can be trained to do it. Looking at the tracks, though, you really can't tell this is what he's doing - you have to see the animal in action to note it. What you can see here, however, is each foot making its own track (no double registers here, where the hind foot lands where the front foot landed), and basically a sloppy pattern. Domestic dogs, for the most part, are not the efficient travellers their wild bretheren are.

So, here's a closer look at the fox's gallop:

With canines, the front feet are larger than the back (they are supporting more weight than the hind feet). In the gallop the feet land front-front-hind-hind, both hind feet coming down in front of the front feet. This animal was travelling from right to left in this photo, so the left-most tracks are the hind feet.

I took a close-up of one of the front footprints because I wanted to verify the size for grey fox. When measuring tracks, you want to measure the impressions made by the foot pads at the bottom of the print, not the hole in the snow, which is bigger than the actual foot. This foot measures about 1 6/8" ; on average a grey fox front foot measures 1 3/8 - 1 7/8", so this falls within the range.

And, of course, there is always the ubiquitous deer trail.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

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.