The first snow of the season had fallen in
the area the day before, and as Lee, Christina and I drove north amidst light
flurries we hoped for the snow to linger.
We’re all a little impatient to start tracking on that white winter canvas
again. But by the time our whole group had gathered together at Allan Park, the
temperature rose, the sun came out, and the snow hastily retreated, not ready
to commit.
However, we were all eager to explore and
learn in this brand new location on a beautiful November morning. Heading south
from the parking lot, we took the main trail towards a large, flat pond,
faintly rippled by wind. “Please, no horses in pond,” a sign next to it read,
which was surprising but sensible advice, and conjured up amusing images in my
head. We swung left to a slope next to the pond and encountered crisscrossed deer
tracks. We examined, marked with popsicle sticks, and discussed our
observations. The general consensus was that there were two trails, one going down
the hill and one going up. The theme of the weekend was pressure releases, so Alexis
took the opportunity to tease out some ways in which these particular tracks
had moved the earth around them, indicating changes of direction, slight turns,
and other specific movements.  |
| Snowshoe Hare |
Leaving the deer tracks and heading along a
new trail, we came across a wide sand path, covered with a wealth of tracks.
Some prints with five clear claw marks were briefly confusing, until we
backtracked slightly and identified the tell-tale J-shaped asymmetry of hare
tracks in one of them. Zooming out, we
could see the track pattern of a snowshoe hare moving at high speed: its feet
spread wide, back feet well ahead of front, and even the front feet staggered
one in front of the other, creating a stretched-out set of tracks for each
bound.
On the same sand path, Alexis took
advantage of some human boot prints to delve more deeply into pressure
releases. We had a brief introduction to
some of Tom Brown Jr.’s terminology on the subject – expecting more focused
study with a tracking box the next day - and some new tools to use in
interpreting animal (and human) movement. Approaching each track as a miniature
landscape, we heard about ridges, peaks, caves, plates, fissures, and other
specific terms used to describe the precise impact increases in movement and
speed have on the soil in and around the track. This is the micro perspective:
tracks as miniature geological events, each tiny formation giving precise clues
as to its big picture meaning.
Heading deeper into the woods, a
semi-regular line of depressions in the leaf-litter along the trail gave us
pause. So regular, and yet… something was off.
The depressions were circular and the leaves looked to have been pushed
outwards, almost swirled, instead of showing momentum in any one direction. Hmm… A good test of our perception. We clicked in to see that the pattern showed a
small animal bounding along the path, stopping to dig in each spot – the fall
larder-building of a squirrel.
 |
| Flying Squirrel Latrine |
The clouds shifted. Several sprinklings of
light snow and hail let us know the temperature was around freezing. Further
through the woods, as we scampered up and down slopes, more finds: small pellets
of scat piled up in tree cavities, in a pattern characteristic of a specific small
forest animal (any guesses?); bitternut hickory nuts, and the trees themselves
with their faintly striped bark; a pile of crow tail and flight feathers,
intact at the shaft tips, as if they had been plucked carefully one by one; another
pile of beautiful black, blue and white feathers – some with hints of other
jewel-like colours – beside a small beak on a mound of earth. What was the
story here? Who was this bird and what
had happened to it? What other animal
was involved?
 |
| Bitternut Hickory |
The sun was moving westward; our afternoon
was nearing its end. But a few more
discoveries were ahead of us: a tiny and perfect nest; a tall grass meadow; a
fox’s den, in an ideal location to survey and hunt smaller creatures in that
same meadow. And, a little later, as we reconnected
with the trail back to the parking lot, two sets of tracks. The first, a single, clear canine track,
walking straight as an arrow across
the human path instead of meanderingly parallel to it – so much information to
be gleaned from one track in the right location. Beside it, some other tiny tracks, easy to
mistake for chipmunk, but with other clues pointing to the possibility of a
short-tailed weasel.
A great day of shifting weather and
shifting perspectives; zooming in and out of details; seeing patterns large and
small making their impact on the landscape and on our ways of seeing.
By: Malgosia Halliop - 2nd year tracking student
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