On page 617 of Mammal Tracks & Signs by Mark Elbroch (2nd ed) there is an excellent description of this behaviour. It reads: Both eastern gray (or “grey”) and fox squirrels also create large visual and olfactory scent posts at the base of trees (often the lee side) and under large branches (Koprowski 1993). Previously, …
Squirrel “stripe” marking on trees, North America (and Europe) Read More »
This is a classic Cape Buffalo dung pile. They look like large pellets, folded into each other and sometimes just a large “plop.” They resemble the dung of domestic cows (or domestic cow dung resembles their dung). Similar species: On occasion, we have seen very atypical waterbuck and giraffe scats that resemble this, but the …
This photo was taken near Siren, Wisconsin, at our annual Deer Trailing Workshop and CyberTracker Trailing Evaluation with North Winds Wilderness School and the Minnesota Tracking Project. Jonathan Poppele (Tracker 2) and Blake Samuele Southard (Tracker 2) were present, and refrained from answering, but contributed with their great senses of humour. Annie Du-Pre Reynolds (Tracker …
White-tailed deer tracks in leaf litter, Wisconsin, USA Read More »
These photos were taken at our training venue, Ngala Training Camp, in the Balule Region of the Greater Kruger, South Africa. The first photo is fresh, and the second one, older. Frikkie Kotze answered this question correctly in our #trackertuesdays #dailytrackingchallenge. It’s scrub hare urine signs! Frikkie had this as a question on a #CyberTracker …
Patrick Bernard Oreja made an educated guess on this one in our #trackertuesdays #weeklytrackingchallenge, “Green pigeon? Fruit seed matter curling up the scat and colouring it. Can also see Uric acid.” Pigeons and doves (family Columbidae), create spiraled little scats under roosts. Depending on what they are eating, they can appear as tight little coils …
Mammal tracks always seem to attract more interest than others, perhaps because that’s what we typically think about tracking, when we think about tracking… In our #trackertuesdays #weeklytrackingchallenge we had three answers from three different countries for this one: Ross Marcel Gariepy (SA) – Zebra, odd toed ungulate or hoofed animal. Mike Watling (USA) – …
Zebra (zeh-brah, not zee-brah) tracks, South Africa Read More »
The veld here in South Africa is still recovering from many years of drought. As a result, the animals are becoming more abundant. More and more, we are seeing these dry, grassy nests, and they aren’t always in rocks. Sometimes, they are in hollows in dead (or still living) trees. We identify them by the …
Mike Watling (foxtracker805) sent this photo from the Channel Islands National Park, where he volunteers as a naturalist. He says, “The bird track is a spotted towhee. They will hang out in the bushes near my campsite (on Santa Rosa Island) and are frequently on the ground under the picnic table. For the spotted towhee, and birds …
Here’s some newly documented invertebrate tracks to share with you all in our Tracker Mentoring community! This odd trail belongs to a beetle larva. It is a “cutworm,” a larva of the Tenebrionidae, as far as we can tell. These are seen from time to time in different regions, and this particular one is from …
Here are some newly documented bird tracks to share with you all in our Tracker Mentoring community. The Burchell’s sandgrouse is a desert dwelling bird, whose tracks we recently encountered in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. These dry country birds are beautifully camouflaged, and you could walk by them unnoticed, unless they fly up! Their …
Burchell’s Sandgrouse Tracks – Okavango Delta, Botswana Read More »