Wrapping up the Wildlife Tracking Intensive for 2013

Black bears, mountain lions, and much much more...

May marked the end of this years Wildlife Tracking Intensive at Wilderness Awareness School. We spent one more weekend exploring wild lands in the region looking for tracks and signs of wildlife and testing our skills in the field.

Mark Kang-O’Higgins inspects the marks left on a leaning alder by a scent marking black bear.

Douglas Cowan inspects a scent marking scrape next to a rotting log from a mountain lion found on a trail along the edge of a wetland on the western edge of the Cascade Mountains.

Advanced Path Student Projects

Saturday afternoon our two Advanced Path students presented on their research projects.

Thanks to all of our students this year for their passion for developing their skills as wildlife trackers and naturalists! It was another great year!

Interested in learning more about the Wildlife Tracking Intensive? Check it out here! Applications now being accepted for next years class which starts in September!

The Remains of an Owl and Other Finds from the Field

This weekend was the 6th weekend of 9 for the year-long Wildlife Tracking Intensive I teach for Wilderness Awareness School. This month we spent Saturday searching for signs of large carnivores and other creatures in the dense rainforests of the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River on the western slope of the Cascades. Among other things we discovered the following tracks and signs:

• Feeeding and scent marking signs of black bears
• Scent marking signs of a mountain lion
• Beaver feeding and dam building activity
• Black-tailed deer and elk sign including antler rubs, trails, tracks, scats and feeding sign

Teaching assistant Dan Gusset and student Erin Campbell inspect the bite mark of a black bear found on a small tree along a game trail. Such marks are commonly produced by scent marking bears whom also claw and rub such trees in efforts to attach their scent to tree for other bears to find.

Douglas Cowan inspects a pika hay mound found under a bridge along the Snoqualmie River. Pika typically live at higher elevations in the Cascades but here were making use of the large boulders laid down at the base of the bridge which mimic higher elevation talus fields. Pika’s collect vegetation in mounds for later consumption in the rocks where they live.

Trever Ose examines some elk hair on an antler rub. Antler rubs are an important scent marking behavior of bull elk associated with the breeding season. After abraiding the bark of the tree with his antlers, the elk will then rub the tree with his face, shoulders and the base of his antlers to attach his scent to the tree. The scent acts as an advertisement to female elk in the area and a challenge to other males.

On Sunday we ventured out to the banks of the Puget Sound where students were quizzed on a wide variety of tracks and signs, including identifying and interpreting the story behind the remains of numerous species of birds we discovered. Tracks and signs we found included:

• Tracks of: racoon, river otter, feral house cat, mink, muskrat, opossum, black rat, deer mouse, shrew, American robin, sparrow, black-crowned night heron, teal.
• River otter scent marking sign
• Pellets from several species of owls containing vole remains
• Northern harrier pellets
• The remains of a barn owl, a short-eared owl, several snow geese, a female pheasant, and several species of ducks most of which appeared to have been predated by areal predators.

On Sunday, besides tracks and signs, the birding was quite good. We observed four snowy owls, a short-eared owl, numerous Northern harriers and other hawks, dunlin, yellow-legs, pintails, widgeons, western meadowlarks, snow geese, trumpeter swans, and many other species.

Front (below) and hind tracks of a muskrat in fine river mud.

All four feet (two fronts at bottom of the frame, hinds above) of a river otter.

The wings of a snow goose which had likely been consumed by a bald eagle on the banks of the Puget Sound.

Identifying bird feathers found in the field at the end of the day.

Feathers from a barn owl (left) and short-eared owl, both found on the edge of a large field filled with vole sign where each owl had likely been hunting when they were killed. The short-eared owl remains where found scattered in the brush bellow some trees in a location where a larger bird, such as a great-horned owl or bald eagle might perch to consume a meal. The barn owl feathers where found below another tree on the ground and was also likely consumed by a raptor.

The class under a particularly large Sitka spruce on the bank of the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River. The large amount of reddish debris at the base of the tree is the result of a feeding Douglas squirrel. Such a midden is created when the squirrel consumes conifer cones from a favored perch and discards the remains onto the forest floor below the perch.

Wolf Tracking In Wisconsin

Front track of an adult Wisconsin wolf.

Just home from a week and a half of adventuring in northern Wisconsin where I participated in a collaboration between Teaching Drum Outdoor School and Wilderness Awareness School on Wisconsin Wolf Tracking Expedition, joined by former Wilderness Awareness School Instructor and founder of the Earth Native Wilderness School, David Scott. Teaching Drum hosted the program which was held very close to the School's home base near the town of Three Lakes, Wisconsin. Despite unseasonably warm conditions on several of the days and a lack of fresh snow for the first half of the class, snow conditions allowed us to peice together some amazing stories about the wolves of the region and the other wildlife that share the North Woods with them.

My coinstructor, and founder of the Earth Native Wilderness School, David Scott, inspects the recent scent marking activity of a wolf under a large hemlock tree just off of a forest service road in the Nicolet National Forest.

David Scott and Teaching Drum staff member Chris Bean discuss the home range of the Giant Pine Pack which the class spent several days tracking.

Prior to the start of the program, Teaching Drum founder Tamarack Song took David Scott and I out to visit the folks participating in the rigorous 11 month long Wilderness Guides Program.

The participants in the Wilderness Guides Program invited us into their sleeping shelter, where they are weathering the snow and subzero temperatures of northern Wisconsin in relative comfort.

The outside of their winter quarters.

Tamarack Song looks on as one of the Guides in training works an elk hide on the frozen lake by their winter camp.

Tracks of a fisher bounding into the forest. Fisher sign was relatively common in many of the locations I visited while in the area.

Participants in the Wolf Tracking Expedition inspect the scat left behind by a large fisher.

Front track of a wolf found on the program.

Conservation Biologist and wolf researcher Ron Schultz shared tracking tips and stories from his years of field work capturing and collaring wolves in the area.

Teaching Drum staff member Leah Moss inspects a set of fisher tracks.

Tracker Randell Westfall inspects the cavity created by an excavated cache of deer meat made by a wolf.

Wilderness Awareness School meets Teaching Drum in the North Woods.

Wolf Tracking in the Salmon River Mountains, Idaho

The landscape, typical of the mountains of central Idaho shows conifer forests, dominated by lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) in various stages of regeneration after naturally occuring fires. Interspersed are large wet and dry meadow systems.

Don Taves inspects the trail of a wolf trotting down a dirt road.

The right front foot of a large wolf. The toes have splayed widely and the claws of each digit have dug in deeply, including in the reduced inside toe due to the fast speed of this animal. The bounding trail of this wolf was adjacent to the trail of two fleeing mule deer indicating a pursuit (apparently unsuccessful for the wolf).

A pine marten (Martes americana) peers down from a safe perch.

Sandhill crane (Grus canadensis) in flight. Cranes breed and rear young in the vast wet meadow systems of central Idaho.

Columbian ground squirrels (Spermophilus columbianus) at a burrow.

Rocky mountain elk (Cervus elaphus)

Students in Wilderness Awareness School’s Idaho Wolf Tracking Expedition hiking out across Corduroy meadows at the southern end of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness towards the end of a long day in the field searching for and following wolf tracks and signs.