The beginning of spring is a magical
time to be in the woods. As Persephone begins her journey of return
to the loving arms of her mother, Demeter, she awakens the sleeping
life force of the plants, and heralds the return of the many migrant
species that call Oregon home for the summer. The dance of life,
which never truly stops, begins to speed up from the stately waltz of
winter to the staccato steps of summer's samba.
Tracking Club met again at BREC last
weekend, and, while taking in the glorious sights and sounds of
spring, had our most interesting day of tracking yet. Your humble
narrator is happy to report that his attendance at Tracking Club has
not been in vain, and over the course of the winter has progressed
from casting around blindly for tracks in the sand to beginning to
read the story of the land the way animals do, and to know where
tracks might be, as well as follow elk and deer paths through the
forest loam.
This week we decided to explore the
“head waters” of the northern stream, and ventured forth to the area
where it enters BREC on the eastern edge of the property, north of
all the parking lots. We choose this area because we wanted to see
where the coyote we have tracked across the sandy area was coming
from, and we were not disappointed.
One of our discoveries was the moldy
corpse of most of a Rough Skinned Newt. Your humble narrator can
report with certainty that the body has been there, untouched, for
the better part of a month at this point, with its severed tail
nearby and a small pile of vomit in between. The story to be drawn
from this evidence is an interesting one, shall be left to you, the
reader.
We found many deer and and elk tracks
and evidence of a well used route that curves around the human
traffic areas of BREC. While on that trail we found our most exciting
discovery yet!
Most of a skeleton! Including a full
skull and jaw bones, with most of the large leg bones and a lot of interesting tiny ones. June and her home school crew
inspected the bones closely, and we believe that these are the bones
of a domestic cat. We were surprised by the excellent condition of
much of the skeleton, but June's home school crew discovered damage on
several places on the right side of the animal and that most of the
middle section of the skeleton was missing. This leads us to suspect that the cat may have been taken by a coyote or maybe a bobcat, which ate the middle of the
animal, leaving the rest for other scavengers.
The bones are currently out at Camp Trackers and will be available for examination at the next Tracking Club meeting.
We're going to keep the skeleton for a
short time and then return the bones to the land. The skull will stay
in our burgeoning head museum.
After that we traveled to the archery
area to see what we could see.
We found an interesting set of deer prints that cut across the main trail on the way to the archery range.
At the archery range we found many tracks but the most interesting thing was some scat that was unlike anything we had seen before. The shape of the scat wasn't unusual, but what we could see inside perplexed us. There were dozens of similar sized delicate, white bone-like things. Quills? Feathers? Spines?
After some more scat dissecting, Kelsey
found the key piece of evidence that let us figure out who the animal
had eaten to produce such unusual poop.
Post your thoughts of what it was in
the comments. Please also comment on what you think happened with the
rough skinned newt, as well as your idea of the probable gait of the
deer in the other photo. (Your humble narrator knows that it is hard
to determine a gait from just 2 prints, but the Tracking Club is
about puzzling out the art of tracking through experience.)
The Tracking Club meets the 1st Sunday of every month from 9-12 at BREC. Our next meeting is April
3rd. The club is open to anyone who has an interest in
tracking and wants to learn more. This isn't a class, and while
teaching and learning happens, this is intended as a time for people
to gain experience with tracking in the field without the crutch of
having an experienced tracker nearby answer all the questions.
