I went to Centennial Woods for my phenology this week. We first followed the the trails, spotting tracks beside or intersecting our path. Many of these were dog tracks, with the occasional fox and squirrel, so we tried finding more open fresh snow. When doing so, we were able to make out coyote, white footed mouse, mink, and red and gray fox. Many of the tracks were hard to narrow down to the specific species, especially since nobody in our group was a strong tracker. We were able to determine the coyote tracks from the toes held together well and the realization that people are less likely to let their dog run free by a frozen over creek that could be dangerous. As for the mink, we saw the clear 5 toes and walking pattern, which with the size of the tracks narrowed it down to mink.
After a bit of trouble getting onto the NR2 group, iNaturalist was very straightforward to use. One thing that I wish you could do (maybe you can and I just didn’t find it) is to report something as just “fox” or “squirrel.” I suppose you could just leave species blank and put it in the notes, but having it in species would show more confidence. On some of the identifications, we were very hesitant to add it to iNaturalist out of worry of being wrong, but eventually we got most tracks up to iNaturalist.
