February 23rd, 2025
Yesterday four of my friends and I walked around campus to find some animal tracks in the snow! I posted many of our findings to my iNaturalist page.
First we walked along the pathway between Marsh Life Science and Howe Library. There we saw multiple tracks that looked very similar. They looked like bounder tracks because of their grouping, and based on the fact that they all led directly to trees, we assumed that they were Eastern gray squirrel tracks.
ˆProbable Eastern gray squirrel tracksˆ
ˆMore probable Eastern gray squirrel tracksˆ
We also saw some strange-looking tracks; it looked like an animal had fallen from a tree and then walked away. The print pattern was diagonal but also looked strangely like squirrel prints at some points. We’re still not quite sure what this was. Maybe it was a squirrel walking strangely due to disorientation after falling out of the tree.
ˆStrange potential Eastern gray squirrel tracksˆ
Closer to the Patrick Leahy building, we saw some American robins. They were in the trees and hopping about in the snow. They left some pretty cool tracks, including some wing marks; based on their positioning, the wing marks could be from a robin landing and the foot marks could be the bird walking away.
My friends and I then walked to the MAT complex on athletic campus because we had seen some pretty cool tracks there a few days before. We saw many of what seemed like rabbit tracks– they had the distinct bigger hind feet and unique hopping pattern. From the closeness of the tracks the rabbit was probably moving relatively slowly. We also found some scat that, based on its small size and spherical shape, probably belongs to a rabbit. Both of these signs together indicate that rabbits were in the area.
ˆProbable rabbit tracksˆ
I also have some picture from the same area a few days ago. There were some probable rabbit tracks heading into a small snow den– I couldn’t tell if it was human-made or rabbit-made, however. We also found some scat and possible urine.
ˆProbable rabbit tracks and scatˆ
Overall my experience using iNaturalist was pretty great! It isn’t great at identifying animal tracks but community input and our tracking books make up for that. iNaturalist is really easy to upload images to, and easy to navigate as well!
This was a fun project, and I look forward to doing some more tracking in the future! See you next time!