Tracking Experience 🐾
For my tracking excursion, I went to Centennial Woods with my friend Allison! It was lightly snowing while we were there but we did our best to trek into the parts of the woods far away from the main trail in hopes of finding some undisturbed tracks.
We walked around for awhile, but weren’t able to find much other than vague squirrel or rabbit tracks. They were everywhere, but given that it had been snowing for pretty much the whole day, most of the tracks just looked like indistinct imprints. Here are some examples:
However, after a bit of searching we found a long trail of those same looking tracks that we followed for about half a mile into the woods. I felt like a detective following a lead. We followed the tracks and puzzled together the story and motivations of the animal we followed. After a while, the tracks dead-ended into a pile of branches that was slightly hollow underneath. I’m not sure if it was the animal’s den, but if it is, I would assume the tracks we followed were a cottontail rabbit’s. If it was a squirrel, I don’t think it would have been on the ground so much for such a long period of time. Here are the photos I took of the tracks leading up the the den:
After following that one trail for a while, it started to get dark so we made our way out of the woods. However, on the way back we stumbled across a trail of paw prints. I’m 60% sure they are that of a grey fox but the other 40% of me wants to say they are a domestic dog’s. Centennial is a popular place for people to walk their dogs and they were fairly fresh. However, the tracks were far off the beaten path and I did not see any human footprints very close to them.
Other Wildlife Sightings 🪹
Other than my specific excursion to Centennial Woods to track, I have also seen wildlife signs while just walking around Burlington. I was on my way home from class one day when I started to hear a strange scratching noise. I took off my headphones and saw it was a grey squirrel munching on an acorn in a tree. It looked to be enjoying a nice snack on a snowy day. I captured this blurry photo of it:
Similarly, I was walking to the Hillel building earlier this week and saw a bird’s nest in one of the trees off the sidewalk. I assume it is no bird’s current home given the season, but I like how the nests remain there even after its inhabitants are gone. Hopefully, it will be repurposed by a new bird looking to start its family in the coming months!
iNaturalist🦉
Using iNaturalist was not too difficult once I figured out how to join the project. For some reason, my geolocations were not working so I had to update my posts after I returned home. I wished I found more distinct tracks so that I had something more concrete to upload. I feel a little strange uploading tracks that I’m not 100% sure of the species because I don’t want to submit false data. However, I did upload the ones I felt most confident about.