For this assignment, a friend and I walked along the waterfront about halfway to Rock Point. It was an unusually warm day so there was plenty of mud to look for tracks in. We were very interested to see what kind of wildlife we could find closer to residential areas. At one point I saw this huge, long-dead tree that had a hollow center. We weren’t able to identify the tree, but there were marks on it to suggest an animal had been living in it.
I was very excited thinking I had found wolf tracks in the mud, since the path was very straight and the prints were about 4 inches. However, due to the large claw indents and close “x”, I decided it was more likely a domesticated dog.
There were several birds, they were too quick to get a picture but we guessed American Goldfinch, American Crow, and Common Robin. There was also an abundance of gray squirrels.
Probably the most interesting discovery was the incredibly large pile of scat we found. After some very impressive tracking we found the culprit: a large brown horse… just walking around by the Echo Center.