1/17/24
For my location, my friends and I went to Mackenzie Park at the Intervale to do some animal tracking and potential bird watching! It had snowed the night before and during the time we were there, so some tracks were new and some tracks were covered in a decent amount of snow. Because of the fresh snow, a lot of the tracks we found were hard to figure out what they were. The tracks we were able to identify were from cottontail rabbits (Genus Sylvilagus), which we found quite a lot of. I was able to compare my findings with others and show what I found in my area with the iNaturalist app, which helped a lot.
Unfortunately, we were not able to identify a lot of the tracks we found besides the cottontail rabbits due to the fresh snow. To identify the tracks the we found, I used my field tracking guide and information from the NR lectures to measure the tracks and look at the shape of them. There were some tracks that we were unsure if it was a rabbit or something else, but we narrowed it down and figured out it was a rabbit. My friends and I also heard and saw many birds which my friend was able to identify with a bird field guide. Some of the birds we found are: Hairy woodpecker (Leuconotopicus villosus) and Tufted titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor).
