The time came to put my tracking skills to the test in this winter wildlife tracking expedition. It proved itself to be quite the challenge, though, as all of the winter conditions have gone away. I was trying to find the prints of wildlife in 40° and sunny (finally) weather throughout the snowless waterfront path in downtown Burlington leading to North Beach. I spent my time here wandering throughout the path and into the woods in hopes to find the perfect wildlife tracks. The search for perfection soon became the search for anything at all. After two hours of exploration, I decided to call it quits on this expedition and go back out another time.
The next day, I set out to explore the depths of Centennial Woods still hoping to find the perfect signs of wildlife. It was only after 10 minutes of walking beyond the path that the first sign appeared. The scat left from a white-tailed deer was present under a layer of twigs and weeds. I questioned if it was rabbit scat, but the amount of it told me it was more likely from a deer than a smaller rabbit. Later, I found an area with some snow yet to be melted away, so I explored it hoping to find tracking marks. While I did not find any prints here, I found even more white-tailed deer scat!
The presence of the white-tailed deer scat gave me the confidence I needed to continue exploring in hopes to find my main goal: wildlife tracks. I found the stream that ran through Centennial Woods and walked along it with the idea that the mud lining of the stream would be the perfect host for the clear, crisp tracks I’d been searching for. I found a small beach of wet dirt that looked like the perfect area to hold tracks, and, upon closer viewing, I proved myself correct. The first thing I found looked like a small, stretched out handprint. Beyond that track I found three more of the same track walking in the direction of the water! I knew this was a racoon due to the five fingers, the way it looked like a hand, and the size of the tracks.
As I encountered these signs of wildlife, I used the iNaturalist app to record my findings. It was my first time documenting something on the app so I was a little bit confused at first, but it was very user-friendly and easy to figure out. As I made my observations and did my identifications on the app, I also looked through other documentations of wildlife in the area to confirm the species I found.