Howdy y’all 🤙🏽 I know I’m posting a little late, but yesterday afternoon I grabbed my NR pal I went down to Centennial with a few weeks ago, and we walked over to Potash Brook to see if we couldn’t find any signs of life. Going back to the fall when all of NR 1 went to Potash to study stream ecology, it was super cool to see how different everything looked in the winter; it was hard to even recognize our lab site with the frozen brook and snow coating the woods’ floor. It was also fun going much deeper into the woods than we were able to in the fall, exploring up through the forest, farther away from Klinger’s bakery, and having way too much fun crunching ice under our boots.
When we first got there, we weren’t super hopeful for finding much because conditions weren’t great. The snow was blown around by the wind making a lot of tracks unclear, there was a lot of ice that didn’t allow for a lot of tracks to show, and there seemed to be a fair bit of foot traffic in some parts of the area. That being said, we were able to find a lot of evidence of fishers in the area.
We actually followed the tracks of this individual down to the brook and back up the hill for maybe a couple hundred feet. There were a few times when the tracks became more clear, and when this happened, we used iNaturalist’s Seek app to help us identify the tracks, and they told us what we already expected…
It was a lot of fun tracking the fisher, but other than that, we couldn’t identify many other tracks. There were various canine tracks throughout the woods, but they were often so close to human footprints, and the tracks themselves didn’t appear very straightforward (as to conserve energy which wild canine species would likely demonstrate). My best guess based on the size of the tracks that did follow roughly straight paths, were not near footprints, and had relatively pointed feet that were small would be fox.
We were on our way back down the hill on our way out of the woods, doing one final loop around the woods to see if we could find some final tracks before we left, and that’s when we found this…
Again, my buddy and I turned to Seek to identify what could have made this, and they suggested the Black Woodpecker, although they really weren’t quite sure either.
The naturalist in me was really hoping I would find some scat or tracks near the hole, but I found absolutely nothing around the base of the tree. I was really really excited at the premise of the woodpecker making a hole in the tree that would then be used as a den by another animal species, but no evidence of such a relationship could be found.
It wasn’t as eventful as I was hoping it would be, but it was pretty fun regardless! It wasn’t super cold so I had good weather, good company, and it just made for a pretty nice day even though I was really freaking sore from snowboarding Sunday 😂 Potash Brook is a really incredible winter spot no matter how the snow looks, and I’d suggest getting down there if you can and find some fisher tracks because there are PLENTY of ’em. Have fun!
Peace and love 🤙🏽