February Tracking
Today, February 19th, I went to Centennial Woods and looked for signs of wildlife. The only animals we actually saw were some European Starlings, but we did find a good amount of tracks. We identified Snowshoe Hare, Deer Mouse, Domestic Dog, and the print of some kind of bird. We found more tracks than I thought we would, and especially when we went off the trail, we found some nice ones. Using inaturalist was pretty easy and I like how it makes your observations part of a bigger story. Uploading the observations was quick and I think I’ll be using it more in the future.
For the Snowshoe Hare print, we decided that species over other bounders like squirrels because the front paws are offset and not parallel, and the tracks seemed too large for a Cottontail Rabbit. For the tiny tracks, we were deciding between Shrew and Deer Mouse because they are similar in size and both have the tail drag. We landed on Deer Mouse because of the gate pattern. The domestic dog prints were pretty clear, especially since they were everywhere and went along the trail.
