Well its been a pretty busy tracking season. There have been a whole bunch of evaluations lately. I flew down to San Diego to attempt to redeem myself on a specialist eval and the following weekend had ANOTHER specialist eval in Washington. I didn’t do as good in Washington – I have a lot more to learn about the animals up here. I did however pass the eval in San Diego. All I missed were a couple of bonus questions. It is a great feeling to finally get the specialist certificate. Here are some pictures from the evals and pictures from other tracking excursions. Enjoy.
Super cute baby lamb at the Alderleaf farm.
Flicker scat
Probing holes from a flicker searching for ants.
I know its not much to see, but these marks are from an Osprey flying low to the ground and grabbing a stick for its nest.
I think this is an Osprey pellet. It contained fish scales, lots of bird feathers and a little bird beak. Very perplexing.
Here is the bird’s beak that was in the pellet.
Nice dog tracks in a gallop.
Snipe tracks.
Elk will scrape trees with their teeth to feed on inner bark but cow elk will also scrape trees like this as a territorial marking behavior. You can tell the difference because there will be a pile of un-eaten bark on the ground.
This is the cool hanging nest of a bushtit.
Here are tracks of a stonefly. You can see the exoskeleton of the stone fly too on the right. Those long pokey things on its butt make the parallel lines.
A better view of the stonefly exoskeleton.
This is the feeding sign of a black bear. They will scrape and eat the inner bark of certain trees like this.
Elk herd. I’m inspired to learn a lot more about these animals in the near future.
Black-crowned night heron track. Looks just like other heron or egret tracks but you can tell them apart by their size.
These weird patterns are the signs left behind by slugs feeding on algae.
Tracks and probing from a western sandpiper.
Tiny western sandpiper track.
Willet tracks.
The great Jonah Evans teaching us about flicker tracks.
Some nice woodrat tracks.
Phoebe nest under a bridge.
Super nice harvest mouse tracks. Harvest mice will climb grass stalks and dangle from their hind feet as the stalk bends down so they can reach the seeds. So their hind feet have a weird thumb on them for gripping the stalk. This is clear enough that we can tell their tracks from other types of mice.
My friend Shirley surprised me with a box full of primitive goodies. Sinew, pine pitch, hide glue, buckskin, soapstone bowl, sweet crooked knife, an awesome flint knapping book… and more. Thanks Shirley! (If anyone else wants to send me a bunch of awesome stuff… please don’t hesitate to do so… 🙂
Natural Skills 