Vole Tracks, Flicker Scat and other Tracks and Sign

I’ve been finding tons of flicker scats lately. Here is one. Its a good bet that a solid bird scat that looks like this (coated in white) is a flicker scat… but break it open and find nothing but ants and sand and its 100% identified.

We found a wolf frozen in this iceberg. No idea what happened to it. This was right off the road so maybe it got hit by a car.

Got to do some bird banding of the black rosy finches. I love the black and pink coloration on these birds.

Spring migration in the Tetons. Back to daily bison traffic jams. No complaints here though.

I believe these are meadowlark tracks. This is an area covered in meadowlarks and the size and blackbird shape are right. Some bird tracks are really hard to identify but I’m pretty sure that’s what these are..

Some nice vole tracks. Voles have equal length front and hind legs so they are able to trot like you see here. Trotting helps them cruise through their grass tunnels without bumping the ceiling and it is also a great help in track identification.

Some striped skunk tracks. Without the size reference you could mistake these for bear tracks!

Retired cougar-hound Thor shows that she still has her woods prowess.

If you have put in some practice but you want to step up your tracking skills, look for tricky tracks that don’t make sense at first. Try to pick out the toes, heel pads, and which feet are fronts vs hinds. Stick with it until you figure it out. Sometimes it may take a LONG time and then it makes sense. These are red squirrel tracks; identifiable by the track in the lower left – a front foot.

Cool otter tail drag, scent marking.

It might be hard to see but we found some bear hair stuck to this tree that a beaver took down. The paper would be titled “Relevance of Beaver Chewed Trees in Black Bear Grooming Habits.” It does make a perfect comb.

The hind foot of an Uinta ground squirrel.

Vole feeding sign on a choke cherry branch. I’ve heard that pocket gophers will eat inner bark through the winter so I wonder if this could be them. This looks like classic vole feeding though.

I’ve been working on local ungulates. Sometimes it is really hard to tell them apart so I made this little collage as a fun exercise.

 

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Capturing M85

Another capture season has come to an end on Panthera’s Teton Cougar Project.  It was a challenging year but we were able to put out a few new collars and recollar some cats whose collars fell off over the past year.  Our method for finding mountain lions is the same as mountain lion hunters – we split up and hike, drive or snowmobile looking for tracks.  Snow makes this much easier but anyone who tells you snow tracking is easy may only be looking at clear tracks.  The right snow conditions can make picking a cougar trail out of the tracks of wolves, deer and elk very challenging.

Generally cougar tracks are big and round and their strides are short. This makes them stand out compared to snow trails of ungulates BUT when there is a light crust on top of the snow, cougars will keep their toes tightly together and take longer strides, making the trail look more like deer or small elk.

From above this looks like a hoof…

But if snow conditions allow you to peek inside you will see the toes and fine claws of a mountain lion.

Sometimes you are forced to rely on how the animal is moving to identify a trail – cougars love sneaking under low-lying branches and they “lurk” through the landscape. They travel from tree to tree, wrapping around the trunk, under branches and through thick bushes. Wolves, elk and deer cruise in more of a straight line.

Can you pick out the cougar trail among the tracks of dozens of elk? It is the one on the left sneaking under 1-2 foot high branches.

M85. It is amazing how relaxed all cougars are – but especially M85 is when he is in a tree. He is only 10 or 15 feet away from me when I took this picture.

He took the drugs very well. Safety of the cat as well as the team is priority in these situations. His eyes are covered to help cool his adrenaline and he is covered in snow to cool his body since his temperature was slightly high.

Very interesting callouses on his feet. I haven’t seen this before and I’m curious about what would cause this. He didn’t have these on his toes last year when we caught him.

His front feet were similar but not as dramatic as his hind foot.

Dew claw on the front foot.

He is an extremely healthy looking cat. One of his canines showed some damage which is expected being around 7 years of age.

His new collar will last 2 years before it automatically falls off which means we will likely never catch him again.

Heading home, best of luck to M85. There are still several months left in the cougar hunting season and a big male like him is highly sought after but he is a smart old cat – lasting 7 years is very unusual for a male in our study area.

 

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Raven pellet, skunk scat and critters feeding on thistle…

Morning light on the Tetons…

I believe this is a cormorant pellet. I found it in an area heavily used by cormorants and it is full of small fish bones.

Beautiful young black bear. Got to watch him rip this log open.

Raven pellet. Look for the shiny bits of aluminum foil.

Wolf tracks and scat full of large bones.

This is a cottonwood root. I thought it was cool to see how it grows around river rocks.

My cozy town of Kelly Wyoming.

The foot of a 1 year old female mountain lion.

Skunk scat full of bald-faced hornets.

A goldfinch was feeding on this thistle and left us a small yellow scat.

Here’s what thistle looks like when fed on by a chipmunk. They clip off the thistle heads and feed on them in a pile on the ground. In the background you can see piles of thistle down.

Sometimes its hard to tell if the thistle was opened by the wind or a bird actually plucked out the seeds to eat them. If you look closely you can see the seed that they are trying to eat. When the wind opens the thistle, the seeds will still be attached to the downy part.

Nice bald eagle tracks.

Here is where the eagle above ate or at least handled a fish. Look closely for the fish scales.

Gull pellet containing crab parts.

Crayfish gastrolith. These are commonly found in otter scats. They live in the stomach of crayfish and store calcium carbonate which they use when they molt and grow a new shell. I’ve been wondering about these things for a while and very thankful to some fellow trackers that helped me figure this one out!

One footed gull. The left foot is normal and you can see the tracks if you look closely. The right foot is injured and just makes those paired impressions.

Nice pelican tracks. Pelicans are one of very few birds that have webbing between all four toes.

Fresh scat of a sage grouse. The green color is very distinctive of sage grouse scat.

I interrupted some type of raptor that was eating this spotted sandpiper. There are a lot of kestrels in this area.

Tiny shrew tracks.

Ravens broke off these cottonwood branches and dropped them to the ground. Maybe they were making tools? I couldn’t find any sign of feeding on the branches.

 

That’s all for now thanks for reading!

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Cougar teeth, Curlew tracks, and more…

We lost another kitten. This one to starvation. Her mother was killed and this kitten survived for over 3 months on her own, scavenging, possibly killing birds or squirrels, but she didn’t make it (her sister is still out there). Learn more about these cats at facebook.com/tetoncougarproject. I took this opportunity to look at her teeth. At 9 months old her adult canines have still not fully erupted – making it very difficult to kill any prey of significant size.

An awesome view of a cougar tongue. This is the tool they use to scrape all the meat off bones, as well as clean themselves and their kittens.

Yellow-bellied marmot tracks.

Got to ride in a small 4-seater plane over the Tetons and Gros Ventre. The purpose was to relocate two mountain lions via telemetry. We found them deep in the Gros Ventre. Here is a backside view of Sleeping Indian (or sheep mountain) with the Tetons in the background.

Yellow-warbler nest with eggs.

Mysterious probing… lots of raven tracks around and curlews in the vicinity.

“High-stepping” curlew tracks. This is a breeding dance of the curlew.

I believe this is sage grouse scat. They are abundant in this area and in the next picture you can see leaves of sagebrush in the broken open scat. Sagebrush creates oils that are toxic to the good flora in animals stomachs. Somehow sage grouse, jackrabbits, and pronghorn are able to eat it.

Little bits of sagebrush leaves in the scat.

 

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The End of Capture Season

December 15th marks the beginning of the Gros Ventre closure and the end of our capture season.  We recollared three cats, uncollared one cat and put a new collar on a big male that we found cruising through the study area.  Catching mountain lions consists of scouring the landscape, finding a fresh track, following the trail until you know the cougar is close, releasing barking dogs that send the cat up a tree, tranquilizing the cat while its in the tree, safely lowering it down, taking measurements, blood samples, putting on a collar, reversing the drugs and watching the cat walk away.  It is an intensive effort!  We spent 6 days trying to catch up to another male that we never did reach.  We hiked 12 hours each day over mountains, deep snow, into the dark but never could catch up to him.  It is hard work but also really fun to get to be part of the capture team and to spend all day following tracks of mountain lions.  It is also awesome to spend time with the houndsmen and watch the dogs do their thing.  Check out Boone Smith on NatGeo Wild.  He has a variety of TV projects and is a member of the Smith family – a fourth generation houndsman.  We are really lucky to get to work with him and his family.

Here are some pictures from the past month of adventures.

This is a fun random thing that you might find in elk country. It is a chunk of ice that gets compacted in the hoof then falls off. These weird ice chunks may stick around long after the tracks have blown away.

Nice badger track in the snow.

Curious cats. Here are the tracks of F109 checking out an old back country cabin.

People wonder if the cats get beat up during the capture process. F47 went and killed this adult moose just a few days after we recollared her. Its the first time we’ve documented a female cougar killing an adult moose on this project. I guess she is feeling ok!

Water shrew tracks. Like a normal shrew but much bigger.

Cool imprint of a raven landing.

Big scrape from our new big male, M85.

M85. This was a wild capture. Out until 3am in -20 degree weather.

Tracks of F51 on the left with one of her kittens on the right.

Beautiful day in the Gros Ventre.

Otter sliding on the snow.

Tracking trick shots. From left to right: coyote, wolf and red fox.

Sunrise in the Gros Ventre.

 

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Cougar Playground

Hiked into a kill site yesterday of a cat with two eleven month old kittens.  Saw about a thousand perfect cougar tracks and found a “play” area where the kittens leaped, rolled around and tackled each other.  Something I’ve learned about animals is that they play WAY more than people expect.  Play is one of the most common behaviors, especially of course in the young animals.  There is a great book called Walking with Bears by Terry DeBruyn where the author followed around a family of black bears and recorded everything they did.  It was amazing how much they played.

These were the first tracks we came across. Aging tracks in snow can be tricky but these look very fresh.

We found a cougar bed with this great scratch post. They seem to like scratching rotten old logs. This one had big pieces ripped off. It is believed that they do this for scent marking purposes as well as to sharpen their claws. It makes much more sense to me that they scratch to sharpen their claws and stretch because I’ve only found these scratch posts next to a bed rather than along main travel routes or on the edges of their territory.

Entering the play zone. This cougar jumped off the log and then made a big leap towards the top of the picture.

Great cougar hind track. Their hind tracks are much more symmetrical than their fronts.

Here is the cougar “playground”. There are tracks everywhere, body impressions, tail swipes, etc. Looks like they had a good time!

Great set of tracks from a bounding cougar kitten. The front tracks are the lower ones. You can probably picture a house cat bounding in the exact same way.

Zoomed out view of the bounding tracks above. If only we could have caught all of this action on film.

Body impressions and tail swipes.

We also came across this giant bear scat with a smaller scat right on top. Must be from a big grizzly bear.

Here’s a zoomed out view of the cougar playground. It might be worth noting that we found this next to where the mother killed a mule deer. I imagine that the amount of play time goes up significantly when the cats are happy and well fed. Another great day of tracking with the Teton Cougar Project.

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Some cool photos

Well I’ve been busy lately.  We took a trip to Oregon for another tracking evaluation.  We had some great questions and intense rain.  Now I’m back in Wyoming looking for work and a place to live so I can stay here through the winter.  I’m getting very excited for the snow tracking season.  Wolves, cougars, foxes, elk, moose, and easy trailing… its going to be fun!

River otter tracks in some sweet mud.

Faint tracks with the culprit in view.

Cool beetle trail.

Awesome shrew tracks. These are actually easy to identify when they are clear. All mammals evolved from a creature with five toes on their front feet and five on their hind feet and shrews are one of the oldest mammals. So if you find a super tiny set of tracks and all feet show five toes, you’ve got a shrew.

Rough skinned newt.

Wasps eating a pear. They were a little slow-moving, I think from all the sugar.

I believe these are pheasant scats. We found them in an open hay barn and they were totally full of ants.

Some great nutria tracks. One cool thing I learned about nutrias is that they don’t have any webbing on their pinky toes of their hind feet.

Snail tracks on the beach.

This was a fun eval question. This is an injured coyote. One of his tracks just shows up as a couple dots. Somehow he is able to make a living in this harsh world.

Nice mink trail walking towards the water.

Mystery bone. Found this on the shore of a lake in Idaho. Haven’t been able to figure out what it is… some kind of fish I think. If you have ideas let me know! *Update: with the help of some folks I’ve learned that this is the spiney fin bone from a catfish!  Pretty cool.

A recent visitor to the office…

Here’s Michelle pointing to a grizzly bear bite. This was a big bear – the bite was about 6 and a half feet high!

Grizzly bear hairs.

We had an amazing day of trailing yesterday. There is a brief window where there is snow on the ground and the bears haven’t started hibernating yet. We followed this female black bear for miles.

The fall colors and the mountains are spectacular here. I think this is one of the most beautiful landscapes I’ve ever been in.

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Cougar Kittens!

An exciting moment with the Teton Cougar Project – I was out for a routine hike checking a kill site of F51 but I couldn’t find anything… it was thick downfall and I started snooping around peaking into tunnels through the logs when I noticed 4 tiny breathing fur balls: cougar kittens!  F51 had unexpectedly dropped four kittens and I found them when they were less than 3 days old.  I took this short video on my phone – check it out!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OdJ-Vj92KY&feature=youtu.be

Make sure the volume is up so you can hear them purring and doing this crazy coughing thing.  Sorry about the text and low-quality but we had to do that for copyright reasons.

We were especially surprised by this discovery because F51 currently had a 10 month old kitten, Lucky.  Normally the kittens don’t disperse and live on their own until they are 18 months old but apparently she kicked Lucky out early.  We think she is too young to be killing deer so she must be living off grouse and snowshoe hare.  Pretty crazy!  We got a glimpse of Lucky yesterday and she looked a little skinny but quite healthy overall.

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Working on the Teton Cougar Project

I’ve been volunteering with the Teton Cougar Project for a week now and have already seen 12 kill sites, many beds, and hiked over 40 miles.  Its been intense!  But I’ve learned a lot and seen a ton of cool stuff.  Here are some pictures…

Big mule deer cached by F109, one of my favorite cats.

Road-killed grouse foot.

Dr. Elbroch has an amazing track cast collection.

Cliff swallow egg.

Badger hole.

Pronghorn foot.

Pronghorn killed by M68.

Track of M68. We just returned from a 4 day road trip finding all of the recent kills from dispersing young male, M68.

Here is where M68 sat and looked out for miles into the desert sagebrush, from the top of a ridge.

Michelle, standing near one of M68’s bedding areas.

Little rock overhand where M68 bedded. From here he had an endless view into the sagebrush desert.

Full moon in the desert.

I’ve always wanted to find where a cougar scratched a log… here it is! They do this to stretch, sharpen their claws and maybe scent mark too. They are just big house cats.

Close-up of the scratch. You can see some hairs stuck in there too.

View from one of M68’s beds.

A recent burn where M68 hunted for a couple days (unsuccessfully). There was a ton of deer and elk sign in here though.

Uinta ground squirrel tracks.

Badger tracks.

We use the teeth to record what age the deer was that was killed. This is the jaw bone of a yearling mule deer.

Bears foraging, flipping over rocks.

Hiking back from one of M68’s kills.

Magpie cough pellet.

Snowshoe hare killed by a cougar. Amazing how the skull is perfectly skinned.

Here a woodpecker pecked into the bark to reach a grub.

The remains of a fawn killed by a cougar.

Fresh wolf tracks.

Back to the Tetons and back to studying our local cats. This was a nice moment from my drive home from the office the other day. Beautiful landscapes full of wildlife seem to be everywhere here.

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Wolf Tracking

I’ve been on the road for a couple weeks now camping in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.  It is wild country out here.  At one camp we woke up to find cougar tracks, black bear tracks, elk, moose, a grizzly bear rub and very fresh wolf tracks… all with in a couple hundred yards of our camp.  Amazing!  I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much mega-fauna packed into such a small space.  We got on some great trails – fresh moose, elk, deer… but the best of all were the wolves.  Lots of open ground and a recent rain made for incredible trailing and we got a rare insight into the lives if these animals.

Here you can see a much larger wolf with a smaller one – I think this is the male and female out patrolling. They came to our camp the first night we were there and checked us out.  From the bottom up it goes: front, hind (of the female) then front, hind of the male.

Perfect front track of a gray wolf. Sometimes its hard to get a feel for the size but this is a big track! That is a six inch ruler on the right.

Getting ready for some fly fishing.

 

Fishing with my Uncle Urbie on Henry’s Fork. Caught a couple nice rainbows in there.

Young cow moose in Montana.

Long blonde hairs of a grizzly bear.

Trailing wolves in Idaho.

Henry’s Fork at sunset.

Idaho sunset.

I believe these are Vesper sparrow tracks.

Uinta ground squirrel tracks. I know their tracks but still don’t know how to pronounce their name.

Tiny shrew tracks… do you see them?

The Grand Tetons.

A couple more days of free-wandering fun before we start our internship with the Teton cougar project.  Will post more soon…

 

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