A Moose with Elk Antlers, Bear Sign and Woodpeckers Eating Grubs…

The moose with goofy “elk” antlers. Never seen anything like this.

Here’s the front foot of a skunk that one of our mountain lions killed.

Tracks of a gray jay. Not much detail but all jays have very narrow feet and steller’s jays are slightly longer.

Here is a steller’s jay track. They are a little over 2″ long.

I’m excited for another season of snow tracking. I wish we hadn’t trampled everything but there are two animals moving up the middle of the picture. On the left is a coyote and on the right is a marten. Snow tracking forces the tracker to focus more on gaits and stride length than just details of a clear track. Here the marten is bounding, making a pattern very similar to the trotting coyote but the distance between the tracks is too long to be a trotting coyote.

The vigorous territorial marking of a red squirrel on a broken branch.

Nice marten tracks. There are also jumping mice, a coyote and other tracks in the picture.

Here are a few pictures of bears ripping open or turning over logs looking for ants or grubs to eat.

 

Look closely for the grizzly tracks and bite mark on the sign that he pulled up out of the ground. As a tracker my favorite skill to practice is “trailing” – following the tracks of animals. Sometimes we loose the trail and spend hours searching for it…

I would love to find out what these grubs are. I’ve been trying to pay more attention to insect sign and found these grubs infesting Rudbeckia spp. A couple weeks later I got to watch a downy woodpecker pecking at the seed heads, trying to get the mystery grubs out.

Here’s what it looked like after the downy got the grub out.

A mystery bone that still haunts me. I think it is a piece of bird vertebrae. It was found in a mountain lion scat so we would love to identify what animal it belongs to. Please let me know if you have ideas.

The next project I’m excited about is a bighorn sheep horn bow. Stay tuned for updates on my progress…

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!

Wildflowers, water shrew tracks, bugs infesting plants and more…

The famous grizzly, 399.

The amazing Grand Prismatic spring in Yellowstone National Park.

Water shrew tracks. Looks closely for five toes on all feet (rodents only have 4 toes on the front ((shrews are insectivores, not rodents))).

More tracks of the water shrew. Like a regular shrew but larger.

Bearberry honeysuckle.

This is a cherry leaf infected by a “finger gall” mite. Eriophyes cerasicrumena does this to black cherrys… not sure if it also does this to our local choke cherry.

Bison in front of the Tetons.

This is a sagebrush infected by the midge Asphondylia auripila.

Another picture of the sagebrush infected by Asphondylia auripila. They create these fuzzy strange growths. They turn brown like this after they are dead… when they are young they are a green fuzzy growth.

Beaver chew on a cottonwood branch that was about eye level. Must have been a deep snow drift here when the beaver was feeding.

A hiding yellow-bellied sapsucker. This bird drills shallow, uniform “sap-wells” in trees which hardens and ferments, attracting insects to feed on the fermented sap. The bird returns to eat those drunk insects.

Warbling Vireo in her nest.

Delphinium glaucum. Tea and alcohol extracts from the seeds have been used for many years to kill lice and cure scabies.

Beautiful view of Death Canyon and Phelps lake.

Giant trumpeter swan tracks. This is North America’s largest waterfowl weighing 20 pounds and they can eat their entire body weight in a day.

There are badger, wolf, bison and grizzly tracks in this photo. I’m sure there’s more in here too.

All that’s left of a 4 week old fawn killed by a mountain lion. Nothing for scale here but the hooves are about an inch long.

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.

 

Osage Bow Build-along

I finished a bow today – here are some pictures I took along the way.  Enjoy!

Here is the stave. Osage tends to be snakey and twisted so finding a straight line can be challenging. All that really matters is that the tips and handle are in line.

The next step is to scrape the back of the bow (the part facing away from you when shooting) down to one growth ring. The back of the bow stretches when you shoot it and if you carve through multiple growth rings it can split on that spot and the bow can explode.

At this point I took a several month hiatus to allow the wood to completely dry. Osage is awesome in that it darkens with time and sun exposure. Really old osage bows are a dark orange/brown color. Now I’ll scrape off the last bits of soft wood on the back of the bow.

Much better.

Having scraped at different times it gives the bow this cool patterning. Maybe it will work as camo when I’m out in the woods.

I use a glass jar to burnish the wood. This compresses the fibers, making it stronger and more resistant to scratches, dents and humidity.

Now comes the tillering process. The bow needs to bend evenly so that no weak spots form. As you can see the bow is very uneven to start with which made it a real challenge to tiller.

The area that looks like a hinge is actually much thicker than the other limb. I was hoping that as the bow is drawn farther it would look more even.

Much more even although still a little odd looking. A great trick for never over straining the wood – I put this whole set up on a scale and pulled the string down – never drawing it past 60 pounds. I would scrape and lighten up the bow and go another notch further down the tillering stick as the weight of the draw became lighter.

I’ll use a knife held at a right angle to scrape off the rasp marks and do the final tillering.

Now to clean up the handle.

Getting better, just needs oiling.

I don’t want the wood to absorb any moisture so I’ll rub bear fat on the entire bow and repeat this several times over the next few days and a couple times a year thereafter.

Much nicer.

Now I’ll make an arrow shelf out of some buckskin. Giving the arrow an exact spot to shoot off of every time improves accuracy.

Contact cement works well for this.

Now I’ll wrap the whole thing with a piece of buckskin.

Good enough for me.

Since I’ll be hunting with this bow I want it to shoot as quietly as possible. String silencers will help with this and beaver fur is perfect for it.  (Note: I didn’t trap this beaver – I had to buy a beaver pelt for work at the local mountain man festival so I got one for myself too!)

I’ll cut a couple narrow strips from the side of the pelt.

Creating a separation in the string. Putting on the silencers works best when the bow is strung – the tension helps it wrap tightly.

Sneak one end of the fur in there.

Then just wrap it around, being careful to pull back the fur as you wrap it so that it doesn’t get stuck under the wrapping.

I’ll do one more lower on the bow and it’ll be done!

The finished bow! I’m very happy with how it came out. It shoots fast and surprisingly quiet. The draw is about 65 pounds – a little heavier than I want so I’ll shoot it for a while and see if it comes down, then I’ll check the tiller and lighten it up if I need to. Thanks for reading!

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.

 

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.

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.

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.

More finds from the Grand Tetons

We’ve survived another couple weeks volunteering for the Teton Cougar Project.  I continue to be amazed at the endless views and abundant wildlife encounters.  Here are some of our latest discoveries.

Michelle spots a moose!

Here is a forest fire that we drove past. There have been a ton of little fires lately. None as big as the one in the Sierras right now but this area is definitely headed for a big one.

An assortment of scats all from M68 over 4 days feeding at a double kill site of a beaver and yearling mule deer. This was a big lesson for me to see how different the scats could look even though they are all from the same animal.

Here is some beaver fur that we found at the kill site. Since there is often hardly anything left from a cougar kill, it pushes us as naturalists to identify animals from their hair, teeth or just a couple bones.

Some type of small raptor track that I keep coming across. I thought they were cooper’s hawk tracks but it bothers me that I never see cooper’s hawks around here.

Giant wolf tracks in the mud. The wolf packs are doing very well in north western Wyoming, it seems. We come across their tracks all the time.

Fossilized Triceratops skull for sale in Jackson… crazy. I didn’t know you could buy these.

Natal den of F109. Natal meaning the place where her kittens were born. I wish I took a zoomed out picture to show how thick with downfall the entire hillside was.

Nice little cutthroat trout.

Osprey feeding on a fish. Wish I had a better camera with a far zooming lens.

Some nice long-tailed weasel tracks. Weasel tracks look to me like tiny dog tracks but when you look closely there are five toes on each foot.

Two mustelid (weasel family) scats on a rock. If I had to guess I would call the small one long-tailed weasel and the big one marten but hard to say for sure.

These giant crickets have been everywhere lately and I caught this one laying its eggs into the ground.

There is a fox somewhere in this picture, one of the black dots in the distance.

The Grand Tetons. They look much bigger in real life.

This is the unmistakeable foot print of a porcupine. No detail, toes or claws really, but nothing else makes this smooth oval shape full of basketball-like pebbles.

Beautiful red fox tracks in the mud. Small dog-like tracks but totally covered in fur and with tiny heel pads. People also look for the “cheveron” shape made by the heel pad on the front foot (the lower one).

Nice trail of a black bear after a rain.

Close up of the black bear tracks. These are both right feet. The one of top is the right hind. It looks just like the left track of a barefoot person.

Nice tracks of a jumping mouse and a frog.

Mystery tracks. I have no idea what these could be. I think they are some kind of reptile or amphibian but I haven’t found any that live in Wyoming that fit for these tracks. It walks like a salamander but has 5 toes on the front feet (salamanders have 4). Will ask around and see if anyone has ideas. *Update* These are water shrew tracks.  Like normal shrew tracks but much bigger.

Hornet nest dug into by a black bear.

View from our latest hike.