The squirrel dug in the snow for a second, stuck its nose in the resulting divot, dug some more, sat up, put something in its mouth, and chewed. Then it did the whole thing again, all in fast motion. In the distant woods, I saw a movement; a second later I saw another movement, but closer now, and then a flash of red-orange. The fox emerged from the woods, low to the ground, its body taut and fluid at the same time, headed for the squirrel like an airplane on the runway. The squirrel’s tail furled and unfurled, and instantly its body became alert. The squirrel swiveled and took off, the fox in pursuit.
Rabbit tracks in fresh snow, next to a glove to show scale. (Photo by Margaret Kusner)
By the time I got outside with my coat, gloves, hat, phone in hand, ready to study all the fresh marks, or signs, on the driveway, which was lightly coated from the previous late afternoon’s snowburst, all the actors were hiding somewhere in the wings.
What an opportunity to put into practice what I had learned the day before from tracker-naturalist David Brown in a talk, “Learn to Track Wildlife in Winter,” at Wolbach Farm in Sudbury, the Sudbury Valley Trustees’ headquarters.
During Brown’s lecture and PowerPoint presentation, I learned to look for either five or four toes, claw marks or none. I heard about walk patterns: whether the animal’s back feet step into its forefeet prints, or whether the prints of its back feet are in front of its forefeet. I learned to look for the width of the line of prints called the straddle and the direction the tracks were going. The size of the print can be indicative of the animal’s species, but not always.
So here I was on Sunday morning, having just witnessed two known animals in an intensely physical contest, on a new slate of snow. However, the fox and the squirrel weren’t the only animals who were out and about, and all the tracks of these other animals were also imprinted in the snow. The signs were as confusing to me as a jumble of letters and numbers are to a young child.
A bobcat print in snow. (Photo courtesy Kimi Smith, USFWS)
The squirrel’s tiny five-toed hind footprints were intermingled with its even smaller four-toed front footprints and with those of a lot of other squirrels and animals as they traveled around.
When I looked away from the place of the struggle, I saw a straight line of roundish paw prints going down the driveway. Because the identifying four toes and claw marks of a fox were interspersed with bits of gravel in the driveway, I wasn’t positive about the identification. However, the prints were about 2½ inches, the size of a fox print. The pattern of walking was in a straight line, like that of a fox, but also like that of some other animals. However, I had actually seen a fox in the area.
Like the child sounding out individual letters, I began to analyze parts of the whole. I saw a circular area, about the size of a small pizza, of squirrel prints pointed in all directions, as though the animal had stomped around in the small area. I imagined it standing its ground to fight the fox, whose oval prints, not many, were on the outside of the circle of squirrel prints. Elongated dark areas appeared as though the snow had been brushed away, maybe by the magnificent tails of the combatants in their struggle. There was no blood or fur.
I’d long forgotten what it’s like to learn to read, not just sounding out the letters and words, but putting it all together to understand action and scenes, and then to interpret meaning. And so it is with tracking. I have found individual prints that clearly show the number of toes, with or without claws, including the shape of the foot pad. But to find a number of clear and continuous prints that show gait, straddle, and speed is another challenge. This is the information that helps you to positively identify the animal. A higher level of tracking is interpretation: reading the environment in order to understand what is happening.
