What’s going on out on the land?
The Spring Birds of Dunby Rd
For our first day of the 2023-2024 Earthtracks Wildlife Tracking Apprenticeship we all gathered at Dunby rd to explore the tracks and sign of wildlife along, and adjacent to, the Bruce Trail. While we encountered much more than birds, I wanted to write a bit of a report back on some of the sign of the birds along the trail as I am trying to focus on learning more about bird track and sign this year. This includes feathers, nests, eggs, scat, pellets, dust baths, kill sites, tracks, feeding sign, etc., etc. For this outing it all started with song.
Corvid Tracks at Bishop Mac
I ended up driving across town this morning to visit a spot where I’ve found Osprey nests, plenty of White-tailed Deer trails as well as tons of Coyote scat and trails in hopes of trailing some animals. While I did backtrack, and later fore track a deer for a good portion of my morning, the most interesting find were the corvid tracks I found in the parking lot as soon as I stepped out of the car.
Along came a skull…
On Saturday October 29th, two days before the episode on my inappropriate appropriation of a Great Horned Owl skull aired, I drove to Mono Tract, North of Orangeville here in Ontario to pick up my partner from a day of learning about and harvesting roots from various species. I wasn’t there while they were doing this. Instead I was off at the Boyne Valley, still a little further North, trailing White-tailed Deer and looking for fungi, but when I arrived at the forest I was met with excitement about a skull.
As I came in, my friend handed me a small brown bag with a excited story about how they found a skull. I asked a couple of clarifying questions to seek out some basic answers, but things didn’t seem certain. I heard that there were talons, feathers, and some bones remaining, that the remains seemed maybe a couple weeks old, but aside from some guesses there was i.d. on whose skull it was and how it got there.
A Short Note On Sapsucker Ecologies
About 1o minutes North of Orangeville, along the fence line of Bruce Trail at Dunby rd, there are a couple of American Mountain Ash trees. These trees are related to the other Sorbus species from around the world, but this one is native to the area. Shorter trees, compound leaves, bright red fruit all help to identify these trees in the warmer months. But in the Winter and early Spring when the leaves and fruit have fallen, the bark becomes a great focal point for local ecologies.
The rows of small holes of various age and sizes freckle the bark like oversized lenticels. It kind of looks like a canker or fungal infection, but it’s not. It is actually the work of a meticulous and skilled member of the Picidae family; the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, a bird which I have not seen that often, but I have come across their sign quite a bit.
Ruffed Grouse Questions from 2022.01.15
Ruffed Grouse were all around us in the forest when we arrived. Many were heard, some were seen, but even more so, their tracks littered the forest floor. There were these sunken oval impressions generally in the shape of a Grouse body pressed into the snow. We put our hands in despite the -20°C temperatures and felt the bottom the impressions. There was a hard icy crust in some of them, but not in others. There was scat in a couple, but not all. All had long chains of tracks emerging from them, but none had discernable tracks leading to them. What was going on?
What happened to this Gull?
I was walking up the frozen river with some kids in tow. We’d been out for a few hours tracking when we were on the last stretch and one of the kids pointed to a small mound on the ice. “Look a Penguin!” I think she’d meant it as a joke, but I took note and walked towards the mound. I had walked along this frozen river the day before and hadn’t noticed a mound on the middle of the river bulging out of the ice. I couldn’t tell what it was at first, but my guess was that a log or branch had broken through somehow. As I got close, I learned it was nothing of the sort.
White Fragility and Fake Blues in a Blue Jay Feather
Lighter or whiter parts of feathers break down more readily. One of the reasons is that darker feathers contain different pigments. The pigments make them stronger and more resilient in the face of harsher conditions. Additionally, white and blue aren’t real colours at all but structural colours created by the structure of the feather itself. Check it out.
Predated Mallard nest
Returned to a Mallard nest only to find that someone had come along and eaten the eggs. Thus began the search for clues to sort out who was the predator? An old fashioned whodunnit, tracker style.
Osprey and headless fish at Bishop Mac
I went out to Bishop Mac with my pal Tamara to practice trailing Deer and Coyotes but when we got there we watched an adult Osprey fly in with a Goldfish and land atop a nest. We watched as the adult leaned over the brim and two small Osprey heads emerged. Almost as soon as the Osprey had arrived they took off again with the Goldfish still in their talons. We both thought this was strange…
Rock Dove Kill site?
I was on my morning walk along the riverside when up the path I came across a large pile of feathers.
I love how a simple walk in the morning, just to get out of the house can turn into a chance to really look at the details of a killsite and study the gaits of the possible predators, and look at the structure of a feather. What amazing teachers these wild neighbours are.
Towards a better understanding of Turkey scat
Towards understanding Turkey scat. Looking at physiological differences in males and females which influcence the shape and structure of their scat. Why wonder about scat? Well… TRACKING!
Tracking Cooper’s Hawks along the Etobicoke Creek
I was exploring the northwestern end of the Etobicoke Creek trail on July 14th when I made my way into an Eastern White Pine plantation edging a creekside forest on the other side of the trail I was on. Near the opening of the trail I found a Robin carcass missing the head.