What’s going on out on the land?
Follow The Food
Knowing the plants who are in relationship with the animals we track can help us find the animals we want to learn about. They can point in the direction of where the animals are going or where they will be going. They can show us if we are in the right environment or if we need to keep looking.
This entry is pretty much a story of a recent afternoon spent tracking in the Lake of Bays region, just South West of Algonquin Park, where we spent a few hours following the food and then finding the animal.
Learning Tracking Lore
I have many things close to my heart, and I am lucky that through the “to know the land” project I get to explore most of them. Three magical threads which braid together very well are myth, tracking, and learning. I am always trying to write blog posts for myself as a way to practice doing the research of what I am seeing out on the trail. I get a sort of fixation going when I am writing, story telling, about what I saw while tracking and I need to learn more about it. Blogging is the impetus and excuse to be so focused on studying.
What is a Hemipenis?
Why would I write a blog post about another animals penis? I am so down with highlighting differing sexual norms which exist outside of normative considerations within the dominant heterocentric colonial culture. Looking at other ways that animals get down is pretty revealing and helps us remember that there really is no “one right way” that is more natural or good. Life finds many ways to express. And, it’s pretty interesting.
Ants, Oleic Acid, and Breakfast Cereal
I found a strange post on reddit, about Ants dropping off their dead at a couple of pieces of cereal that were placed in the colony. I had to understand why the Ants might have been doing this.
I ended up doing some research, and this is what I found.
A Closer Look At Rabbit Tracks
I have been trying to study Eastern Cottontail Rabbit (Sylvilagus floridanus) tracks with more intention for the past year. I have also wanted to write about something about some of the things I have been looking for specifically when I come across Rabbit tracks. Lately for me, it has been about the individual toes of the Rabbit tracks and their positions. The toe positions can tell us a lot about which of the feet we may be looking at. Is it a left front or a right front? If we look close, and know what to look for, the toes will tell us.
Eramosa River tracking journal, 2022.01.23
I left the house just before 8am so I could get out before too many people were out walking their Dogs. There ends up being a bit of a jumble in the trails when the Dogs come out and it’s just easier to spot everything without much distraction. I also feel a little weird sometimes, standing in the middle of a path, road or even the frozen river where everyone is walking by. If more folks stopped to ask about the tracks or even say hello it would feel less awkward, but usually they just stare, and then walk by cautiously while their Dog barks at me. Even the Dogs know there is something amiss about a person standing there noticing the world. I recount a bit of these feelings because it happened again this morning while I was checking a Grey Squirrel bounding trail along the road by my house.
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?
Mystery scat
Earlier this year, my partner and I were paddling along the Mahzenazing River, heading back in the direction of the park entrance. We had just spent our last night at Point Grondine where we'd seen two Black Bears, three big ass Beavers, and had a late night encounter with either a Bobcat or Lynx - it was too dark to tell.
We were paddling back when my partner had to pull the canoe over so she could pee. While I waited in the canoe I noticed there was some scat on a rock nearby. This is where the mystery began…
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.
In Search of Fisher Tracks, Tracking Journal, 2022.01.11
I was out on the ice real close to where I’d fallen through last year, looking for signs of a possible Fiser (Pekania pennanti) that my friend had said she may have seen a couple of hours before. She had told me about the possible Fisher earlier in the day when were were skating on the frozen river closer to my house. As soon as I was done with the skates, I put on my big boots and went upstream in search of this maybe Mustelid.
Tracking Journal, 2021.12.28
It was really windy at the top of the hill. I was really grateful that I had the forsight to bring my jacket, even if I had that thought that it was supposed to warm up a little over the day. For now it was early, it was windy and I was cold. Opening with my backpack to pull out my coat while trying to not ruin the White-footed Deer Mouse trail in front of me was a challenge, but once the coat was on, my attention was on the trail.
Shrew, Mouse, and Vole Trails
I still get confused between Shrew, Mouse and Vole trails. A couple of mornings ago, when we got a fresh coat of snow, I could look down and see some pretty clear trails running perpendicular to the path I was walking on. They were small, had tracks of feet, and some showed tail drags. Some were hoping, some walking. While I looked at them I realized that I wasn’t 100% on which species or group of species they belonged to.
In light of this conundrum, I thought it would be worthwhile to put a little post together to help me better learn what to look for. Here goes.
Crayfish Gastroliths
I can’t remember when, but a couple of years ago, I think it was a co-op student at work, or maybe a new instructor, come over and ask me what some little thing was that they had found. It was small, flat yet round and slightly depressed on one side, like a danish or a donut whose hole didn’t make it all the way through. I examined it and took a couple of photos, and told them what I thought. “Probably a seed of some kind”, I said, but I never did figure out what fruit that seed came from. Turns out it wasn’t a seed after all but something a little bit stranger.
Boyne Valley Tracking Journal, 11.12.2021
Once the two of our crew had returned from bringing a car to the next road over, we began our journey through the Boyne Valley, North of Orangeville. I had been there before. The last time was 2019 with my second year of the apprenticeship. It was a great place for trailing White Tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and was the first place I had ever seen Northern River Otter (Lontra canadensis) tracks. I was stoked to be back.
Tracking Journal 2021.11.27
We had just finished part of our climb up Old Baldy, maybe a quarter of the way to the top, just finished checking out some pretty clear mouse tracks, bounding across our trail when we all sort of slowed and stopped. We knew something was a little different about the tracks, but it took a second to register. There were pretty clear, though not as crisp as some of the others we had seen. Perhaps that may have indicated some sense of age… Perhaps the air was cooler when the animal came through and the snow was a little more powdery? Perhaps the animal had come through during the evening the day before or maybe during night?
Differentiating between Cepaea nemoralis and Cepaea hortensis
Snails have captured my attention lately and I am getting more and more curious as time goes on.
It isn’t like my curiosity has suddenly been triggered, but rather, it has grown over the past year or so. This curiosity and interest tends to fall back to one or two specific species which I encounter most often. They are the common species in my area of Southern Ontario in the Cepaea genus, Cepaea hortensis and Cepaea nemoralis. But how do you tell them apart?
There is one way to know, but it can be a bit tricky.
Scapulae pt. 1
Detailing the scapulae I find, where I find them, and who they likely belonged to. I hope to turn this archive into a zine someday, and will make an effort to return to post more images or perhaps just make new posts as I go.
The Season of Fungi pt. 3
The last couple of entries on Fungi were mostly about Mushrooms in their conventional forms. I wanted to focus on some cool fungi which don’t take on the shapes many of us are familiar with, but vary in presentation and form. Here are some brief introductions to three which have caught my eye in the past year.
Tracking Journal 2021.10.09 pt. 2
After most folks left, the rest of us sat down for a quick lunch. There was 4 of us left. A big group can find a lot, but a small group can go at a different kind of pace, both physically and mentally. It is nice to have had the chance to have the big crew in the morning, and a smaller group for the afternoon.
I can’t quite recall who spotted the next mystery first, but it was a big unknown to me. A strange something I had never seen before or experienced before, and I have walked this trail hundreds of times. This special little treasure was handed to me and my brain clicked to wonder and awe. What the hell was it?
The Season of Fungi pt. 2
Since it is the peak season for finding fungi, I had enough photos and enough interest that I decided to make another post detailing some of the species I have been finding. I also wanted to note that there have been dozens of species which I cannot identify, which have totally stumped me. In no way am I a master mycologist or do I know a lot about fungi, but instead these posts are just my process of learning, and hopefully retaining the information.
So here we go.