Susan and I attended Walnut Hill's 1-day lynx tracking program on the
20th, and then spent a few hours the next morning tracking elsewhere on
our own. We were fortunate to find lynx tracks both days.
This was in central Maine, near Moosehead Lake, in early succession
spruce/fir forest, where there was a lot of snowshoe hare and grouse
activity. Both days, I was struck by how intensively the lynx used a
very small area with a lot of hare activity: Lynx trails criss crossed
through the hare hangouts. This makes sense, since this cat is a hare
specialist.
(Maybe I don't yet have enough experience to make this generalization,
but it seems to me that bobcats don't have as strong a tendency to
concentrate their efforts in such a small area. They seem to do more
opportunistic wandering, which would make sense, given the more varied
diet of the generalist bobcat.)
Although we saw no clean, crisp lynx tracks, it is easy to determine
lynx even from a poor, partially blown out or snowed over trail. The
first two photos show the typical direct registering walk in deep snow.
Note the huge tracks, wide straddle, and bobcat-like step length. No
other animal fits that picture. A cougar can make tracks that large,
but the stride will be much longer than that of a lynx trail.
The third photo shows tracks of the lynx's favorite prey, the snowshoe
hare. In deep snow, this animal can splay its toes to produce huge,
snowshoe-like tracks, as shown in this picture. When the snowshoe hare
does not splay its toes, the tracks look just like over-sized cottontail
tracks.
In the 4th photo, you see a pattern of tracks which looks like that of a
lagomorph, and, at first glance, we assumed it was snowshoe hare. But
those tracks were actually produced by a lynx, which bounded several
times in succession as it ascended a hill (and then resumed its
alternating walk). Like its prey, the predator is adapted to deep snow
with long, powerful hind legs, and huge feet, and will occasionally use
those long, strong legs to bound in the same manner as its prey.
The last photo shows a weenie weasel whisking off with dragging prey.
Last week's light snowfall provided the perfect substrate for tracking at Chelmsford/Carlisle Cranberry Bog Reservation; 1st up was an otter trail emerging from a ridge of pine saplings; a daunting upland passage between wetlands. Likely a bold, roving male. I've only found a run at this ridge once since the early 90's. The tracks soon vanished in a tangle of cattails & thin ice.
Otters are said to "slide downhill most of the time", and uphill only
"occasionally", so those at Vaughn Hills last week must have taken great
pains to through off trackers.
In fact, on that particular day, they decided to do more uphill than
downhill sliding. One photo shows some uphill sliding - you can see that
the animal had to frequently propel itself forward with its feet in
order to keep moving. There was quite a bit of downhill loping, even on
steep slopes.
On the ice, the otter on the right chose to lope, while the one on the
left slid. (The narrow slides going perpendicular to the otters'
direction of travel were made by the slipping hooves of a deer as it
crossed the frozen stream.) Most of the slides I found that day were
short, and on flat ice.
There was a stretch of 9 consecutive steps of 2-2 bounding, the first
time I've seen an otter use that gait with virtually perfect registration.
One thing that has been fairly consistent, at least in my experience so
far, is the tight grouping of tracks. You can see that discrete
grouping in the photos above. Sometimes the tracks within a group did
spread out, but not often to the point where it was difficult to
distinguish separate groups (which does often happens in fisher trails).
Why did they do so much downhill loping? I don't know, but the tracks
are kind of small for otter, so maybe they were young ones playfully
goofing around, and/or maybe they had been eating well, and did not have
to worry about moving efficiently to conserve energy.
The tracks in the photo without a ruler measured about 2.5 inches in width.
One highlight of the trip was seeing a porcupine den (complete with
resident porcupine) in the root ball of a fallen tree right at the edge
of a wetland. One side of the root mass had a sheltered opening large
enough for a bear, if you were a bear who liked denning up in porcupine
scat!
David Brown has at least one more Quabbin trip planned for this year.
Visit http://www.dbwildlife.com for details.
Lars took these at Delaney two days ago. Raccoon comes from an Algonquian word meaning “he who scratches his hands.” In Europe it’s a “wash bear” (waschbär in German, vaskebjørn in Danish and Norwegian, tvättbjörn in Swedish and wasbeer in Dutch. The second photo reminds me of dinosaur tracks in Western MA.
