Getting to Know Porcupines

I’ve been thinking about porcupines. There are porcupines in central New York where I live, but they’re not common, so in that region (unlike in the Adirondacks) I don’t often encounter their tracks. But this spring we had some late April snowfalls, and on two different occasions I was surprised and excited to find porcupine trails. In the photo below (direction of travel from right to left) you can see the left front and left rear tracks. The hind track (on the left) shows the flattened sole area of the foot nicely, with the marks of the claws to its left. The smaller front print lies to the right but isn’t as clear because the thin snow fractured in the sole area and three of the four claw marks were covered by the hind print.

Those meager April snowfalls weren’t ideal for recording clear tracks, so I’m including a more revealing photo of porcupine tracks that I took a few years ago in the Adirondacks. There was a light skiff of snow on a dark, icy base, and the soles and claws can be seen clearly. Again, the tracks are left front and hind, and the direction of travel is toward the upper left. In the rear print (on the right) the sole is larger but the claws are shorter than in the front print (on the left). If you look carefully at the front track you can see the faint imprints of the front toes (which usually don’t show up at all) just behind the dark holes made by the claws. And those streaks that run toward the upper left from the front claw impressions are drag marks made by the claws as they came forward when the foot was lifted.

So what if there’s no snow? Following trails may not be an option, but porcupines leave plenty of other evidence of their presence. Their winter diet includes the inner bark of trees, both conifers and hardwoods, and the buds and leaves of conifers. Scenes like the one pictured below (on yellow birch) show how efficient a porcupine can be at removing the cambium tissues of living trees. And this kind of evidence lasts long after the actual feeding was done. Small debarked patches high in hardwoods (but not conifers) could also be due to squirrels, which may turn to bark feeding when other food is scarce. However, the amount of exposed wood in the photo below is more than a squirrel would be able to achieve.

To get at tree buds or leaves a porcupine climbs high into a tree (where the most vigorous branches are), bites off twigs, eats the buds or leaves, and then drops the twigs. The photo below shows a scattering of nip twigs which accumulated on the ground as a porky fed in the hemlock tree above. When porcupines feed on the swelling buds of sugar maples in early spring, or on acorns in late summer, they harvest and discard the twigs in a similar manner.

But twigs and branches can fall with no help from porcupines, so how do we know whether a porky was the culprit? The first clue is the relatively even sizes of nip twigs (mostly 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 feet), compared with the wide range of sizes when wind or ice damage is the cause. Another clue is the appearance of the separation site. Randomly broken branches and twigs have ragged, irregular ends. The photo below shows the clean, angled cut found on a red oak twig that was nipped by a porcupine.

To get to feeding spots high in the canopy a porcupine must climb trees, and on trees with light bark, like the aspen in the photo below, climbing marks are very visible. Aspens are sought out by porcupines in spring when the leaves are young and easily digested, and preferred trees are often visited several years in succession. Bears also climb trees to feast on young leaves, nuts, and fruits, but the spacing between porcupine claw marks, between 1/4 and 3/4 of an inch, is much closer than the spacing in climbing marks left by bears.

Porcupine dens are another unmistakable sign. Unlike many other animals, porcupines defecate in their sleeping areas, and when scat piles up they simply plow through it or push it out of the way. The trunk of the sugar maple in the photo below had a hollow space which served as a porcupine den, and the waterfall of scat which fell down from it is evidence of an extended period of occupancy. Porcupine scats are cylindrical to kidney-shaped, and they can also be found among the nip twigs dropped from favored feeding trees.

In spite of their prickly defense, porcupines are preyed upon by most medium-sized carnivores. I found the coyote scat in the next photo last winter, earlier but in the same general area where I found the nip twigs and the tracks in the April snow. The coyote could have been responsible for the porky’s death, but it’s also possible that the initial killer was a fisher, and that the coyote scavenged the carcass later. The quantity of quill fragments is surprising and makes me wonder whether any quills entered the coyote’s body.

By now porcupines have left the mature forests and moved to more mixed habitats where they can find the growing herbaceous shoots and leaves, cattails and other wetland plants, roots, tubers, and fruits that make up their spring and summer diet. There are lots of other animals which consume the same plants, so unless you actually see a porcupine having a meal it’s hard to recognize the signs of summer feeding. But if you’re alert you may find long-lasting evidence of their cold weather activities.