red fox – Linda J. Spielman

What Do Claw Marks Tell Us?

Claws, like hair and feathers, are made up of proteins called keratins and are characteristic of mammals, reptiles, and birds. In mammals claws evolved into a variety of forms, including fingernails and hooves, but it’s the hard, tapered appendages we consider true claws that are the focus of this post. The marks they make in tracks can tell us a lot about the lifestyles and behaviors of their owners.

The gray squirrel right and left front tracks in the photo below (direction of travel toward the left) show conspicuous claw marks. The tiny pricks made by the claws tell us they’re quite sharp, as we would expect in an acrobatic climber like a squirrel. Behind each claw mark is a toe impression, and behind the toes there is a tight group of middle pads. Two heel pads lie at the back end of the track. The combination of sharp claws and protruding toe, middle, and heel pads is what gives the gray squirrel its excellent climbing ability.

There’s another interesting feature in these prints: on the inner side of each set of heel pads there’s an impression of the vestigial fifth toe, something not often seen.

Porcupines, although not as graceful as squirrels, are also good climbers, and their feet are equipped with impressive claws. The photo below shows three sets of front and rear porcupine tracks, all heading toward the upper left. At the lower right you see a left rear track with a left front track above and to the left of it. Almost directly above those there’s a right rear print with a right front print above it. At the upper left there’s another pair of left front and rear prints. In each set the hind track is the larger of the two. The spaces between the claw marks and the oblong sole areas appear at first glance to be unoccupied– porcupine toes frequently don’t register in tracks. But if you look closely you can see faint toe impressions in the front tracks. You’ll notice that the claws of the front feet make marks a little farther forward compared to those of the rear tracks.

Fishers are also good climbers, so it’s not surprising that their tracks show the marks of sharp claws. The next photo shows the left front print of a fisher, oriented toward the left, with narrow claw gouges at the tips of the toes. But fishers don’t just use their claws for climbing–these animals are predators, and their sharp claws are essential for catching and subduing prey. The five toes, each tipped with a claw, make a lopsided crescent, and the middle pad and heel area make up the rest of the print.

Claws also come in handy for digging. Striped skunk tracks, like the left front print shown below, have prominent claw marks which extend well ahead of the toes. The claw impressions are more robust the ones in the first photo–not very good for climbing but hefty enough to make good digging tools.

The presence or absence of claw marks is sometimes considered diagnostic for track identification, but, like many aspects of tracking it’s not an absolute. The next photo shows front (lower left) and rear (upper right) prints of a gray fox, direction of travel from right to left. Gray foxes have semi-retractable claws, and prints without any claw marks, like the ones below, are common. The same goes for bobcats and house cats, which have retractable claws.

But if a gray fox needs extra grip it can extend its claws, making tracks that look like the ones in the next photo. The larger front track is on the right and the smaller hind track is on the left, and the direction of travel is toward the top. By extending its claws the animal was able to gain more purchase in the soft mud. The marks vary in thickness because of the varying depth of the tracks and movement of the toes, but the rear track shows slender grooves which are consistent with claws that are very sharp. Although not as arboreal as squirrels and fishers, gray foxes are good climbers. Their sharp claws assist not only in climbing but also in capturing prey. Claw marks are sometimes seen in feline tracks under similar conditions.

Animals with retractable and semi-retractable claws are able to draw their claws completely or partially inside their toes. But all animals, even those with robust claws, can control their position by flexing or extending the toes. The front track in the next photo (made by a coyote walking toward the left) shows beautiful impressions of the toes and the middle pad, but no claw marks.

A coyote moving at a side trot toward the right made the front (upper left) and hind (lower right) tracks in the photo below. Claw marks lie ahead of all four toes of the front track, and ahead of the leading toes of the hind track. The depths of the tracks made at the walk and at the trot are similar, but the toes were flexed enough at the faster gait to make most of the claws dig into the sand.

Partial sets of claw marks often occur in wild canines. The coyote front (left) and hind (right) prints (direction of travel toward the left) in the next photo show tiny pricks ahead of the leading toes, indicating that just the tips of the two leading claws in each print touched down.

Dog tracks, like the front print (direction of travel toward the right) shown below, are more likely to have blunt, robust claw marks that routinely show in tracks, even when walking or at rest. In the photo the claw marks have rounded leading edges due to their wider tips. In addition to the blunt claw marks, the more rounded overall shape and the outward angles of the inner and outer toes are indicators of domestic dog rather than coyote or fox.

To further drive home this point, contrast the dog print above with the red fox front track (heading toward the right) in the next photo. The red fox claw marks are slender and pointed, and they’re oriented straight ahead–or even slightly inward on the leading toes. The claw marks of the inner and outer toes are tucked tightly against the sides of the leading toes. It would be rare for a dog track to show this kind of compactness in soft mud.

There’s a explanation for the differences between the claws of dogs and wild canines. Coyotes and foxes spend their lives on the move, so their claws are constantly shortened and shaped natural abrasion. Dogs spend more time resting and less time travelling over the landscape, so their claws are not naturally worn down and must be trimmed manually. Consequently, the claws of dogs are usually longer and blunter than the claws of coyotes and foxes. Similarly, the feet of wild canines have excellent muscle tone, and this creates tracks that are tight and compact. The less fit feet of dogs spread out more and leave tracks in which the toes and claws often angle outward.

Cottontail rabbits and snowshoe hares have thick fur on the bottoms of their feet, so claw marks don’t usually show in tracks. In the photo of snowshoe hare tracks below, right and left hind tracks (oriented to the right) take up the center, a smaller left front track heading toward the left lies on the left, and part of a left hind track, also heading toward the left, can be seen at the upper right. The fur thins out somewhat in the summer, but even in July when these tracks were photographed, it was thick enough to muffle the claw marks in the rear tracks. They do show just a little at the tips of the toes in the front track.

But rabbit and hare claws are surprisingly sharp. Rabbits defend themselves with strong kicks, and the claws can inflict real damage. Claws also help the animals to grip the ground in the weaving and dodging escape maneuvers that help them evade predators. In the next photo you see two rear prints made by a leaping cottontail rabbit. The claws dug in deeply to give the rabbit a powerful take-off.

Why claw marks appear the way they do, why they’re present or missing, how they’re used by different animals–these are all questions that deserve our attention. Every track we find presents opportunities to explore this topic further.

When Animals Break the Rules

Bobcats walk in direct register. Deer walk in indirect register. Red foxes have a bar in the middle pad of the front foot but not in the rear foot. Fishers move at a lope or bound. Cats have four toes. These and other statements are the received wisdom of the tracking literature. But are they always true? As we’ll see in the following paragraphs, there are exceptions to even these seeming inviolable maxims.

Let’s start with walking deer. They do indeed place their feet in indirect register most of the time. The photo below shows tracks made by a deer walking in indirect register toward the upper right. At the lower left you see a left rear print partly superimposed on the left front print. Roughly in the center of the photo there’s a right front track with a right rear track partly on top but a little behind. At the upper right the left rear track sits a little behind and slightly to the inside of the left front track. The zig-zag pattern is the signature of the walk, and each set of impressions is made up of the front and rear prints from the same side. It’s the partial superimposition of the two prints that makes it an indirect register walk.

Direct registration occurs when the rear print is perfectly superimposed on the front print. As the next photo (the trail of a white-tail deer walking from right to left) shows, this does occur, especially in younger deer.

As this close-up (from a different trail from the one shown above) shows, direct registration makes it hard to tell if the track was made by two feet or just one. Among all the deer trails you see, there are bound to be a few that show direct registration.

Bobcats are said to walk in direct register, but again this is not an absolute. The bobcat trail in the photo below (direction of travel from left to right) is in very obvious indirect register. The zig-zag pattern indicates the walk (and as a side note, you can see how much narrower it is than the zig-zag of the walking deer). In each set of two prints the hind print falls partially but not perfectly on the front print.

In case you have some doubts, a close-up from a different part of the same trail will convince you that this is indeed a bobcat trail.

Was the bobcat distracted? Or tired? We’ll never know. Later in the same trail the animal switched to an overstep walk, a gait that’s often seen in bobcats, so its overall behavior didn’t throw up any red flags.

The next photo shows a direct register trail made by a bobcat walking toward the upper left. In each impression you see what appears to be a single track, but is actually two tracks, the rear print superimposed on the front print. And here’s another interesting aside: The concave hollows around the tracks are not connected to registration, but were instead made by the thick fur covering and surrounding the bobcat’s feet. They’re known as hair halos.

Staying with felines for the moment let’s look at toes, which are supposed to be four in number (counting those which normally touch down) in both wild felines and domestic cats. In the next photo you see some tracks which are clearly feline, but don’t fit the four-toed paradigm. My friend Ben Altman has two house cats, both of which have feet with more than the standard four toes. This is called polydactyly and it’s caused by genetic mutations. It’s not uncommon in domestic cats but is rare in wild felines.

We’re told that fishers prefer to move at a lope or a bound but this, too, is not always the case. In the next photo you see a fisher trail going from lower left to upper right and a red fox trail moving from bottom to top. The fox is travelling at a lope, a gait similar to the habitual gait of a fisher. But what’s the fisher doing? Definitely not the typical lope or bound. Because the front tracks of the fisher are larger than the hind tracks we can work out what the gait is. At the very lower left in the fisher trail there’s a right rear print, and the sequence of the next eight tracks (up until the pattern changes at the upper right), is: right front, left front, right rear, left rear, right front, left front, right rear, left rear. This extended pattern shows that the fisher was speeding along at a flat-out gallop. Fishers don’t often do this, but they obviously can. Something alarming must have pushed the animal into unusual speed.

One of the absolute statements we often hear has to do with red fox tracks. The going wisdom is that there’s a bar or crescent shaped depression in the middle pad of the front track, but not in the rear track. A ridge of horny skin that protrudes through the hairy covering of the pad is the source of the bar, and it’s supposed to be absent from the middle pad of the hind foot. Here’s what we’re accustomed to observing–notice the bar in the front middle pad (on the left) and the absence of the bar in the rear middle pad (on the right).

But on rare occasions we see red fox tracks with a bar in the middle pad of both the front and rear prints. Here’s one example. The front track is at the lower right and the rear track is at the upper left.

Just so you don’t think this is a one-off, here’s another example. The front print is in the upper right and the rear print, with a reduced but visible bar, is at the lower left. (The carboard square in the upper left is one inch on a side.)

Raccoon trails are a common find, and the next photo shows the way a raccoon pace-walking trail is supposed to look. What we expect to see is sets of two prints, each set a front from one side and a rear from the other side. In the photo the direction of travel is from lower left to upper right, and the hind prints are larger than the front prints. Starting at the lower left, the first set is left front with right rear, the second is right front with left rear, the third is left front with right rear, and the last is right front with left rear.

The raccoon which made the trail in the next photo (direction of travel lower left to upper right) appears to be in serious violation of the rules of tracking. Instead of alternating front and rear tracks there are two sets with left rear and right front, then two sets with left front and right rear, and again two sets with left rear and right front. Can a raccoon even do that?

The answer is, no, a raccoon can’t do that. But two raccoons, one following close behind the other, can do that. It you focus on every other set of two you’ll see a normal raccoon pace-walk trail. So what appeared to be an impossible situation turns out to be a perfectly normal, albeit unusual, event.

We need to learn what’s most common in animal tracks and trails, but we also need to think out of the box when faced with uncommon track and trail patterns. Whether it’s two animals conspiring to create a confusing trail, or one animal with an unusual track or behavior, nature can always throw up something we’ve never seen before. It may take days, weeks, or even months to understand what we saw, but that’s part of the excitement of tracking. It’s why we keep coming back for more.

Bringing Home Dinner

When we come upon a site where a predator killed a prey animal, we’re able to see in detail the interaction between hunter and hunted. But finding such a site is a rare. It’s more common to find the trail of a successful hunter carrying its prey, and this also makes for fascinating study. To understand such a trail we must pick out the crucial evidence from the other disturbances that occur in animal trails. Let’s start with a fairly straightforward example.

In the photo below you see a trail made by a fisher loping from left to right. There are three typical fisher track groups, each group a place where the fisher landed and then took off. Above each track group you can see a curving gouge in the snow made by something the fisher was carrying. But what exactly was being carried? Could it have been a stick? Not likely, based on the length of the trail involved (it went on for quite a distance) and the consistency of the patterns. There’s also the fact that the marks are curved, suggesting that the item being carried was swinging slightly. (If you visit a place where dogs have been playing with sticks you’ll see how different it looks when a stick is being carried.) The predator would have been gripping the body of its prize, and something that extended to the side would have touched the snow at each landing. The curving marks are actually made up of two parallel lines, and these lines seem too widely separated to be claw marks from a dangling foot. Their size and positioning do seem about right for the tips of wing feathers, suggesting it was a bird. If it was a bird it couldn’t have been large, since it only touched the snow at the low points in the fisher’s bounding gait. A turkey would be much too big, and even a grouse would probably have left more traces in the snow. Perhaps it was something the size of a blue jay or a junco.

A short-tailed weasel bounding from upper left to lower right made the trail in the next photo. The trail consists of paired track impressions, a common pattern for small mustelids. To the left of each set of weasel prints there’s a thin, slightly curved line in the snow. There’s also a shorter and wider mark just ahead of the weasel tracks. The thin lines are the right size for a tail, and the wider depressions could have been a foot. Given the small size of a short-tailed weasel, it’s likely that the predator was carrying something equally small. A white-footed mouse seems unlikely, because its long tail would have made a longer stroke in the snow. My guess is either a meadow vole or a woodland vole.

The next photo shows the tracks of a fisher loping from right to left, and just below the tracks you see a wide groove. Below that groove you can see several lighter lines. These finer marks aren’t completely parallel with the deeper groove, so the deep groove and the fine lines must have come from separate body parts. The wider groove seems too deep and even to be something as light as a feather–was it a tail or perhaps a thickly furred foot? The finer lines could be the marks of dragging claws. This example is less clear than the two preceding ones, but I’m inclined to think the prey item was a mammal, perhaps a rabbit.

Now to some examples of marks that we often find in animal trails that don’t indicate dragging parts of a prey animal. In the next photo you see the trail of a long-tailed weasel bounding from bottom to top. There are grooves behind each landing spot, but they weren’t made by something being carried; the marks were made by the animal’s tail. Each time the weasel took off for the next bound its body sank into the snow, and the tail left a tapered groove. Tail marks are always connected to body impressions rather than being off to the side of the tracks as they are in the three preceding photos.

Here’s another example of potentially confusing disturbances that are not indicative of something being carried. The next photo shows the trail of a fisher walking from the lower right to the upper left. The fisher dragged the tips of its feet through the snow with each step. Notice that the drag marks are within the trail rather than to the side, and each drag mark extends completely or partially between two tracks.

Drag marks aren’t always as obvious as the ones shown above. In the next photo you see the trail of a coyote walking from top to bottom. In the lowest part of the photo there’s a thin line that was made by a single claw. There are wider gouges above that made by the rounded tips of the feet. But again the grooves lie within the trail width and always connect to tracks.

In the next photo we see what at first glance looks like the trail of some kind of otherworldly creature. It’s actually several coyote trails moving from left to right on a frozen waterway. To sort this out we need to focus in on the trail of each individual animal. The central part of the sequence draws our eye first: There’s an wavy drag mark that seems connected with the series of tracks in the center. If we look at just those tracks we see that they were made by a walking coyote. The drag mark seems to touch the prints, but toward the right it swings to the side and misses the tracks. This tells us that it’s not a foot drag but something that’s being carried. Above the central area there’s a similar string of tracks, and if we concentrate on those we see that they were made by another walking coyote. A third track sequence which lies below was made by yet another walking coyote. The outer trails are close to, but not on top of, the central trail, so there must have been two animals following close behind the one with the food item.

This scenario is supported by the next photo, which was taken in a place where the coyotes slowed down to go through a culvert. The tracks are closer together and the drag mark is more irregular. The drag mark touches one coyote print but misses the others, so it wasn’t made by the coyote’s feet. It’s definitely evidence of something being carried.

As to what was being carried, we can say it was a medium-sized object with a blunt projecting part and enough weight to make a deep groove in the snow. Claws would be thinner, an animal’s nose would be wider, an ear would be softer, and a tail would be fluffier and lighter. That would seem to eliminate all the medium-sized, winter-active animals in our region. But there’s another possibility: the detached body part of a deer with a protruding bone. The area where I found these tracks is a popular spot for hunters, and in mid-December, when I took the photos, coyotes would still have been scavenging on deer carcasses.

I’ll never know for sure, but a deer part is a reasonable conjecture, and conjecture is often what we’re left with when we attempt to understand the trail of a predators carrying dinner. Even without definite conclusions, the process of sorting out the details can be satisfying in itself.

Zig-Zags

In past posts I’ve used the term zig-zag to describe certain track patterns. In this article I’d like to delve more deeply into how zig-zags arise and what they can tell us about the animals that make them. When we humans walk in a relaxed, natural manner we place our feet in a zig-zag pattern because each foot falls to its own side of the line made by our moving center of gravity, the center line of the trail. It’s easy to verify this: Just walk naturally in snow or mud or on a dry surface with wet feet and then look at your tracks. The same logic applies to birds, so we often see patterns like the one in the next photo, made by a turkey walking from left to right. Each print angles inward, which helps to distinguish right from left. The sequence, starting at the left, is right, left, right, left, right.

Two legged zig-zags are pretty straightforward, but four-footed animals also create zig-zags, and it’s not as easy to understand how a four-footed animal can do that. Watching animals helps, but it’s hard to follow foot placement when animals are moving in real time. Fortunately for us twenty-first century trackers, there’s a tool that can bridge the gap–the internet. So let’s take a look at a video of a horse. If you click on this link: Bing Videos, then click on horses walking youtube and start the video, you’ll see a horse walking in slow motion. Notice that as each front foot leaves the ground the rear foot on the same side comes down in the spot just vacated by the front foot. The video doesn’t show the pattern on the ground, but it’s easy to see how the horse leaves a series of double impressions, each one a front track overlaid by a rear track. And since the feet on each side fall to their own side of the center line, the overall pattern is a zig-zag. The trail in the next photo, made by a deer walking from bottom to top, is a good example of a zig-zag made by a four-footed animal.

But all zig-zags aren’t the same. The physical characteristics of animals vary, and this affects the kinds of patterns they leave when they walk. There are also different types of walks, with differing relative placement of the front and rear tracks. In the photo above the walk is an almost perfect direct register gait, meaning that the rear feet fell almost exactly on top of the corresponding front tracks. The next photo shows tracks made by a woodchuck walking from lower left to upper right (and just below the second impression, tracks of a squirrel bounding toward the bottom). The trail is more variable but the tracks are mostly in indirect register, meaning that the rear tracks fell partly but not completely on top of the corresponding front tracks. Starting at the lower left the track sequence for the woodchuck is: right rear on right front, left rear on left front, right rear, right front, left rear on left front. Even in this more irregular trail the zig-zag is apparent.

The width of the zig-zag, known among trackers as trail width, varies from one species of animal to another. To measure trail width, find a relatively straight part of the trail and imagine or draw out two parallel straight lines that just touch the outsides of the alternate sets of tracks. Then measure the perpendicular distance between the lines. This is diagrammed in the next photo of the indirect register track pattern made by a walking opossum heading toward the upper right.

In the next photo you see a trail made by a gray fox walking from right to left. The trail has a different look from the opossum and woodchuck trails, both because of its narrower width and also because the fox’s step lengths are longer. But the zig-zag is still apparent. Trail widths, combined with step length, can be helpful in identification, since chunky animals like woodchucks and possums make wider trails and take shorter steps than slimmer, longer-legged animals do. And trail widths are especially important when you’re considering animals with similar step lengths. For example, trail widths for a walking coyote are generally between 4 and 5 inches while trail widths for deer moving at a walk range from 5 to 10 inches. Even when the tracks are degraded or obscured by collapsing snow it’s usually possible to differentiate between a coyote trail and a deer trail.

Animals find it harder to move in deep snow, but when they’re walking their trails still show the zig-zag pattern. In the photo below a red fox walked from bottom to top leaving a zig-zag arrangement of deep holes in the snow.

All of the gaits discussed above (and the one the horse was doing in the video) fit into what I call the regular walk–also called the diagonal walk in the tracking literature. But that’s not the only kind of walk animals can do. A common variant is the overstep walk. To see a dog doing the overstep walk click on this link: Bing Videos and then click on dog gaits youtube and start the video. The recording shows a dog walking at actual speed followed by the same sequence in slow motion. If you keep your eye on the spot just vacated by a front foot you’ll see the corresponding rear foot come down a little past it. (This video also does a nice job with the amble, equivalent to the pace-walk of the raccoon, and the trot.)

The interesting thing about the overstep walk is that the pattern of tracks on the ground also makes a zig-zag, but the points of the zig-zag consist of sets of two prints, front and rear from the same side, rather than the impressions of two superimposed tracks. In the next photo you see an overstep pattern made by a house cat moving from lower right to upper left. Because a cat’s front tracks are wider and shorter than the rear ones we can see that in each set the front track is behind the rear. The sequence, starting at the lower right, is: right front, right rear, left front, left rear, right front, right rear. Among animals that are habitual walkers, overstep walks are common.

Another variation you’ll come across is the understep walk. The next photo shows the trail of an opossum doing an understep walk, heading from the lower left to the upper right. Again, the prints are arranged in sets of two, each set the front and rear from the same side. In each pair the hand-like hind track, with its thumb pointing inward, lies behind the front track with its more evenly spread toes.

We sometimes find zig-zag walking patterns in the trails of animals that aren’t habitual walkers. Fishers move mostly in bounds or lopes, but they walk when extra caution is needed or when the footing isn’t secure. The trail in the photo below was made by a fisher walking, mostly in direct register, from lower right to upper left.

Walking trails are less common for minks than for fishers, and for minks it seems to be mostly about the animal’s dislike of unstable surfaces. In the next photo a mink walked from right to left through mud (looking pretty dry in the photo but probably much wetter and slipperier when the tracks were made), leaving sets of paired tracks. But which walk is this, overstep or understep? We can tell because the middle toe in the mink’s hind print usually angles a little to the outside. So the sequence, starting at the right, is: left rear, left front, right rear, right front, left rear, left front, right rear, right front, and this is an understep walk.

White-footed mice are even less likely to walk than minks, but the next image attests to the fact that they do it on rare occasions. A white-footed mouse walked from bottom to top, leaving sets of paired tracks. The four-toed front prints lie behind the five-toed rear prints in each set, so the mouse was doing an overstep walk. The trail both before and after the walking part was on drier footing with normal mouse bounding patterns, so it was the wet mud that made the mouse shift to a walk.

Many animals get around mostly at a walk, and zig-zags abound in the tracking world. The details of the patterns can tell us a lot about the nature of the track maker. But the sight of a zig-zag for an animal whose default gait is not the walk is an even more compelling call to investigate. In addition to their help in species identification, zig-zags can tell us how animals interact with each other and with their surroundings. In this post we’ve only made a start. There are other kinds of zig-zags, and even patterns that look like zig-zags but aren’t. I’ll keep these topics for a future article. In the meantime, follow the zig-zags wherever they lead.

Perfect Perches

Perches–they’re important to wild creatures for many different reasons. The gray squirrel in the opening image (from yardandgarage.com) is using a perch as a feeding site. The next photo shows a Norway spruce whose dead lower branches provided feeding perches for a red squirrel. You can see how the piles of inedible cone cores and scales accumulated under the branches the squirrel perched on. These accumulations are called middens, and they can build up over time into substantial mounds.

Favorite perches often show signs of usage. The red squirrel that used the perch shown below left a cone scale and a number of opened seeds, some with wings still attached.

Red squirrels may mark perches by biting them. In the next photo you see a Norway spruce branch that bears the distinctive paired incisor marks made by a red squirrel. The lower branches of conifers are usually dead, so these marks don’t heal over and may last quite a while.

In the next photo you see a discovery I made during summer a few years ago. The Norway spruce cone crop that year was early and abundant, and a red squirrel had left a cone core, stripped of its supply of edible seeds, resting on the perch it had used. And in case you’re wondering, no, I didn’t put it there, it was all the squirrel’s doing. The scales that dropped as the squirrel fed can be seen on the ground at the base of the tree.

The photo below shows an unusually well elevated feeding perch used by a gray squirrel.

In the next photo you see what I found on top of the log: the remains of an acorn the squirrel had fed on.

Here’s a perch used not for feeding but for food storage. A gray squirrel lodged a black walnut in the crotch of a honeysuckle branch. I’m not sure what the squirrel’s motivation was–perhaps it was to keep the walnut away from other squirrels.

A perch doesn’t need to be overly high to be suitable. In the next photo you see a log used by a squirrel–it could have been a red or a gray–feeding on a white pine cone.

Rocks can also make good perches. Last August a red squirrel harvested young larch cones and brought them to the rock shown below for consumption. Where rocks or logs are available they are preferred over ground level feeding sites.

But food isn’t the only thing drawing animals to perches. A red fox balanced on the log in the next photo in order to deposit its scat. Scat is important in intraspecies communication, and wild canines prefer to leave their scat in conspicuous positions. Sometimes this requires a little acrobatic ability to position the scat just right.

One of my favorite spring experiences is hearing the drumming of ruffed grouse. Males in search of mates perch on logs or other raised features and beat their wings to produce a resonant booming sound. They prefer platforms that are unobstructed and raised well off the ground. You can see a spot in the center of the image where the bark was dislodged by the drumming bird.

Perches can also be used as observation posts. In the next photo you see a mound of earth thrown up by a falling tree. There were tracks–they were barely visible so I didn’t include a photo–going up the side. The size of the impressions suggested a fox.

On top of the mound (shown in the next photo) there were obvious signs of disturbance, showing that it had been used as a perch. The fox would have sat quietly while it listened, looked, and sniffed for signs of prey animals.

We seem to have circled back around to the topic of food, so here’s my last example of a feeding perch. A black bear climbed the beech tree in the photo below and pulled a nut-bearing branch inwards until it broke off. The bear consumed the goodies, pushed the branch aside and pulled another one inward until it broke. The discarded branches formed a tangled cluster, and the bear might even have stood on the growing mass of harvested branches as it continued to pull more branches in. These branch clusters are known by the somewhat misleading term bear nests, although they have more in common with squirrel middens than with nests. With healthy beeches becoming less abundant, bear nests in beech trees are harder to find than they used to be, but the same kind of sign occurs in apple, black cherry, serviceberry, and oak trees.

Wild creatures know their territories in minute detail, and they’re familiar with all the best perches. The attributes of a perfect perch vary somewhat with the specific animal and situation, but safety and accessibility are always important. The location also needs to be appropriate to the animal’s purpose, whether it’s to consume food, to find food, or to advertise its presence. If we stay alert for perches we can begin to understand what makes a good perch and what they can tell us about the lives of the animals.

What Goes In Comes Out

A big part of understanding animal lives is knowing what they eat. There’s lots of general information available in books and other publications, but to understand the dietary habits of the animals in one’s own landscape requires a few steps beyond that. We can observe animals when they’re hunting or feeding, and we can interpret chews, feeding sites, and feeding leftovers. But for many mammals, especially omnivores and carnivores, scat is the best tool. Scat contains the undigestible parts of everything an animal ingests, and it remains long after the creature has left the scene.

For herbivores, plant fibers make up the bulk of eliminations, so their scat has a grainy texture like the rabbit scat shown below. When herbivores eat foods high in water content their scat may be darker and softer, but the fibrous essence can still be seen.

Raccoons are omnivores, and their latrines often contain scats with a variety of contents. In the next photo you see raccoon scats with grape seeds and skins, apple seeds, ant parts, deer hairs, and the amorphous remains of deer flesh. An important safety note: raccoon scat may contain the eggs of a parasite that can infect humans, so it should never be touched with bare hands. To be on the safe side, it’s best to use sticks or other tools to manipulate scat, no matter whose it is.

The photo below shows river otter scat filled with crayfish shell fragments. In locations where fish are the main prey item, fish scales and bones will be the most common contents. In coastal marshes scats with crab shell fragments may predominate, indicating that crabs make up the bulk of the animals’ diet.

For many omnivores and carnivores scat contents vary with the changing seasons. The bear scat shown below was photographed in early May, and it’s made up of the remains of the newly emerging leaves and shoots the bear had been eating. Bears lose weight during hibernation and for many weeks afterwards because the grasses, sedges, and young shoots they must subsist on are energy-poor foods.

It’s only when higher quality edibles become abundant that bears begin to put on the pounds. The bear that left the scat shown in the next illustration had been feasting on black cherries. The summer diet of fruits and berries is often supplemented with insects, and you may find bear scats containing ant or yellowjacket parts.

Scats like that pictured below, full of fragments of acorns and hickory nuts, begin to show up in late summer. The seasonal abundance of acorns, nuts, and fruits, as well as increasing insect populations, provides a crucial, energy dense diet. At this time bears transition into a period of hyperphagia, and spend most of their waking hours seeking food or eating. The fat stores they put on will carry them through their winter hibernation.

The scat of canids reveals that their diets also follow seasonal cycles. Winter and early spring fare is mostly made up of animal prey and carrion. Signs of feeding on deer carcasses start to show up during the fall hunting season and continue through the winter. The coyote scat in the photo below contains deer hair and leg bone fragments. Foxes also feed on deer carcasses, but they aren’t powerful enough to crack large bones to get at the marrow the way coyotes do. Deer killed by hunters (and the carcasses resulting from the vehicle collisions that seem to spike during hunting season) may be preserved well enough in the cold to last through most of the winter. Carcasses of winter-killed deer also provide scavenging opportunities.

The red fox scat shown below (photographed in mid-March) contains the remains of a small rodent that was swallowed whole. There’s a leg bone in the chunk at the lower left, a molar in the piece at the top, and an incisor in the segment at the lower right. The bones are embedded in twisted masses of short hairs. Positioning its scat on the manhole cover was the fox’s way of signaling its presence to other foxes in the area. Small rodents and other small mammals are a winter mainstay for foxes and coyotes.

Like bears, canines graduate to summer foods as they become available. A sure sign that berries are in season are finds like the coyote scat shown below, filled with raspberry seeds. Note that the segments are tubular and blunt-ended rather than tapered like scats made up of animal remains.

As summer progresses, the menu widens. The red fox scat in the next photo (found in early September) contains acorn shells, apple skins, and fragments of field corn kernels.

Some scats lead to surprising discoveries. The next photo shows some gray fox scat containing the remains of a frog. Hollow leg bones are clearly visible, and when I pulled it apart I saw the still articulated bones of a rear foot. It’s a bit unusual to find frog remains in fox scat, but the really surprising thing is that I found this in early December. The weather had been mild, and apparently some frogs had not yet gone underground for the winter.

Food is central to survival, and scat can provide direct information about what animals eat and when they eat it. The many stories scat has to tell can illuminate not just feeding habits, but also interactions among animals, and interactions with the surrounding landscape. Each story adds to our connection with the animals around us.

Gray Fox Affairs

It’s been a strange winter. In my neck of the woods we had some significant snow early in the season, but no big storms since then. Temperatures have been up and down (more up than down), and with all the melting, the snow we do have has consolidated into a dense, icy layer. Much of the time the conditions have been terrible for tracking, but every once in a while something wonderful has happened: warmth and liquid precipitation have been followed by dropping temperatures and a change from rain to snow. When this happens, snow that falls while the air is still relatively warm becomes bonded to the crust. As the temperature drops and additional snow falls, it forms a soft layer on top. The result is a non-slip and easily navigable surface that is a perfect medium for recording tracks.

A few days ago I encountered just such conditions: an icy base covered by a thin layer of soft snow. I was in an extensive natural area, and both the forest road I was following and the surrounding landscape offered beautiful tracking conditions. Animals of all sorts had been moving easily over the snow, and there were tracks everywhere. I found myself following the trail of a gray fox. The animal went for quite a distance at an easy trot, but then it did something that was quite puzzling.

The photo below shows the fox trail as it goes from upper left to lower right. (You can also see a coyote trail to the right of the fox trail, and a mountain bike trail to the right of that.) As it entered the frame the fox was walking (the first three tracks at the upper left). In the next section (between the last walking step and the edge of the tree shadow) the pattern was very different, and following that the trail looks unlike either of the previous sections. I wanted to know what was going on and why the middle section looked so different.

In a situation like this the first thing to do is identify each track. The zig-zag of the walking section helps us to tell right and left, and the fact that the front foot is larger than the hind foot distinguishes front from rear. The next photo shows a gray fox front print on the left and a gray fox rear print on the right. You can see the difference in overall size and also the difference in the sizes of the middle pads.

The photo below shows just the puzzling middle section, and if you compare photos you’ll see that the front and rear in the photo above are actually the first two tracks in the middle section. It’s pretty clear that the first four prints in the photo below are left front, left rear, right front, right rear. After that it gets harder. The track just above the right rear is smaller than the one to its right, so those two prints must be left hind, left front. Three tracks from the right side come next, and it looks to me like the sequence is right rear, right front, right rear. The final two before the tree shadow are the left front and the left rear, and at the edge of the tree shadow there’s a right front with a right rear partially superimposed on it.

In the next photo I’ve added labels showing my take on right/left and front/rear. If we start at the beginning of the whole sequence, the animal was trotting (those tracks aren’t seen in the photos) and then slowed down to a walk (the first three tracks in the distance shot). The next section shows that the fox slowed even more to an overstep walk (the first four prints in the photo below), then slowed even more to an understep walk. There’s an extra right hind that’s puzzling, but I’m guessing the fox just repositioned its right hind foot. Then the overstep walk reappears after which the fox picked up the trot (the two impressions at the lower right in the first photo). Notice that the step lengths in the overstep part are shorter than the regular walk steps that preceeded them, and the step lengths in the understep part are shorter yet.

That analysis was rather involved, but it leads to a picture of what the fox actually did. As it trotted along something it detected made it slow down, first to a walk and then almost but not quite to a standstill. It was probably sniffing and listening intently as it moved very slowly. Once the animal concluded that it was okay to move on, it resumed its journey at a trot. It’s impossible, without more evidence, to know what caused the fox to react the way it did. It may have been a threat, but it could also have been something that interested it for a different reason. It is, after all, mating season for wild canines.

And the fox I was following was definitely tuned in to mating season. Farther on I found a spot (shown in the next photo) where the animal had detoured to urinate on a small spruce branch. If you look in the center of the frame you’ll see a squiggle of urine that runs horizontally from the upper edge of the spruce branch. Because the urine wasn’t squirted out the side of the tracks we know this was a female. She would have lifter one hind leg forward and supported herself on the other hind leg (plus two front legs) as she urinated. The relative depths of the tracks tell us that the supporting rear foot was the left. Its track is in the prominent double impression above and to the left of the urine.

I’ll never know what made the gray fox slow down and leave the pattern discussed in the beginning of this article. It could have been a threat–there was certainly a coyote in the neighborhood, or it could have been the mountain biker. A fisher (whose tracks I also found on that day) would have made the gray fox nervous. And there were red fox trails as well. But the trail shown in the photos above doesn’t suggest alarm so much as cautious interest. The fox didn’t change direction but just continued on. Was it another gray fox, one she was familiar with, or one she had mated with in a previous year? We have a small part of the whole story, and we can only speculate about the rest, but it’s fascinating just as it is.

Where Do The Bones Go?

Have you ever wondered what happens to all the bones? Animals are dying all the time, and when they die their soft tissues are eaten by predators and scavengers, picked off by birds, ingested by insects, and decomposed by microorganisms. This leaves just bones, like those of a rabbit shown below. But we don’t see bones littering the landscape, so what happens to them?

First let’s consider small animals. When a tiny creature such as a vole is killed by a predator, the catch is swallowed whole and the bones are crushed and partly assimilated. Undigested bone fragments are eliminated in scat (or pellets if the hunter was a hawk or owl). You can see small bone fragments in the red fox scat shown below–there’s also plant material, tiny hairs, and what appears to be a whisker. Scat like this will eventually be weathered and dispersed into the soil. Even if a small animal isn’t completely consumed immediately, its remains will be broken down, dispersed, and probably hidden from our view by its surroundings.

But what of larger animals whose carcasses would be more obvious? Deer immediately come to mind, but the question also applies to bears, coyotes, woodchucks, raccoons, and other similar sized animals. We do occasionally see the remains of recently deceased animals, like the deer carcass in the next photo, but why don’t we see piles of old bones lying around everywhere?

The answer has to do with the nutritional value of bones. The deer femur in the next photo was cracked open by a coyote to get at the marrow. (I say coyote because the only other animal in our region which is powerful enough to break a deer leg bone would be a bear, and there were no bears in the area where the bone was found.) Toward the upper end of the larger piece you can see some striations which were probably made by the coyote’s molars as it worked at the bone.

We sometimes see evidence of the utilization of bones this way in scat. The coyote scat in the next image contains an abundance of deer bone fragments and deer hair. The hair would have cushioned the sharp bone edges and prevented injury to the animal’s digestive system. It wouldn’t take long for bone fragments like these to be hidden in the upper layers of soil.

In addition to marrow, bones contain calcium, phosphorus, and other minerals which may be lacking in the diets of wild animals. Mineral deficiencies are especially likely for herbivores. Many animals supplement their nutrient intake by chewing on bones, and they usually choose less daunting ones such as scapulas, ribs, and vertebrae. The bones of birds, reptiles, and smaller mammals such as rabbits can also be utilized by less powerful animals. Even deer have been observed chewing on bones. This kind of chewing may not leave obvious signs–just ragged edges, missing ends, or random gouges.

Rodents also gnaw on bones, and the evidence of their activity is often more conspicuous. In the next photo you see a segment of deer leg bone lodged on a midden at the base of a Norway spruce tree. Middens, piles of discarded cone cores and scales, are created when a red squirrel repeatedly uses a favorite perch to feed on cones. The red squirrel that claimed this tree must have used the same perch to work on the bone.

In the next photo you can see the grooves made by a squirrel’s incisors as it chiseled off bone shavings.

Smaller rodents, like voles and white-footed mice, leave finer grooves like the ones in the next photo.

These creatures weren’t after marrow, since the bones were relatively old and the marrow had been removed long ago. This behavior is probably driven in part by the need to supplement their mineral intake, but rodents also chew on bones (and antlers as well) to maintain their teeth in good condition. Their incisors grow constantly, and are subject to malocclusion if not shaped and worn down with regular gnawing. The same is true for rabbits and hares, which are also known to gnaw on bones.

As time passes carcasses are pulled apart and bones are cleaned of soft tissue, scattered, broken, crushed, pulverized, chewed, and ingested by many different animals. Rather than piling up as useless cast-offs, animal bones gradually disappear as they are utilized by living creatures. Animals are part of the web of life both while they are alive and after they are dead.

Conspicuous Communication

If you’ve ever found a pile of feces perched in a conspicuous spot, you’ve encountered a message from an animal. Canines are especially likely to communicate this way, and they’ll use any location that makes a good exhibit. The photo below shows red fox scat displayed on the base of a fallen log. There’s both recent and older scat–recognizable by its lighter color–indicating that this location has been used more than once. One older chunk is nestled in the center of the new deposit and another rests below it on a shelf of wood.

Our olfactory abilities are too limited to appreciate the complex bouquet of chemicals in scat, but for canines–and probably other species–each deposit conveys information. The specific content of the communication could be establishment of a territorial boundary, advertisement of mating availability, or reinforcement of group cohesion. Scat can also indicate the health, status, and identity of the animal which produced it. The coyote scat in the next photo was in the center of a road rather than on a raised object, but it’s placement made it noticeable nevertheless. I found this in June, when we would expect coyote parents to be leading their offspring on short explorations, and my best guess is that the message was territorial in nature.

Important locations may accumulate a number of deposits. The rock in the next image must have been significant, because there are four different scats on the rock and several more which fell off to one side and aren’t visible in the photo. All of the deposits were left by red or gray foxes, and the contents include apple skins and seeds, hair and small bones, and insect parts. The most intriguing one is the chunk at the lower right.

A closer look shows that it contains porcupine quills.

An ant mound formed the pedestal for the red fox scat in the next shot. I found it in early spring, so the ants would still have been deep underground when the animal stood on the mound and dropped its feces directly on top.

Manhole covers can provide suitable display locations. The red fox that left the scat in the next photo had dined on a small rodent, as indicated by the short hairs and small bones it contained. The manhole cover was in a grassy trail and allowed the scat to stand out in the uniformly green surroundings.

Sometimes scat seems to represent an assertion of confidence. Coyotes will kill foxes, so the smaller canines are usually careful to avoid encounters. In the photo below a recent gray fox scat (at the lower right) sits on an older accumulation of coyote scat. The deer hair in the coyote scat shows that the animal had scavenged on a mostly cleaned out carcass, while the gray fox had eaten meat from a fresher carcass.

Any protruding object is a potential platform for canine scat. The photo below shows a deposit of coyote scat on a pile of horse dung.

In the next photo you see one of my most surprising finds. A gray fox had deposited scat on top of a rock cairn which marked a trail junction. This must have required a delicate balancing act, because the pile of rocks was tall enough that the fox would have needed to place at least one rear foot on the cairn.

The conspicuous locations often chosen by wild canines mean that we often notice the scat left by wild canines. We’re less adept at interpreting the messages contained therein. But even if we miss what’s most important to the animals, it’s fun to enjoy the creative and sometimes whimsical positioning of the scat of foxes and coyotes.

Knowing Coyote Tracks

Coyotes are one of our more common predators, but when we find a possible coyote track it can be difficult to identify it with certainty. Could it be a fox? Or maybe a bobcat? And there’s also the possibility of domestic dog. Dog tracks show up almost everywhere and are often mistaken for coyote. In this post I’ll share some thoughts on how to separate coyote prints from some confusing look-alike tracks.

First let’s deal with felines. The bobcat track below is a right front print, oriented toward the top of the frame. Like coyotes, bobcats have four toes and an undivided middle pad, but unlike coyotes (and other canines) bobcat tracks are asymmetrical. They have a leading toe (the second from the left in the photo) and a trailing toe (the right-most one), and the middle pad is canted to the outside. Try this simple test for symmetry: Imagine a vertical line which passes through the center of the track, and then imagine folding the right half of the track over onto the left half. You’ll see that they don’t match up. Now do the same thing with the track in the next photo, a coyote front print, again oriented toward the top of the photo. You’ll see that the right half matches almost perfectly when folded onto the left half.

Both the bobcat and the coyote prints pictured are clear and complete, but because of varying conditions some bobcat tracks–especially rear prints–appear more symmetrical, and canine tracks sometimes have an asymmetrical look. Fortunately, there are other features that can help to distinguish the two. An important feature is the shape of the ridges between the toes and the middle pad. In the coyote track the large ridges between the toes and the middle pad form an X, and at the central point of the X there’s a dome. The major ridges in the bobcat track don’t form an X–they could be described as a squashed H or a partly rotated C-shape with some kinks. Another characteristic to look at is the relative sizes of toes and pads. In bobcat tracks the toes are small in relation to the overall track size, and the middle pad is large. In coyote tracks it’s the reverse: the toes are larger and the middle pad is smaller in relation to the overall track size. In the coyote track there are some delicate claw marks, two close together ahead of the leading toes and a lighter one on the left outer toe. Claw marks are absent in the bobcat photo. If more grip is needed a cat may extend its claws, but claw impressions are much less common in bobcat tracks than they are in coyote (or other canine) tracks. Bobcat prints also tend to be rounder, and coyote prints are more oval or egg-shaped.

Then there’s red fox, whose tracks overlap with coyote tracks at the lower end of the coyote size range. The next photo shows a red fox front print, oriented toward the right side. It’s similar to the coyote track in being symmetrical, and in having the canine X and dome, but there are some features that separate it from coyote. The hair that covers the underside of the fox’s foot shows as striations in the toes and middle pad. This hair gets worn down as the season progresses so it may be less conspicuous in late summer and fall, but in early winter a new growth of thick hair develops. Red fox tracks in snow often have a blurry appearance because of the dense hair. The undersides of coyote toes and middle pads are bare of hair in all seasons, so the toe and pad impressions have smooth surfaces and crisp outlines.

In the middle pad of the red fox print there’s a curved indentation (vertically oriented in the photo) made by a ridge of tough skin that protrudes through the hair. This bar or chevron (present in the front foot and very rarely in the rear foot) is unique to the red fox and, when visible, separates it conclusively from the coyote. In the preceding photo of the coyote track you can see that the bar is absent.

Distinguishing coyotes from domestic dogs can be the toughest challenge. Dogs are so variable that there aren’t any absolute criteria, and many dog tracks are similar to coyote tracks in size. The photo below shows the rear (on the left) and front (on the right) prints of a coyote, oriented toward the right. As in most canines the rear track is smaller than the front. Note the absence of claw marks except for the delicate, closely set pricks ahead of the leading toes of the front foot. Both front and hind tracks are oval in overall outline, and their middle pads are small in relation to the overall track size.

Coyote rear (left) and front (right) tracks

Comparing those tracks with the dog tracks in the next photo, we see some clear differences. The front track of the dog (above) is more rounded and has a larger middle pad. The claw marks in the front print are more robust and are present ahead of all four toes. The rear print of the dog (below) is slimmer than the front but has a conspicuous middle pad, and there are claw marks ahead of all four toes.

Domestic dog front (above) and rear (below) tracks

Dog tracks like the front print below (oriented toward the top) are even easier to identify. The large middle pad and the thick claw marks are strong indicators, but the most striking feature is the spreading of the inner and outer toes. Many dogs have “floppy” feet. Because they are not as active their feet lack the muscle tone of wild canines, and their toes spread more. The inner and outer toes and claws may point to the sides rather than straight ahead. Dogs that get plenty of exercise, like the one that made the tracks in the preceding photo, may not show this spreading.

Varying conditions can affect the appearance of coyote tracks, and this is where things can get confusing. The coyote front track (facing to the right) in the next photo doesn’t look as neat and tight as the coyote tracks shown in previous photos. There are claw marks ahead of all four toes, the inner and outer toes aren’t as tightly tucked in behind the leading toes, and the claw marks are more divergent. This animal was trotting on soft, moist sand, so it allowed its toes to spread slightly for support. But the track still shows the small middle pad and the delicate claw marks that point toward coyote rather than dog.

Faster movement can have an even greater effect on tracks. The print shown below (a front, pointing toward the right) was made by a galloping coyote. The toes are spread, the claw marks are deep, and the middle pad looks asymmetrical. But even this track shows coyote rather than dog features. The claws are sharply pointed and the middle pad is small compared to the overall track size.

There will always be times when making a firm identification is difficult. The tracks may be distorted or degraded, or there may only be partial tracks. But even if we can only come to a tentative conclusion, we can still observe and learn as much as possible. And the more we struggle with challenging situations, the better we will be at knowing coyote tracks when we see them.