Sunday blessed us with a perfect late Fall day. It was one of those mornings where you are warm only if you're moving a bit but the day got warmer into the afternoon.
We came upon many deer tracks and discussed their age. The soft gravel on the road shoulder was made harder from the nighttime frost. The soil that was kicked out of the track was very dry. So we knew the deer had passed at least 12 hours previous on a warmer day when the road was softer. The previous 24 hours had been very windy and we suggested that maybe the deer hadn't been moving as much. The deer has 2 toes/hooves that register reliably but they also have 2 more toes behind the hooves that register in soft substrate and you can tell the difference between the front and hind track by the angle of the dewclaws. The front dewclaws are roughly 45 degree angle out from the direction of travel, whereas the hind dewclaws are in line with the direction of travel. The track below is actually 2 footprints in a slight overstep where the back foot landed slightly farther up than the front foot. You can see the clear hind dewclaws generally in line with direction of travel and just below them are the front dewclaws that are angled outwards. The rest of the front tracks had been obliterated by the hind track.
When I scouted the river in the morning, I noticed that a Raccoon had walked through the mud and because the track compressed the mud the previous night, the frost rose 1 inch everywhere except in the tracks, making a stark contrast in the early morning light. I like this photo, because depending on what track you look at, it looks like a house cat, raccoon, otter, or woodchuck. But by the time the group looked at them and the frost had melted, they were perfect Raccoon tracks again. As we walked down the river, we paralleled these tracks the entire outing- the Raccoon on the lower animal highway on the water and we were on the upper animal highway at the top of the bank.
Someone (Cindy B?) found an old cow hoof in the leaf litter.
And Sarah L. noticed that inside of the hoof were a number of tiger moth cocoons.
I had my own intention of finding a Raccoon or Muskrat latrine on this outing and when I reached the end of the peninsula, I thought I was going to get skunked when I saw this large Silver Maple with so much character. Beth, Steve and I crossed the Beaver Dam to check it out. (It reminds me of Old Man Willow in The Lord of The Rings!)
On our way to the ancient tree we found this latrine raised up on a downed tree. The diameter was 0.5" and less, so it was on the small side for a Raccoon and a bit large for Muskrat but perhaps a Fox is another guess? Comment at the bottom of the blog post (below the "recent posts" section) with your observations and guess!!
Whatever is was from, it was still very active because when we moved some scat we saw this:
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