Tracking Day

We’ve been on a three-week break, during which I’ve been, if anything, busier than while class is in session. So it’s taken me this long to blog our last class. But here, at long last, it is!

We met at Venture this week. After romping with Mojo the dog and playing a morning round of T-Rex Frisbee (which is the most awesome game in the Universe) we set off for the lagoon near Pescadero.



We ambled down to the beach to check out the morning’s stories. These marks were all over the sand, crisscrossing each other in little trails and sometimes funneling into a big communal run. I love sand tracking.






We continued on, tried to stick our heads into an old beaver den but found it blocked by a botanical guard. Though many of us are nonreactive to poison oak, we still didn’t push our luck. We consoled ourselves by investigating this interesting mark and fairly fresh scat near the den area.



When we stopped for lunch we found these beautiful prints in the mud of the channel bank, still fairly close to the den area.



As we moved on, we kept on the look out for beavers or beaver sign. They continued to prove elusive, despite the fact that I’d brought my beaver-cut walking stick with me that day. We did get close to a wary, plain-looking turtle. He looked like he was enjoying the sun so we did our best to go quiet and slow and respect his space.



Finally we found our way up the hill to an open area full of grasses and wildflowers. The ground there was peppered with big holes and massive throw mounds. We spread out, looking for the freshest mounds.

On the way, I encountered this butterfly. I’ve never seen this type near my home, or in any other urban area.



Finally we found a fresh looking mound that lolled from the mouth of a very big (perhaps 9 inches across) hole. The mound showed deep lumbering tracks across its length. I took these photos while standing uphill from the hole, with the hole in the lower left corner and the mound extending up the photo, downhill from me.






These tracks raise a lot of questions: Are all of these from the same animal? How was the animal moving, to leave such a jumbled pattern? When was the animal last here? Was this a one-time or repeat use? Why was the animal in the area? Is it still here?

We still had further investigations to carry on elsewhere, so we dragged ourselves away from the tracks and the wildflowers, and moved on to the hypericum zone further south on the coast.

Once at the hypericum area, we all took Cybertrackers and dove in. Our last many attempts have been aborted for one reason or another, and as of this afternoon we hadn’t yet placed any hyperucum data points on our map. Our mission for the last hour or two of the afternoon was to catalogue whatever biodiversity we could. For reference, this is what the interior of the hypericum growth looks like:



Not very diverse. The hypericum is especially strange because one will push through and through the unending monotony of hypericum stalks, and then find, engulfed in the center, the skeleton of a long-dead tree or shrub, shaded out under the thick canopy. After such a find the hypericum seed capsule rattling that follows all of one’s movements often takes on an eerie sound.

But we did find some interesting things. I followed the edge and found a stand of poison hemlock, a plant that I’ve never seen wildlife use very extensively. In the middle of the stand were clipped stalks of hemlock, smoothly cut at an angle very much like a rodent’s or rabbit’s work.



I continued on into the hypericum, and found a woodrat nest uphill from a dead elderberry tree. The net was constructed almost entirely or elderberry sticks, with little hyperucum material. I wondered if the woodrat had such an aversion to hypericum that it would try to use hemlock in the absence of good elderberry or other more commonly used material. When I heard the rat skittering and rattling through the hemlock stand, it sounded to me like he moved with energy and health. But my ears are not well trained in woodrat skitters, so I could be wrong.

We returned, our cybertrackers finally full of good data for our maps.