What’s going on out on the land?
Sign of Birds in Algonquin Park
While in Algonquin Park this past week with the Earth Tracks Winter Wildlife Tracking Trip I tried to pay more attention to some of the bird sign throughout our days, though I didn’t always get some good photos, and I missed recording some beautiful songs and calls. I will share however what I did find in the park and what I have been able to learn thus far.
Trailing a Fisher at Old Baldy
We had just crossed over from the thick White Cedar forest into a little more spacious deciduous forest, when, in a very unassuming tone, a friend called us over to check out some tracks. I don’t know if he realized at first how cool the trail he had just found was, but as we stepped off of the path and looked down at the tracks everyone leaned in a little closer, and our voices started to ring with a little more excitement. Our colleague had found a Fisher trail.
Examining Coyote Courting Behaviours : Tracking at Bell’s Lake
On Saturday we met up to go tracking with the apprenticeship crew. Marcus and I pulled up I noted the trail along the middle of the road, between the tire tracks, where it looked like some sort of canid had been walking along. The folks who were already there had already noticed this trail and were exploring other trails as well. As everyone arrived we circled up and then decided to follow the trail into the woods and see what else we could figure out.
What began as a wonder, ended as a joyful celebration of the possibility of romance and new life. All from following a couple of Coyotes.
What’s Up With The Ice Crystals On The Path?
It happens every year in the forest where I work. The Eastern White Cedar leaves which litter the ground are lifted away from the trail by strange columnar ice formations. The ice crystals, reminded me of Superman’s “Fortress of Solitude” but I just wasn’t sure what was going on? I had to look it up.
Frost Cracking
A couple of years ago on a trail which circled Sasajewun Lake at the Algonquin Wildlife Research Station, we came across a few trees that I thought had been struck by lightning. I saw fissures in the tree, some shallow, some deeper. These fissures wrapped in a long loose spiral around the trunk of the tree from fairly high up most of the way down. Many different tree species had these fissures and many were near the path. This is when I started to think again about lightning strikes. How did so many trees along a single path get struck by lightning? Turns out they didn’t.
Eramosa River tracking journal, 2022.01.23
I left the house just before 8am so I could get out before too many people were out walking their Dogs. There ends up being a bit of a jumble in the trails when the Dogs come out and it’s just easier to spot everything without much distraction. I also feel a little weird sometimes, standing in the middle of a path, road or even the frozen river where everyone is walking by. If more folks stopped to ask about the tracks or even say hello it would feel less awkward, but usually they just stare, and then walk by cautiously while their Dog barks at me. Even the Dogs know there is something amiss about a person standing there noticing the world. I recount a bit of these feelings because it happened again this morning while I was checking a Grey Squirrel bounding trail along the road by my house.
What happened to this Gull?
I was walking up the frozen river with some kids in tow. We’d been out for a few hours tracking when we were on the last stretch and one of the kids pointed to a small mound on the ice. “Look a Penguin!” I think she’d meant it as a joke, but I took note and walked towards the mound. I had walked along this frozen river the day before and hadn’t noticed a mound on the middle of the river bulging out of the ice. I couldn’t tell what it was at first, but my guess was that a log or branch had broken through somehow. As I got close, I learned it was nothing of the sort.