NEW IMAGES are at the beginning of the gallery.

Identifying tracks is a good way of discovering who is living in a particular woodland, field or wetland. Tracks in mud, sand and snow also tell stories. You can see where animals have interacted, sometimes to the misfortune of one of them. You can also, if you follow them, often discover what they were doing, where they were looking for food, whether they were meandering along investigating here or there, or whether they had a purpose, no dawdling and sidetracking permitted. Fresh snow is excellent for finding tracks, and winter reveals the presence of all sorts of birds and animals we might rarely see because they are secretive and/or nocturnal, or just plain hard to see!

Of course, tracks can also be found in mud, but snow covers such a large area that it is easier and more fun to figure out what was going on.

But there are always tracks that defy identification. Many tracks could be those of several similar species. I've just left those labeled as "Tracks"!

In addition to tracks, there are other indications of an animal's presence in an area. Scat is a good clue, if you can figure out whose scat it is. Sometimes it is easy, other times not at all. Often animals show their presence through their eating habits. Moose strip the bark from young red maples, porcupines chew bark on trees, mostly high up, but sometimes at ground level, snowshoe hare chew branches closer to the ground, etc. As well, some mammals make readily identifiable nests, such as the grey squirrel leafy dreys, the big grassy "balls" in trees made by red squirrels, and nests of mice and voles.

Scat is also a good place to look for insects including certain species of butterflies which are attracted to feeding on it.