Week of September 29, 2024 – October 5, 2024
by Kaylen Iorio, Environmental Educator
One of my favorite things to do while exploring nature is to look around for animal tracks; the evidence of animals is all around us… if we know where to look!
We don’t always need to see animals to know they have been here. Woodpeckers, for example, leave holes in trees in search of food or a good place to make a cavity for a nest. We can even tell which woodpeckers made which holes based on their size, shape, and arrangement. Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers drill holes less than half an inch in diameter in nice, neat horizontal rows around the trunks of trees in search of food. Sometimes sapsuckers leave so many holes over months and months that the rows are no longer distinguishable from each other! Comparatively, yellow-bellied Sapsuckers’ larger cousin the Pileated Woodpecker excavate much bigger holes in trees in search of ant colonies. These holes can be very large and are usually rectangular when this species is looking for food.
One of my favorite animal tracks to find is from a nimble-fingered critter often seen scurrying from trash cans or rummaging through campsites. North American Raccoons can be found in a variety of habitats; they are called generalists. Raccoons can survive in suburban, urban, and rural areas, which makes it easy to become familiar with their tracks. Raccoons have five toes on both their hind feet and front feet with the front paws resembling tiny human hands. While they don’t have opposable thumbs, raccoons’ hands are very dexterous at 2.5 – 3.5 inches long and about 2 – 3 inches wide. The pair of feet pictured below was found at the stream edge, where our mischievous friend may have been getting a drink!
One of the most frequent tracks I encounter is very specific looking from a large four-legged mammal that is very common in Central New York that you have most likely seen grazing in fields, darting across roads, or even in your backyard. Deer are ungulates, meaning they walk on their toes (I know, how very dainty of them). There are subdivisions of ungulates, even-toed or artiodactyla and odd-toed or perissodactyla, a distinction that is very important to note when tracking. Deer are a part of the order artiodactyla and possess four toes on each of their four legs. However, White-tailed Deer tend to only show two toes in their prints; their other two toes are called dew claws and usually are not seen in tracks unless they are crossing through deep snow or mud. Look for two slender indentations next to each other about 1-3 inches wide and 1.5-4 inches long depending on male vs. female. Once you know what to look for, you will find these tracks everywhere!
This is just a basic overview of the very detailed world of animal tracking. Many additional factors go into the art of tracking including analyzing scat, measuring gait and length of strides, noting the difference between hind feet vs front feet, knowing behavioral habits and migration patterns, understanding habitat preference, diet, and much more! My interest in animal tracks sparked in college from my very experienced professors and TAs. Learning about the tracks of many North American creatures and the evidence they leave behind creates an opportunity to see nature through a new perspective. It is exciting finding tracks and correctly identifying them because it makes you feel like a nature investigator! I encourage you all to look for evidence of animals or tracks found in the ground and try to figure out which local critter they could be from!