Tracks

Saturday March 2 2013

The logging road is like a magnet, sucking me higher uphill, though the going is difficult. Traversing the snow is like wading through a giant 7-11 slurpy. Heavy, pulling back on your leg with every step that you sink to your knees. It was reasonable to walk on a few days ago but above-freezing temperatures has drastically changed it. Finding a meal - or escaping from being one - must be difficult now for the creatures who endure this winter landscape.

I was asked if I'm watching out for bears and cougars. Sure, I always look over my shoulders as I'm hiking, but here bears ought to be hibernating still (right??), and no cougar in his right mind would be lurching through this deep snow, wasting precious winter energy chasing prey. I hope so anyway, because I wouldn't escape anywhere fast. The term sitting duck comes to mind.


I come across large footprints, but they are difficult to decipher in this slush. They are larger than my feet - but the snow is now soft enough that the tracks could have been made by a deer many days ago, just denting the hard packed snow, but they have now melted to Bigfoot-sized platters a foot deep. From the distance between strides, I suspect elk; I discount cougar. But I still look over my shoulder as I struggle ever upward.

I'm ever hopeful of finding a barred owl feather, a treasure from the company I've been keeping at night; but I find something even more amazing.

The tracks in the snow are of a predator and prey - a bird of prey predator and prey.


There has been a struggle here. The yellow is where the pounce happened. The owl was facing toward 11:00 in the photo. The red are strokes from spread wingtips. An owl will often stand over its gripped prey, wings outstretched, covering it for a while before flying away. The green are toe prints where the owl turned to walk, moving with the prey in his mouth, stepping away from the battle scene, before he took off.


3 front toes and a back toe can clearly be seen in these 2 prints.


2 more bird foot prints, sunk deeper in the snow, probably from the owl pushing off to take to the air. In front of him are a few pieces of fur from the prey he held in his beak.


Feather prints.


A closeup of the 3 front toes and hind toe, with a clear imprint of the sharp hind talon.

I'm convinced it must have been one of the owls I heard in this very area the night before.

I find the tracks in the morning; by evening even the site of the clash has melted away.


*No, I'm not in Idaho
*The light was dull, poor for showing contrast in the tracks.
* And I think I'm right. I'm really no tracker. But I have a good imagination, and… what else could it be?

Follow Coyote

Monday December 24 2012

Follow coyote, on a bright winter day

into the canyon

below the cliff walls

across the tripping creek

past the trout pool

around the long-eared owl thickets

below the sharp shinned hawk that hunts its prey.

Follow coyote over the ice that hides his passage

down into the draw

up onto the flats

to the Owyhee mountains

to the crossroads and the parting of ways.

Follow Coyote, ghost in the snow

Jumpy

Thursday February 17 2011

All this talk about cougars, after my story on bobcat prints, and I'm looking over my shoulders.

Inches of snow fall overnight. I'm out walking in the new snow next day. Some flakes are still falling, but the temperature has risen to just above freezing. Some of the snow stacked on the needles of the pine trees occasionally slides to the ground with a sudden WHOMPF in the otherwise quiet forest. One lump lands beside me. I jump a foot in the air. Another lands behind me, WHOMMPHFF and I leap and whirl a 180 in the air, my heart thumping.


Silly, I say, it's just snow. There are no cougars out here. Haven't seen any tracks, the horses haven't been nervous. Well, sure, cougars are out here, but not right here. Surely.

Today I flounder through more fresh fluffy snow - hard packed inches of snow covered by ice covered by the new snow - graceless, noisy, incompetent. Vulnerable. My feet heavy and clumsy, grabbed by the snow with each step, sometimes sinking to my knees if I don't stay on a track.


I look over my shoulder, a lot. Not that it would help, if a cougar were close. I wouldn't see it stalking - unless it boldly walked behind me in my tracks; I wouldn't see it hiding through the trees where they grow close and the low branches drape the snow. And I'm so loud when I walk. My feet crunch, my clothing swishes, my collar creaks - which makes me jerk my head around, thinking it's something else behind me.

I'm not nervous; I don't feel anything amiss. I'm just looking around a lot. This is no different from the many other forests I've hiked through - often after dark, far away from human habitation.

And yet... there has been a lot of cougar discussion that has stuck in my head more than usual. Including the fact that you're more likely to be struck by lightning twice before being attacked by a cougar.

And, I see no cougar tracks around here... or are there?


What are these? I walked within 30 yards of this spot 3 days ago. Today I discover old tracks in the snow - big tracks. They have since softened and melted and expanded, and have been snowed in by inches of snow the last 24 hours, but there is unmistakably a track of something that has left big footprints. I can't match the stride without jumping from step to step.


Hmmm. It's not a deer; tracks are too small. Wouldn't be a bear; they should be hibernating now. Elk perhaps? Tracks still seem too small. But wait - that can't be an elk, it goes from heavy undergrowth trees, across an open spot to more heavy undergrowth trees. What else is that size with that big a stride... ??

Perhaps I'm stretching my imagination. I continue to enjoy the snow walk. But now I'm jumpy as a cat.

Cat!

Saturday February 12 2011

I wander up a hill in this Montana forest, savoring the winter snow.


The snow is heavy and wet, dragging at my feet. Deer tracks litter the snow, telling the story of a busy forest over a highway that's hidden in the summer. Without snow, the forest always looks empty. It's not.

I clumsily slop and slosh and half slide along deer highways and down a snow covered logging road - until I stop dead in my own tracks.

Cat tracks!


Small, but unmistakably (I'm hoping - I'm pretty sure) cat tracks.

Has to be a bobcat. The tracks cross this logging road and go straight up the hill.


The cat is long gone, but of course I have to follow. Up I scramble, slipping, falling, slithering, panting, grabbing onto roots and brush to keep from sliding back down; ridiculously, maddeningly graceless as I follow pawprints of an undoubtedly graceful, efficient, effortless cat.



I can't read snow as well as dirt, but with the softened, sunken print in this softened, gently melting snow, I'd say the tracks came from the night before. The cat was on a mission, tracks undeviating, heading straight up the mountainside. On a southern facing slope with sparse trees, the snow disappears, and with it, the tracks and any hint that anything passed this way.


I slide back down the hill (actually sit on my coat and slide down) and follow the tracks where they came from. Still a straight line - across the road back into the forest, over the snow-covered little creek (water flowing beneath, snow thick enough that I don't fall in), until the tracks finally fade in ice.


The snow will melt, the tracks will disappear.

But the cat will still be here... somewhere.

Snow Tales

Tuesday December 23 2008

Drive down the highway through this high desert country, and you might say, wow. Barren. Nothing there. You might even stop and get out a pair of binoculars to look around - and you would probably say Wow - nothing there.

But wait for the winter, when a snowfall reveals the secret tales of the desert, a land swarming with wildlife if you take the time to sit and watch and wait.

Wake up in the morning and find a very fresh deer kill in the neighbor's front pasture. The neighbor thought he saw cougar tracks, but they were perhaps obliterated afterwards by innumerable canine tracks. A pack of coyotes or neighborhood dogs. The deer was dragged around in a square path till it went down, or it went down and was tugged about as a carcass. Absolutely nothing left of the deer a few hours later but fur, blood, and remains of entrails. It was devoured. The Ravens and magpies also left tracks in the snow. They got a share of the prize too.

Walk up the Bates Creek drainage in the evening while storm clouds gather around the Owyhees, and winter light throws shadows in the freeways of tracks and tells more stories.

Quail tracks, wandering the snow, looking for seeds. We've had an abundance of quail this year, at least two hatchings.

Possibly quail. Too small for Ravens, too big for juncos and sparrows.

Jackrabbits in the creekbed.

These are a mystery! Anybody?

Deer and jackrabbit junction.

Mouse.

This is a coyote. Going and coming. He drags a foot or two in the snow.

The foot-dragging coyote on a jackrabbit highway.

Deer art. A party?

And my favorite, quail taking flight and landing. Soft feathers on soft snow. Bird art.












With all the tracks, you'd think I'd see birds and animals everywhere. I only flushed a hawk, some quail, and two jackrabbits. But they're all out there. And they are watching me.