Did you know… ?
Your favourite hiking trail is a great place to look for wildlife tracks in winter. Ecological meeting places and wetlands are also rich territory, writes Larry Pynn in our Winter 2008 cover story, “especially the transition area between meadow and forest, which provides animals with both food and cover into which they may escape.”
Here are a few other tracker tips to bear in mind when trying to decode animal tracks:
* River otters are agile in water but rather clumsy on land. Look for long slide marks between prints, and note that the otter’s webbed back toes may only be visible in mud tracks.
* Marks left in the snow by a cougar’s tail can help you distinguish between this cat and the equally elusive lynx.
* The hind toes of the snowshoe hare spread to form a broad “snowshoe” four to 12 centimetres wide. Watch for intercepting tracks of the hare’s many avian and mammal predators.