Who left the muddy footprints? Examining animal tracks in messy landscapes
Canada’s landscapes will be filled with plenty of 'calling cards' from wildlife as they trek through the, at-times, messy spring weather that comes with the season. Here's how you can identify the animal footprints
With spring in full force and average temperatures on an uphill climb, Canada's great outdoors is now bustling with wildlife.
Many of the animals are now on the move, leaving behind tracks, markings and other signs that show they're out and about. With the messy weather that spring often brings, the markings can be easy to spot in your local landscapes.
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The visibility of tracks becomes easier with the changing weather conditions, but even if you're looking year-round, you will "always see something," says Aerin Jacob, director of science and research at the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC).
It's just a matter of "attuning your eye to know what you should be looking for and where to look."
Wolf print. (Aerin Jacob/Nature Conservancy of Canada/Submitted to The Weather Network).
"If you know where to look [and] you know what to look for, tracks and signs are there all the time," said Jacob, in a recent interview with The Weather Network. "I encourage people to look at the edges of a mud puddle. Or, as the water in a puddle starts to dry up, you'll get more and more of that muddy edge exposed. Check out that place."
'Take a pause' before you try to identify animal tracks
In addition to mud puddle edges, Jacob recommends people to examine wet sand on a beach, and see what may have been traversing across. And, if you get another helping of snow before summer arrives--depending on where you are in Canada--there is always that avenue to examine and "see what was walking through there."
"That's my number 1 tip for people. Take a pause before you rush in to try to examine something," said Jacob.
Identifying lynx tracks on skis in Banff National Park, Alta. (Lia Chalifour/Submitted to The Weather Network)
"We're often so eager to figure out what it was, we don't stop to zoom back and see what was going on here. How many tracks are there? Are there multiple species? And then go and look at one track in particular," said Jacob.
But, you need to do some research before you attempt to locate and identify animal markings. Before you even go outside, you need to "get a sense" of the species that are in your area--helping you narrow down the possibilities, Jacob said.
"It's like having a grocery list before you go to the store, so you know what you're looking for. So, that's your first thing. And then, once you're there and you see something again, take a look around in the big picture before you zero in on one specific track," said Jacob.
After that, you should be thinking about the pattern of the tracks.
Wolverine tracks in Banff National Park, Alta. (Aerin Jacob/NCC/Submitted to The Weather Network)
"Is this an animal that hopped somewhere? Or, did it take big steps, big strides?" said Jacob.
Once you've got a track, which you're looking at more closely, measure it–– with or without a ruler, she said.
"Even if you have a pen or you take a picture of something beside your hand, that will give you a reference. How big is this relative to something I know the size of? You can be looking for the number of toes," said Jacob. "Is this an animal that has four toes, like a cat or a dog? Or, is this something that has five toes, like the weasel family. Or, is it something that has two toes and they're cloven, a hoof."
Wolf tracks in stepped-in fresh paint from construction in Banff National Park, Alta. (Aerin Jacob/NCC/Submitted to The Weather Network)
While asking all of those questions will help you to "zero in on what it could be," no single piece of information will tell you exactly what species it is, Jacob said. "You're always looking for a combination of things."
Spring sees animals becoming more mobile
With spring, animals will be on the move to explore different locales, look for sources of foos and/or finding mates, Jacob said.
So, as they travel through the different environments, particularly in stormy weather, they will often leave their footprints behind for us to discover.
"They leave their tracks. So, it just gives us this chance to see who has been there? Maybe, what were they doing? Where were they going?" said Jacob.
(Getty Images/Valeria Vechterova/676463434-170667a)
And once a footprint is left behind, sometimes it will remain intact for a long time, she said, depending on "what happens next," weather-wise.
"If it rains overnight and then in the morning you have wildlife moving by, and they're leaving tracks in there, those might last until it rains again," said Jacob. "Sometimes, when I've been hiking certain places [and] it's dry and hot in the summertime, you can still see the imprint of a really heavy animal, like a bear or a moose, or sometimes even the medium-sized ones, like a wolf."
With lingering snowfall on the ground earlier on in the season, you could still have animals that are walking on "really old snow, maybe with a thick crust on top," Jacob said. So, you will get a sense of "how big it is" based on how deep that track is or the distance between the tracks.
However, you will still have to figure out what animal left the track.
Deer mouse tracks. (Aerin Jacob/NCC/Submitted to The Weather Network)
"You won't have the conditions that will let you tell exactly what it was. The snow is old [and] it has been weathered a lot, so you won't be able to see those fine details that could help you distinguish between different species. You might have a guess," said Jacob.
What animal tracks you will see varies on location
Location is key to animal tracks and what the most common footprints are. Jacob, for example, lives on the West Coast and frequents mudflats where she will see wildlife in intertidal regions adjacent to the ocean.
"There are a lot of birds," said Jacob. "We'll see heron tracks, eagles, Canada geese. We will also see otters, maybe even minks."
And in other landscapes, such as Jacob's family camp in northern Ontario, the tracks of beavers are what you may come across. In some locales near the camp, you might see tracks of martens, even though they're not an aquatic species.
Caribou. (Getty Images)
"It's a whole variety. Everything needs to drink, and so seeing that water's edge is a great place to be looking," said Jacob.
Tracking animals can help scientists who can't be 'everywhere'
She noted that anybody, of any age, can learn to identify animal footprints. To get children involved, Jacob recommends the Outdoor Learning School and Store--a Canadian non-profit organization that offers resources and courses--which is hosting a free webinar for teachers on May 20.
"Anybody can do this. You don't have to have a ton of expertise in the taxonomy of the species or being able to identify all the minute details of some of these tricky ones. It's collecting that information and sharing it. I find it a really generous way of giving to the broader community," said Jacob.
Using wildlife movement data can help experts get a better idea of how to protect habitats, and improve the monitoring of species and their locales and migration.
Elk. (Warren Howes/Submitted to The Weather Network)
"We can't be everywhere. People have eyes and ears in all corners of the country and around the world. Having everyday people in the community contribute information like this, and putting it on a platform like iNaturalist lets us learn all kinds of things," said Jacob.
Keeping tabs on where wildlife go will tell scientists "all kinds of stuff" about the distribution of animals, as well as the timing of their movements, Jacob said.
"We need information about all of the common species. One of the things we find with conservation is that things are common, common [and] common, until one day they're not. That's what we want to prevent," said Jacob. "We want to make sure we're conserving and protecting nature, so that it will be there always."
"Nature Conservancy of Canada and other groups use that in our conservation planning, so that we're drawing from the broadest and best possible information to make good decisions."
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Thumbnail courtesy of Aerin Jacob.