I've Seen the Tracks...Now Here Are the River Otters!

I was starting to think that otters are invisible...I've seen tracks on the sand bar near Index, on Osprey Swamp at the school land, and at several of the interesting places I've gone on field trips...but no otters. Then, the day before Thanksgiving, I needed to get my oil changed. I dropped my vehicle off at the garage and walked up hill to the trail at McCormick Park. I thought I'd walk a while until they called me to come get my car.

Five hours later, I got the call...still, I felt like I'd had a great day, and I would not have seen this pair if it had only taken the hour I expected. The River Otter (Lontra canadensis) is a member of the mustelidae family. They are both playful and wicked carnivores - kind of like me!

This pair seemed to enjoy looking at me as much as I enjoyed watching them...they hung around for about 20 minutes while I shot pictures until my camera battery ran down. I'm really glad that I got to see these beautiful animals - the trail is just 2 blocks from Highway 203, and the trail is used by walkers (with or without dogs), bikers, and the occassional horseback rider. Who would guess that otters would live so close to such an active trail?

Urban Wild Things

Early Sunday I walked down the hill to pick up the Seattle Times, and was treated to quite an interesting array of critters! Just a couple of blocks from my apartment, I found a pair of little bucks, velvet now gone from their antlers. The larger of the pair sported a sharp pair of spikes that did not quite clear his ears...I did not realize the other was a buck until I looked at the photos I'd taken. His antlers barely showed at all.
Around the corner and near the highway, I saw a large doe and 2 smaller deer, all standing broadside as if taunting me. They were on the far side of the pasture that backs up against the Starbucks parking lot just around the way...They saw me, and all three animals watched as I continued on my way...the fog was light, but did complicate getting a good photo of the threesome.
Paper purchased, I started back up the steep hill. I hoped to see the deer again, as I'd only been 10 minutes or so in getting the paper. But they were gone...
Just at the crest of the hill where the pasture meets the brushy edge, I noticed something grey and stopped to bring my camera up and use the zoom feature to look...The coyote saw me and bounded into the brush! I only got a glimpse of it, but was happy to know that my run 0f coyote sightings is not over yet!

Story in a Mud Puddle

The shallow puddle was about 10 feet long. Our instructors found the opposum, black bear and elk tracks earlier in the week. Another class had been at the site on Friday. We found the cougar track early on Saturday...it was new.

Our Tracking Intensive class is winding down -only one more weekend session to go. The guest instructor was Sue Morse of Keeping Track in Vermont. Her specialty is predators, and we spent a day near Carnation learning about black bear (Ursus americanus). The cougar track was a bonus! I'll have more about the cats later.

It's amazing what you can learn by following a naturalist like Sue through the woods on a sunny day. Along with bear fact, she threw out nuggets of information about our local Aplodontia (Aplodontia rufa), elk (Cervus canadensis) and blacktail deer (Odocoileus hemionus) as well.

Can You Guess Who Left These Tracks?

I stopped so suddenly that I almost hurt
myself when I saw these tracks on my
way to work recently...They were so clear and gave good front and back prints - I usually only find one or the other. I had to check with my Tracking Intensive instructor to make sure I had the ID right before I shared with you.
I'm still unsure when I first see a new track, and even though I thought I knew what it was after checking the field guides, I doubted myself...mainly because I thought I had a resident one of these mammals in my yard!

Turns out I was wrong, and after a closer look at the track photos I'd taken in the snow and realized that my resident critter is a different member of this family. My neighbor hood critter is smaller, and is a Pacific Northwest native. These tracks were in a residential area, just a few blocks from the office. This tasty animal lives back in Missouri, Arkansas and Oaklahoma, and is really an introduced species here...so no reason for all my friends back home not to make a guess about it...I'm not telling until someone leaves a guess in the comments area...Click on the word comment below, and give it a shot!

Sex in the Neighborhood

There was a pair of amorous raccoons in the Cedar tree by my bedroom window yesterday.

Clara, my cat, directed my attention out the window...I noticed that she was intent on something - her tail was thumping against the window in irritation.

At first, I only saw the one...and she was not happy that I'd intruded. She's hissing at me...this photo was taken in poor light, so I played with my "fun" options on my Easy Share photo software...I kind of like the cartoon effect, and it seems to fit the situation.

It was a first for me, watching a couple of raccoons go at it in a tree. They were about 25 feet up, and on a precarious-looking limb. Sort of reminiscent of satin sheets on a water bed...

I'm not even going to speculate on what it says about me that I watched...and took pictures. I'm claiming "naturalist curiosity".

An Early Morning Gift

I stopped at the intersection before stepping out onto the road and looked to the left for traffic, then to the ...wait a minute...what's that? My head swiveled back to the left and there it was! Coyote number 6 was trotting up the hill about a block from my apartment. Given the location, it's likely the same animal as Coyote number 4, and the one who leaves scat on the sidewalks around the wooded area where a dry stream bed wonders down the hill toward Highway 203.

I reached for my camera, but before I could get it out of the bag and turned on, the coyote had disappeared into the blackberry bramble. It stopped to look at me first, and without any apparent fear or distress, it vanished. Cool!

I crossed the street and started to trail it...and found a bit of fresh animal skin that looked a lot like what was left of someone's black cat. Then I realized I'd be late for work if I didn't turn around.

Now, Wilderness Awareness School is one of the few workplaces where you can get away with being late because you were trailing an animal. However, I knew I had payroll and taxes to deal with, so I went on to work. But now that I've seen it I'll be out early with camera ready, and I'll get a picture of it yet.

Big Fish

For those of you who thought I don't know that a Bullfrog is an amphibian and not a reptile, give yourselves 30 points for noticing...Writers need editors, and mine was asleep at the keyboard.

My vacation adventures continued and I feel really lucky to have seen a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodius) catch a fish that was almost too big for it to swallow! I often see the big bird at McCormick Park and have taken many, many pictures of it. Some of them have even been good. I've watched it hunting and have missed the chance to get a pic of it diving after fish.

On Thursday afternoon, I was there with the camera when I noticed the critter was stalking it's prey. As I shot pics, it sank deeper into the water and slowly stretched out it's neck...and I missed the shot of the dive.

It came up with a fish - a big fish - and moved to shore. From the far bank, I took picture after picture as it tried to figure out how to eat the fish...I could see the fish flopping and watched the bird try to maneuver it into position...The bird paced the shoreline, shook the fish, used it's feet to try to turn it...The fish continued to flop.

Many pics later, and after I started to fear that the bird would choke on it's meal, it finally managed to swallow the fish. What a lucky time to be passing by with a camera!

I am trying to upload some pics, but there are "errors" so I'll try again later.

A Walk in the Park.

So my boss made me take a day off. It was sunny and warm on Monday, and I decided to walk down to McCormick Park here in Duvall and just wander. What a great naturalist's day!


The first thing I noticed was that there were LOTS of birds around (and in the interest of time and space, today I'll not bother with the Latin names). There were Mallards and Wood Ducks on the water, and a couple of duck varieties that I have to look up. Robins, Redwinged Blackbirds, Sparrows, Kinglets, Stellar's Jays, Thrushes, and many more were singing and/or going about the business of the day.

Plants are putting on new growth, and lots of them are in bloom. I saw that others are picking the young Stinging Nettle plants - I like mine in potato soup!

I saw a bunch of young Garter snakes sunning themselves in the leaves by a bridge abutment. They were only 5 inches long (a guess, as I didn't measure).

Iwas taking pictures of a Chipmunk that was busily eating cherry blossoms when one of the Residential Program students, Kate, caught up with me. We walked on south together and watched a pregnant coyote in a field of dandelions. On the way back, Kate found a Hummingbird nest with eggs! I'm really looking forward to my next day off!