Cabin fever

ORRINGTON – Feeling a little cabin feverish after a week of cold weather, two Fields Pond Audubon Center staff members, experienced trackers, decided to go on a quick tracking excursion at lunchtime. There was still a little snow on the ground, so the conditions were pretty good.

So off we went and started looking. The usual array of deer tracks was evident in the field as well as a nice line of dainty fox tracks. A little farther into the woods however, we found a more intriguing track – quite puzzling, it turned out.

This track had five toes and a fairly broad foot. We debated what animal it could have been. Several common mammals show five toes in the track. A raccoon has a long narrow foot with five long toes, a porcupine shows five shorter toes but has a broader, shorter foot.

Fishers and otters show five toes, but their tracks are arranged in a two by two pattern as they bound. This animal was more of a walker than a bounder. The tracks looked somewhat like raccoon tracks, but not quite. We felt rusty at winter tracking. We decided to follow these tracks to see where the animal was going. Would it leave other clues to its identity?

Tracks to well-trodden path

What started out as a single animal track soon became a path where many animal feet had trod. So we followed some more. Puzzled by the tracks, we looked for more clues like hair or feeding sites or a den. We looked high, we looked low, but we kept following the animal trail.

Bonanza! We found a den! Eventually the tracks led to an area that had some urine spots and dirty footprints and aha! Quills on the ground, and a big pile of scat coming out from a hole at the base of a big ash tree! It could be none other than the den of a porcupine!

We had solved the mystery, but still we were puzzled. The tracks hadn’t quite looked like porcupine footprints. How could we have confused raccoon tracks with porcupine tracks? They are quite different. Were our tracking skills rusty from the summer? It seemed we needed to brush up on winter tracks.

Next week: We will share part two of this nature mystery!

Send sightings, comments, or questions to fieldspond@maineaudubon.org