Tracking Challenge Two, Identify This Animal

Description

Tracking Challenge Two asks us to identify an animal in deep snow, mainly by gait patterns and behavior. The answer is at the end of the video. I also included some interesting nature observations along the way.

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,Tracking,gait patterns

Video Transcription

this is the second tracking mystery and today it's just about identifying this creature we're going to see its tracks as we follow them through the woods moving in a number of different gait patterns and we'll just see if we can figure it out here's where I picked up this path this trail and there's a little more a knife for size comparison and put down my hand too so you can kind of get the feeling of that more knife which will be our size comparison from here on out and right now we're just seeing the movement of this animal I'll say right away that this is an unusual gait pattern for the animal that we're tracking

here it is again and once more that clue is that this is an unusual gait pattern for this animal now we're going to get a clue balancing on a log is going to rule out a fair amount of animals so now we're up on that log and this there's our measurement again and here we can see even though these tracks are worn we can start to see a little bit more detail how cool we might be chasing here's something special and put my finger by it and see if I can zoom up a little bit you think you saw one just pop sort of teleport into the frame and there you got to see it hop these are all over snow this is a pretty low density of them but these are what are called snow fleas and they're not fleas they're actually a spring tail here's a better density of these snow fleas my theory you often see them collected in tracks like this my theory is that they fall in there and my hypothesis is that they fall in there they get sort of trapped and then maybe they call to their friends help me out then they all get stuck

we see these little guys in the winter because they're on the snow the truth is this density of spring tail it's here all year round so in the summer they're all over by our feet on the forest floor we just usually don't see them because they blend in so up here it is again this time walking over a narrow log and you can little bit see some of the detail on some of the tracks and it went straight across

and cross through here and went up to the left here's that wood metal that makes really really good cordage if you've seen that earlier video hopefully this is going to show up in this lighting overseeing a nice bounding gate yeah it's not we're seeing the agility of this animal comes across this log over that mound of snow balances across thing and right down here I'm here we're seeing a really proper bow this is more of the normal gait pattern that we usually see here it is bounding over the edge

Ravens over head down the hill it goes perfect perfect bounding okay there's one decent track you can see one two three or and then not very well registering five another decent track you might be able to see five toes in there you can start to see part of the heel pad sort of has a Halfmoon shape there's some amazing amazing marks in the street for size comparison this is the work of a woodpecker but you can tell that it's a pili ated woodpecker because of that long rectangular shape just the size and the power of these impact that's quite a beak Mendoza we're also seeing some of the habits of this creature it's really moving around doesn't sit still now we've been tracking up the whole valley and we're seeing a lot of movement just bounding bounding balancing all over the place and it's warm enough today for some unusual winter visitors in the woods in here we're able to see these are marks emerging up out of the front of the track

you

if you haven't figured out what we've been tracking I'm going to reveal it to you this is a mustelid it's in the weasel family it's called a Fisher Fisher is one of the most agile of all the mustelids mustelids are we know them as skunked with their chemical defense Badgers that are terrestrial and live most of their lives underground all the way to otters that are almost completely aquatic and so an amazing family of animals and the Fisher is is a really fun one to track because it loves trees it goes up and over never really you know very seldom goes in a straight line it's always wandering looking exploring very very fun to try to stay on its path there is one gate pattern that this particular Fisher did not leave for us so I've tried to recreate it here in the snow with my fingers not the best it's not the real thing but it will show you another really common gate pattern for these animals and its distinctive enough that from a distance if it's the right size and it's a skate pattern you often can identify it as a Fisher here it is you can see track and then two that are together and then one and up there is another set of them let me know if you knew what this animal was that we were tracking before I revealed it and also leave any experiences you've had with fisher's down in the comments if you find one of these trails it's a really fun one to follow love to hear any of your stories thank you very much for watching happy tracking you