Tracking

Today we trekked though the Barrington Headwaters led by trakker Dan Gardoqui director of the White Pine Learning Center in Maine.  Dan was awesome, his enthusiasm was infectious even in the 90 degree weather.  Some of the animal species we encountered included a small Garder snake, a wood frog, scarab beetle and a hermit thrush fledgling which we helped back to his nest.  We also encountered lots of evidence of other species, aka. poop.  There was deer scat, hard little pellets, moose scat dry and larger, flying squirrel scat tiny like gerbel food, and a whole lot of porcupine poop.  In fact there was about two feet of porcupine poop piled in front of a hollowed out tree, their home.  Circling away from the tree were porcupine trails, the leaves were flattened from the use and an occasional quill could be found.  There were some other signs of the animal life as well, bite marks on the sugar maples indicated sap tapping by the squirrels.  They dig their bottom teeth into the bark and drag the top teeth along the bark to pull out the sweet tap underneath.   There was also signs of death in the forest.  The skull of a female deer between 2 and 3 years old, with its teeth still jagged ready to do more chewing.  But in the forest some good still came of this, besides being a source of food for the larger carnivores, rodents also chew the skull for a precious source of calcium.  So that's a brief synopsis of life in the Barrington woods today July 9, 2008....