Identifying Animal Tracks: Mammals, Birds, and Other Animals of the Eastern United States
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About this ebook
"The book shows lots of tracks in drawings to help you. Birds, insects and mammals are included in this highly informative book. Get a copy today." — Texas Kitchen and Garden and More
You can find them almost anywhere: crisscrossing a snowy meadow, etched in the mud of a stream bank or the wet sand of the sea breach, traced in the dust of a country road. Animal tracks are the signatures of the animals themselves and a fascinating part of nature study.
Prints and tracks not only identify the animals that made them, but reveal much about animal anatomy, relationship to the environment, habits, and behavior. Animal tracks tell fascinating stories to those with the skills to decipher them.
This book will give you those skills. It is a comprehensive guide to the prints and tracks of over 100 species of mammals, birds, frogs, toads, salamanders, snakes, lizards, turtles, insects, and other invertebrates — all common to the eastern United States. A special finding key will help you quickly identify the tracks of dozens of common birds and mammals. This key includes information on size of prints, type of gait, habitat, geographical range, and other distinguishing characteristics. In addition, the author has include dozens of his own drawings to aid in identification, and suggestions for making your own drawings, photographs and plaster casts of the tracks you find.
For naturalists, campers, hikers, biologists, scouts — and nature lovers, this book is an ideal introduction to a relaxing, enjoyable pastime, and an opportunity to gain greater knowledge and understanding of the natural world.
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Identifying Animal Tracks - Richard Headstrom
Copyright © 1971 by Richard Headstrom. All rights reserved.
This Dover edition, first published in 1983, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the work originally published by Ives Washburn, Inc., New York, in 1971 under the title Whose Track Is It?
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Headstrom, Richard,1902-Identifying animal tracks.
Reprint. Originally published: Whose track is it? New York : Washburn, c 1971.
Includes index.
1. Animal tracks — Atlantic States. 2. Animal tracks — United States. 1. Title.
QL768.H4 1983 591.5 82-17814
9780486142968
Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation
24442313
www.doverpublications.com
To My Wife
Preface
In the Bulletin of the Massachusetts Audubon Society of January, 1950, I published an article called Whose Track Is That? A Guide to Animal Tracks Found in Massachusetts,
which was afterwards issued as a reprint. Several years later I published some material in A Curriculum Guide for Intermediate Grade Teachers, printed by the Massachusetts Department of Education, under the title of Tracking Animals.
During the past twenty years this material and the reprint have been so extensively used by various groups interested in the outdoors and by the public at large, that it recently occurred to me that it might prove worthwhile to expand the material originally published by the Audubon Society to include the tracks of all the mammals found east of the Mississippi and to include also material on the tracks of other animals such as birds, frogs, toads, salamanders, snakes, lizards, turtles, and insects and other invertebrates.
Hence the present book, which does not presume to be the definitive work on animal tracks, but is merely a guide to help those of us who enjoy the outdoors to identify the tracks that we are apt to come across in the snow, in the mud of a streamside, in the sand of a pond shore and in that of the sea beach, and to learn how to read the stories they tell.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Preface
Introduction
PART I - TRACKS OF MAMMALS
How to Use the Key
Key to Mammal Tracks
Notes
PART II - TRACKS OF BIRDS
Prints and Tracks of Birds
Key to Bird Tracks
Notes
PART III - TRACKS OF REPTILES
Prints and Tracks of Reptiles
PART IV - TRACKS OF AMPHIBIANS
Prints and Tracks of Amphibians
PART V - TRACKS OF INSECTS AND OTHER INVERTEBRATES
Prints and Tracks of Insects and Other Invertebrates
APPENDIXES
Index
Introduction
We may have the first snowfall in November or December, or even in October. Depending on where we live, we may not have more than a dusting before the new year. But I can remember as a boy going coasting on Thanksgiving.
We view the first snowstorm with mixed feelings. In a way we like to see the snow again but when we think of the hazards it creates in our modern way of life, we are not too sure. But it is always a problem to those wild animals that are active during the winter season, since food often becomes scarce or inaccessible. To be aware of this, you need only look out the window at your feeding station and watch the birds there. The birds, however, are not your only visitors. Though you may not see some of them you know these other visitors have been there because they leave their calling cards in the snow.
To many of us such calling cards might as well be blank, for unless we actually see these visitors we don’t know who they are. But if we can read the cards, their identity is easily revealed.
To learn to identify the animals whose footprints we find in the snow is not very difficult, for every animal makes its own distinctive prints or series of prints in the form of a track pattern. You need only go out to the nearest field or patch of woods after a snowstorm and compare a few of the prints that you find in the smooth sheet of new snow to see that they are as different from each other and as distinctive as a series of signatures in a hotel register.
Not only do the prints help us identify the animals that made them, but the arrangement of the prints teaches us something of their habits. As you watch a gray squirrel cavort in your backyard, in the woods, or in a city park, you can imagine what sort of prints it will leave in the snow. You will find that prints of all four feet are made with each bound and that the prints of the two hind feet are paired; that is, they are side by side and in front of the prints made by the front feet. And what may seem strange is that the hind feet prints indicate the direction of travel; a fact that can easily be verified by looking at the toe marks.
All mammals that travel over the ground by bounding — mice, rats, squirrels, and rabbits — make the same kind of track patterna though the position of the front feet prints may differ; that is, they may either be paired or one may be a little in advance of the other. Paired front feet prints are typical of the bounding animals that climb, such as the red and gray squirrels and the deer mouse. Alternate front footprints are mostly made by terrestrial mammals such as the rabbit and the meadow mouse.
One set of prints that is common everywhere is that of the domestic or house cat. A glance at the prints is enough to see that the animal walks on its toes, for only toe marks appear in its prints. The prints form a single line because the cat commonly puts a hind foot into the impression formed by a front foot. The dog and the fox also walk on their toes but the cat’s prints are easily distinguished since a cat walks with its claws retracted and hence claw marks do not appear in its prints. At first glance the track of a dog may appear to be much like that of a fox but a careful comparison will show that the prints of the fox are more or less in a straight line and that the toe pads of the dog are somewhat larger, though in deep snow it is difficult to distinguish toe pad marks from claw marks.
Animals that walk on their toes are said to be digitigrade. These animals usually rely on speed to overtake their prey or to escape from their enemies. In addition to the three already mentioned, others that travel on their toes are the deer, moose, cow, goat, sheep, pig, and horse. All make fairly distinctive prints that are easy to identify once you get to know them.
Animals that have no need to hurry, either to capture their food or to elude their enemies, such as the porcupine with its quills and vegetarian diet and the skunk with its potent scent gland and omnivorous diet, are more elaborate in their movements and hence place both heels and toes to the ground. These animals are said to be plantigrade as also are the bear, raccoon, opossum, and woodchuck whose track is not often seen in the snow since it hibernates during the winter season. All of these animals make their own characteristic prints and track pattern though the track pattern may vary according to the gait. Thus the skunk’s prints may sometimes form a diagonal line pattern.
In the track of some animals, the tail leaves a mark and thus becomes an important feature of the track pattern. In the track of the muskrat, for instance, the tail mark forms a strong curving line between the row of footprints. In that of the deer mouse it forms a straight continuous line between the rows of footprints as well as between the bounds unless they are of unusual length. When the cottontail sits, its tail makes a small round mark in the snow.
The sparrow, junco, goldfinch, and other winter birds also leave their prints in the snow. The size and shape of the prints, the number of toes and their arrangement serve to identify them and to provide us