Wildlife Sightings
Animal Signs and Tracks found at the Wildlife Tracking Intensive Field Day with Alcott Smith:
Saturday: Pineridge Ski Area, Perigo Hill, Poestenkill, NY: We had a great day. The snow conditions were perfect. We saw tracks of red and gray fox, coyote, mink, river otter (including slides), fisher, porcupine, deer, bob cat, raccoon, grouse, owl (or hawk), red squirrel, gray squirrel, mice, shrews, etc. The foxes were all over the place. The fisher was only minutes ahead of us having actually crossed the tracks of one of our party that had gone scouting ahead at lunch time. It wandered all around on the side of a hill where there was a porcupine trail and several dens. But the best of all was the bob cat. They were the best bob cat tracks I’ve ever seen. We followed them for a while and found some picture perfect prints. We also saw where a gray fox jumped up into the crotch of a tree, (which had some now in it that held tracks), then jumped down onto a stump and then to the ground.
Sunday: Dyken Pond Center, Grafton, NY:
Mouse (either White-footed or Deer)
Red Squirrel
Porcupine – den and the actual porcupine inside the den!
Long-tailed Weasel or Ermine
Fisher – including tracks, scent posts and where it had bedded down for at least one night
Red Fox
Gray Fox
Eastern Coyote
White-tailed Deer
YIKES!
One of our sharp-eyed environmental educators spied this little guy on our grounds one morning. We all had to blink and look twice to believe what we were seeing. This phenomena is rousing the worried-fascination of the science community. A bit more background can be found at the following link: http://www.livescience.com/animals/081029-deformed-salamanders.html
Have you spotted wildlife in your backyard or on your last trip to the Center? Go to this link to log your sighting:
http://www.communitywalk.com/map/22362
Bird Walk May 17, 2009
Walk led by Tray Biasiolli, New York State Parks
Ovenbird
Blue-headed vireo
Chickadee
Rufus throated hummingbird
Blackburnian warbler
Yellowthroat
Red-winged blackbird
Black-throated green warbler
Balck-throated blue warbler
Baltimore oriole
Tree swallow
Nashville warbler
Song sparrow
Phoebe
American robin
Flicker
Brown creeper
Blue jay
Junco
Pine warbler
Swamp sparrow
Yellow-bellied sapsucker
Mourning dove
White-throated sparrow
Canada warbler
Mallard
Hermit thrush
Yellow-rumped warbler
Redstart
