Thursday, March 13, 2008

Foxes, coyotes and mice, oh my!


If you've been reading our blog recently, you may notice that we have a tendency to get excited about SCAT! (By the way, anyone have any guesses as to the identity of the "mystery mail object" from a few weeks back?) So, for this week's post, we were excited to discover a large amount of carnivore (that means meat-eater) scat just outside our educational yurt. We've always known that nutria live under and around the yurt, but this was a new finding altogether!
Not only did we discover the scat and trails around the yurt, we were lucky enough to go out last night with Dave Walp, tracker extrodinaire (great at lookin' at tracks). He confirmed that we were looking at carnivore scat, from either a fox or a coyote. It is more likely fox, although the size of this pile tells us it could be a coyote.
William, our resident site-host, will be keeping a look-out at night when he's here to watch for critters, and will be sure to let us know if he sees anything.

As for other animal signs to piece together this puzzle, next to the side door we found a pile of tiny bones, probably from a mouse. Just under the doorstep were these larger bones, as yet unidentified.













The wetlands are always full of surprises, especially this time of year. If we find any further evidence in this scat/bone mystery, we'll be sure to keep you posted!

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