rimrunner

You’ll see this assertion a lot in online tracking communities; it’s even part of the spiel on telling the difference between canine and feline tracks at a sanctuary where I volunteer. Claws mean dog; no claws mean cat.

First of all, that’s not necessarily true. Cats do have claws, after all, and just because they tend to keep them retracted when on the move doesn’t mean that they always do. There are no universal, one hundred percent always true criteria in tracking. Variations in substrate, in behavior, in movement, and many other variables make for tracks and sign that show up differently than you’d expect.

Secondly, stopping at a single criterion or description when IDing a track or sign risks short-circuiting the observational skill that tracking both leverages and trains. Even when I’m sure of an ID, I’ve gotten into the habit of looking for at least three indications that I’m correct. Every so often, doing so causes me to change my mind—or at least consider alternatives to my ID. If I can’t come up with three, I need to study more.

But let’s get back to cats and dogs.


It is true that the claws guideline is often a reliable starting point.

Feline and canine tracks are similar, but there are several ways to distinguish them beyond claws. To begin with, there’s the overall shape: canine tracks are generally more oval, longer front to back than side to side. Feline tracks are generally rounder. They both have four toes, but the dog’s tracks will have the middle two toes leading, while the outer toes are set further back (and, in some species such as the coyote and black-backed jackal, are almost behind the middle toes). Meanwhile, the cat’s toes are more spread out laterally. One of the two middle toes will usually be slightly ahead of all the rest, and that will indicate whether the foot that made it was a left or a right.


Here are some nice, clear canine tracks, a front and hind side by side. The overall tidiness and diminutive size leads me to ID this as coyote.

Here already we’ll run into exceptions. While the above holds true for every wild canine I’ve ever seen, and every wild or domestic feline, domestic dog tracks can vary enormously when it comes to overall shape and how the toes show up in relation to one another in the track. There’s also the question of substrate: something loose and slippery, like deep, dry sand, can cause even a canine foot to spread out laterally. I once misidentified a mountain lion track as a large domestic dog for this very reason. (Also, claws—but we’ll come back to that!)

The above can affect the placement of the toes in relation to the palm or heel; that said, as a general rule, with a canine track you can draw an “X” by making two lines starting between the outer toes on each side, and going straight to the bottom of the track, without ever crossing the heel pad. With a feline track, at least one of those lines will cross the heel pad.


Here’s a nice, clear bobcat track, found on a dirt road in western Washington.

Then there’s the shape of the heel pad. If you’re lucky enough to find a super clear and detailed track, you’ll see a more triangular shape to the heel if the track is canine, while the feline’s is more trapezoidal. The canine track will have two lobes at the rear of the heel pad, while the feline track will have three—though this is one of those details that tends to show up less clearly in messy substrate. The way that I’m giving exceptions to every guideline here hopefully highlights the importance of having more than one support for a given ID.

And that goes for claws, too. Cats use claws for two things: as weapons, and for traction. On slippery ground, such as mud, snow, or soft sand, they might well use their claws to keep from sliding.

Similarly, claws don’t always show in canine tracks. Coyote claws can be so narrow and pointed that they don’t register on harder substrate, and gray foxes actually have semi-retractable claws.


A pair of gray fox tracks. The overall characteristics are distinctly canine, but claws are not showing.

One of the frustrating things about tracking is that there are always exceptions. That’s also one of the wonderful things about it. On an eval I took recently there was so much debate about one of the stations that even the evaluators finally agreed that there was room for an alternative interpretation. I often like to say that the wildlife hasn’t read the field manuals, and even guidebooks written by experts aren’t prescriptive. Asking further questions is an invitation to look for further evidence. Sometimes, those are the claws of a cat.

(Originally posted at Following Curiosity. You can comment here or there.)

Guess what? Coyote butt!

…a little over three weeks, actually. Though I’ve had longer gaps in blogging before, lately I’ve been trying to make a more regular practice of it, for a few different reasons. The main one is that I enjoy it. Other reasons include reflecting on things in a way that accounts for the possibility that someone might read them, as well as my annoyance at how many people I know who, instead of sharing their own thoughts (however awkwardly phrased), repost narratives that are either obviously AI-generated, or (more troubling in my view) written in that rhetorical style, because that’s what’s getting shared. This mostly happens on Facebook, and is a major reason that I’m spending less time there.

Probably good for me.

The week before last, I went down to the Oregon Dunes for a three-day tracking course, followed by a CyberTracker evaluation. I’d scored a 99% on my last track and sign eval in the Pacific Northwest, and I was hoping this time around to gain that elusive one hundred. That didn’t happen, but I learned a lot and got to enjoy being in my tracking community, and those are what count.

The Dunes are an amazing combination of vast stretches of sand, and a coastal rainforest ecosystem. I’ve found salamander tracks leading across the dunes in between the forested deflation zones or larger tree islands. From the tops of the dunes you can see all the way to the sea. The shape of the landscape shifts over time, and yet there are landmarks. Dangers are few, but the one that always unnerves me are the stovepipes. The sand has buried entire groves of trees, and when these die and rot away, they can leave hollow columns behind. Step in one of these and your leg might go in up to your hip.

I’ve gone there alone a few times in spite of this, and that can be fun, in the way that chosen solitude is fun. I’ve chosen my own route across the sand and napped on the beach. But going with a group, especially a group of fellow trackers, is the best. Not just for safety reasons, but because you learn more with a group.

When I got back I spent much of the week getting ready for the community garage sale. This is a huge annual event that this year involved over 600 households. Mine was small and off the beaten path, but I still had a steady trickle of people all day. I was surprised at how popular the CDs were, but perhaps the same people who haunt garage sales are also fans of physical media. In the final ten minutes I sold off the second of two tents, a battery charger, and an old rice cooker—it still works of course, but we’d replaced it with a bigger one.

I also went to see Carmen at Seattle Opera with an old friend. Carmen has a lot about it that’s pretty problematic, mostly having to do with race, but there’s a lot you can mitigate with staging and presentation. This production was more sympathetic to its lead than some I’ve seen. (I’ve never found José, the male lead, sympathetic at all, though he’s supposed to read as normative at least. Hmph.)

And then, of course, Sunday was Mother’s Day, so I visited my parents and then went on an outing with South Sound Tracking Club.

Anyway, all that means I haven’t had much time to write, though I did complete some freelance work.

I don’t have any clever note to end this on, but that’s what’s up.

(Originally posted at Following Curiosity. You can comment here or there.)

I should perhaps begin by saying that there are two people with this name who turn up in online searches. This post pertains to the wildlife tracker, software developer, and indigenous communities advocate, not the diamond scammer.

Now that that’s out of the way…

It’s no stretch to say that I wouldn’t have been in Namibia last month, learning tracking from Ju/’hoansi master trackers, were it not for Louis’s work, which since the 1990s has focused on the preservation of and advocacy for traditional tracking skills. The CyberTracker app and training and certification organization was born from this work, leading in turn to Tracker Certification North America as well as many opportunities to train with teachers and mentors in the U.S.

I hope to meet Louis in person someday, though he’s had some health problems in recent years. Reflecting on my own recent experiences and where this journey has taken me, I’m just grateful that he followed his own curiosity and passion all those years ago, and found connections that are still growing and branching to this day.

My first tracking eval in Namibia, I don’t think I broke fifty percent.

The way CyberTracker evals work is pretty straightforward: the evaluator points out a track or sign, and you give an ID as your answer. Sometimes there are more questions: what activity or behavior is responsible for what you’re seeing; if it’s a footprint, you might have to say which foot, as well as the animal that made it. The questions have varying levels of difficulty and are scored accordingly; a harder question is worth more points if you get it right, and you lose fewer points if you get it wrong.

Last time, the ungulates got me.

A key element of tracking is knowing the possibilities. If I find hoofprints in a forest in the Pacific Northwest, it’s very unlikely to be a zebra (unless, you know, this happens). But when I was asked to assess a single-toed hoofprint on the shore of a shallow lake surrounded by tall grass in the Kalahari Desert, zebra had to be on the list of possibilities.


Two ungulate tracks, two different species. (Roan and wildebeest, in this instance.)

So did donkeys and horses, incidentally. It’s the rare location when tracking that you don’t have to consider domestic animals as well.

Similarly, in Washington State, if you find a two-toed ungulate track, you can count the number of reasonable possibilities on the fingers of one hand. On top of which, in many parts of the state, only one or two of those possibilities are going to be relevant. On my land in Thurston County, the options are deer or elk, with an outside chance of a neighbor’s goat going on a wander.

In the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, where the eval I’ve taken twice now took place, there were eight: duiker, steenbok, impala, kudu, roan, oryx, wildebeest, and giraffe.


Roan track in tricky substrate. Just as clear as in the field guides.

Discerning between these isn’t an impossible task. Giraffe feet are so large that you really aren’t going to mistake their tracks for anything else. In cases where different species have similarly sized feet—duiker and steenbok, in this instance, or roan, oryx, and wildebeest—then you have to start considering things like shape of foot, whether an animal tends to step in its own tracks or not, baseline gaits, and preferred habitats. (This is where having a wildlife biology background can come in handy, though practice and an obsession with field guides will also do the trick.)


Field guides such as this one for instance.

For my first eval in Africa, though, it was all very bewildering. Until that week I hadn’t known what a duiker was. Spending some quality time with field guides prior to the trip would have helped with that, but, well, I didn’t. This meant that I learned about the existence, behaviors, and even appearance of several species initially through their tracks. (Aardwolf was another one.) I learned that jackals have a lot in common, in terms of both tracks and behavior, with coyotes. I learned that oryxes have shorter legs relative to their body size, and therefore tend to understep when walking, so their hind feet come down short of their fronts. I learned that aardwolf tracks look a lot like hyenas’, only smaller. When I finally saw the animals that made these tracks, I could map their physical attributes to what I’d seen on the ground: the jackal’s lively trot, so like a coyote’s; the oryx’s short hind legs; aardwolves that looked a lot like hyenas, only smaller.


If I saw this in North America I’d conclude it was a small coyote.

But even my second time around, with the prior eval, several more field days with master tracker’s, and some quality time with field guides under my belt, those eight ungulates occasionally stymied me. Differences in substrate, in weather when the tracks were made, in what the weather had done since, in gait, and even in age of the animal in question were confounding factors.

Tracking isn’t just a way of knowing a landscape. Often, it also tells you how much you have left to learn.


A group of trackers in our natural environment: poring over marks in the dust.

(Originally posted at Following Curiosity. You can comment here or there.)

I’ve just returned from Namibia, where I once again had the privilege of learning wildlife track and sign from master trackers of the Ju/’hoansi as part of the Tracking the Kalahari project. I’m still going through my photos but this is an early favorite; a quick snapshot where I accidentally got great composition and lighting.

This was my second trip and a special opportunity to deepen my connection with tracking, with the land I was visiting, and the people I met there. I’m sure I’ll have more to share in coming days.

(Originally posted at Following Curiosity. You can comment here or there.)

A few Mondays ago I woke up way too early in the Longmire Stewardship Campground at Mount Rainier, in order to meet the lead researcher for a pika counting project. The object of this research was in fact to test a protocol that could be taught to non-specialists. If it worked, volunteer citizen scientists could be deployed to pika habitats, in order to gain a clearer count of the actual numbers of this species. As a tracker who does not have an academic scientific background, I’m in somewhat of a gray area where specialization is concerned.

I do know what pikas look like, though: imagine a rabbit with mouse ears, and you’re pretty close. The first time I saw them, I was on a hike with a friend near Artist Point, near Mount Baker in the North Cascades. We were on a section of trail that ran along a talus slope, with the wide bowl of a high valley spread out below us. As we moved along the trail, a raptor soared across the valley, swooping low over the valley floor.

Cue a chorus of alarm calls, erupting from all over the talus slope: the characteristic, high-pitched “Eee!” of pikas. Before long we saw them, perching on rocks to give their alarms, then scurrying into the shelter of the rocks. Pikas are a species specialized in terms of habitat: the rocks provide shelter and passage out of sight and reach of predators, and they forage in the vegetation that grows around the talus’s edges. At the right time of day you can observe them hurrying back and forth with harvested greens bunching in their mouths, carrying the forage to their haypile larders. Pikas don’t hibernate; they store up food for the winter, when forage is scarce. Perhaps paradoxically, they also don’t function well at higher temperatures, which is why they’re endangered.

When I first heard about Pokémon I thought that Pikachu was a pika. I mean, it’s right there in the name. But the character’s design was inspired by squirrels and mice, not pikas, and the name is a combination of two Japanese words.

Pikas also aren’t rodents. Neither are rabbits, to whom they are closely related; pikas really do look like rabbits that someone stuck mouse ears on. A fairly readily perceptible distinguishing characteristic is their front teeth. Rodent teeth have high iron content, giving them a yellowish or orange appearance. While lagomorphs also have prominent front incisors, they lack this hue. They also have a somewhat different way of moving, though since pikas mostly inhabit rocky slopes, finding their actual tracks is fairly difficult.

Spotting pikas themselves, though, is pretty easy, if there are any to be found in your particular location. Youtube has plenty of videos of pikas moving about and making their distinctive vocalizations. Many of these were made at Mount Rainier, even. So if this research protocol I’m helping to test proves out, visitors to the park might have an opportunity to observe these beings for themselves, but advance research into the species and its conservation.