Gourds

 

I took a gourd canteen making workshop with Cody Lundin at Winter Count this winter.  I brought back a lot of seeds from my gourd and some of my classmates and planted them this spring having started them in the house.  I did everything wrong from forgetting to water them to waiting to long to transpant them to the garden.  Despite my best efforts to kill them they proliferated much to my excitment.

 

 

 

 

  

Big Bobcat

I am finally posting again, sorry for the interruptions I will try to post more regularly or at least in bigger clumps.

Yesterday on the way to work I saw a huge bobcat in the middle of the day in someones front yard. I was driving, late for work and going to fast but still saw it from the corner of my eye right there in the sunshine. It was so big my very first thought was I was seeing a mountain lion. Of course it was not, it had pointed ears with white spots on them. It was as big as a smallish German Shepard, very healthy looking and moved rather slowly. I slowed down as I went past and had to back up. I do this a lot with wild animals and they often wait for me to come back for a second look, I assume out of curiosity. I had my camera right there on the seat next to me but by the time I got it out of the bag the bobcat had walked into the woods. I got out to look for it, but of course it disappeared like a ghost. When I went back to the car it appeared crossing the road in front of me. I got a couple crappy pictures of it that I will try to put up next week when I get back home.

I can see how people may sometimes mistake bobcats for mountain lions, though I am sure that is not always the case. I can also understand now how a bobcat can hunt whitetails, this animal was certainly capable of taking doe.

Andy

Winter Count

Here are some photos from Winter Count Febuary, 2008.

Tracks near the house.

Opossum tracks in the yard. Both front and hind feet are in the picture. The under step walk of the Opossum. He or she had checked my front door, found it closed and moved on. A squirrel tried to get away with this apple.

A Raccoon sat and ate this apple very recently, the water from the old apple was still unfrozen.

Some more Raccoon tracks, leaving the apple feast. This one has a routine of checking all the buildings on the property.
A nice, somewhat atypical Cottontail bounding pattern.

Another good tracking day.

Beaver Bog Swamp at Great Hollow Wilderness School in New Fairfield. Another day of perfect tracking conditions out on the swamp. Raccoon Tracks. Front track on the left, note the crescent palm pad shape.

Raccoon in their typical pacing gait. Close up of Bobcat tracks, front is to the left, hind to the right. Over step walk of a bobcat indicative of a faster walk, covering some distance quickly and efficiently.
Another overstep walk, this time a little slower.
Deer out on the ice.

Bobcat and raccoon tracks New Fairfield CT

Bobcat in as far as I can tell an overstep walk. It is possibly a rotarty lope. The conditions could not have been more perfect. Here is a raccoon coming towards the camera in its typical pacing gait.

Bear at Great Hollow.

Here are some bear tracks we found at work. They were a little old and effected by melt.

In this one you can clearly see some of the toe and claw marks. An over-step walk/pace. A classic bear thing to do.

A length of a more or less direct register walk. The bear traveled quite a distance in this gate alternating with the over-step walk above.
Some bear poop.

My friend Mal and I got out a couple weeks ago up in Wells Maine to do some tracking. Here is a White Tailed Deer skull we found left by hunters and scavenged by a smallish bird. I have guessed its size to be about that of a Jay. Only the tail marks were visible to us as it had landed and taken off right there beside the skull. There are the tail marks in front of my fingers.
Mal showed me where there has been some extensive Porcupine damage to a stand of Douglas Fir. Here is one example.
And, in my book, the coolest find of the day, as it elicited much discussion between us on gates and behaviours, are these tracks of a Coyote descending a hill in a trot on the right then ascending in a bound/gallop, depending on who’s terms you use.
The two tracks on the right side are the trot down and the four on the left belong to the up hill gallop track group. The uphill movement would have used the power of the animals rear-end hence the large space between track groups.
Andy

Tracking in Maine

I had the pleasure of going tracking while visiting some dear friends in southern Maine this weekend.

My girlfriend Deneen and I went to look at a spot she had seen deer bedded down in earlier in the day and we (by that I mean I, Deneen is much less clumsy) startled seven deer up out of their beds but not before getting a good look at a couple of them 30 or 40 yards away. They were so graceful as they bounded off.

Here is Deneen alongside one of the many beds we found. I did not count but there was more than a dozen.
Here is the most beautiful bed we saw. It is easy to see how the animal lay there and quickly rose at our disturbance.

In another area we found what I am pretty sure was a Ruffed Grouse landing and take-off. the Tail is clear in the landing and delicate wing marks are to either side of the take-off along with the body prints.

More pictures to come.

Andy

Maine Primitive Skills School of Connecticut

I am pleased to announce that I will be teaching workshops as a satellite school of the Maine Primitive Skills School here in Northfield Connecticut. Workshops and dates are on their 2008 calender now. Please check it out, there is also information about the facilities I have access to here in Northfield as well as tons of information on the Maine school.

There is a link to the Left side of this page.