Common Tracks of Southeast Alaska: A Naturalist’s Guide to Our Most “Trackable” Mammals and Birds: Where to Find Them and How to Read Their Sign

1. What they did

Richard Carstensen, a naturalist with Discovery Southeast, wrote this pocket guide to help students, teachers, visitors and budding naturalists identify the tracks of the most common mammals and birds of Southeast Alaska. It began in 1991 as a field guide for Juneau teachers taking classes outdoors in winter, and this is its third edition. Tracking and sign interpretation are the core field activities of Discovery Southeast’s winter Nature Studies Program, which takes hundreds of elementary school students outdoors each year.

The guide does not try to compete with continent-wide tracking books. Instead, it is meant to be used alongside Mark Elbroch’s Mammal Tracks & Sign (2003), narrowing the range of possible track-makers for this region, the way a regional bird checklist works alongside a national bird guide.

It contains:

• A table of which tracking habitats (muddy trails, beaches and mudflats, stream banks, yards and buildings) each species is likely to use, and which are light-footed enough to leave tracks mainly on snow.
• Tracking basics: measurements, symbols and gait patterns.
• A table of scientific names with notes on each species around Juneau.
• Hand-drawn front and hind tracks, the most common gait, and range maps for 16 mammal species or groups, plus 4 representative birds and the western toad.
• Notes on other mammals and birds, recommended field sites, a reflection on disturbance to wildlife, and a table of species distribution across five parts of Southeast Alaska.

2. What they found

Four basic questions

The guide asks trackers not to jump to conclusions, and to answer four questions: how many toes show (in the weasel family, the fifth inner toe often fails to show), whether claws show, the size of the track, and the gait. With confident answers, the maker of a track can usually be identified. Then comes “the fun part”: following the tracks to learn about the animal.

Gaits and measurements

• Measurements are foot width, stride (from one footprint to where the same foot lands again) and straddle (width across a group of tracks).
• Gaits covered: walking (hind overstepping, landing on or understepping the front), trotting, paired and diagonal hops and bounds of rodents and hares, and the 2x, 4x and 1-2-1x lopes of the weasel family. Gallops are noted as complex and not illustrated.
• In hopping tracks the front feet land ahead; in bounding tracks the hind feet land ahead.

Track size and conditions

• Track size varies within species, and tracks grow larger as they age and weather, especially in snow.
• The best tracking conditions are a light snowfall over a firm base, which can show even the toe prints of mice.
• Without snow, the best places are those where disturbance has replaced moss and vegetation with bare sand or mud: big aggrading rivers, ocean beaches and estuaries, muddy trails, stream banks, gravel pits and roadsides. The moss-carpeted rainforest understory is among the hardest places to track.

Identification tips (examples)

• A clear 5-toed front print about 1.5 inches across on a muddy stream bank near Sitka can only be a mink.
• Mink tracks can be confused with the 4-toed prints of the dog family, because the small inner toe does not always show.
• Wolf and coyote tracks resemble dog tracks; following the trail and looking at behaviour gives clues.
• House cats are tidy walkers whose hind feet often land exactly on the front prints. Lynx tracks are similar but about 3.5 inches wide.
• Raven tracks are almost the same shape as crow tracks but larger (about 5.5 inches long).
• Marten scats, unlike those of related weasels, often contain berry remains. Mountain goat hair caught in brush can mark winter refuges months later.
• Great blue heron tracks can be confused with eagle tracks, but are more slender and lack long talons.

Birds and amphibians

Bird tracks vary less between species than mammal tracks, so four species represent the main foot types: perching birds (long rear toe), swimming birds (webbed feet), shorebirds (short rear toe) and raptors (thick toes with talons). Of Southeast Alaska’s six native amphibians, only the western toad often leaves tracks, on the muddy shores of ponds.

Distribution

Mammal diversity is highest on the northern mainland (all 32 species in the table occur there) and lowest on Admiralty, Baranof and Chichagof Islands (16 each). Checking the table first can avoid many false turns in identification.

3. What they concluded

• Identification is only the first step; following tracks reveals the animal’s story.
• A patient, methodical approach to identification is especially recommended with young students, as an introduction to deductive reasoning.
• Every visit to wild places causes some disturbance to wildlife. Because contact with wild things is a basic human need but is irritating to the animals, tracking and sign interpretation can be the most respectful way to experience nature. Fluent trackers can even use their skills to avoid some wildlife encounters.
• The author hopes that, through the window of animal sign, people will gain a greater appreciation for wildlife and wild places.

4. How tracking was or was not used

The whole guide is about tracks and signs identification. It covers footprints, gaits, track measurements and snow tracks, with notes on other signs such as scat (wolf, mink, marten), feeding signs (porcupine-chewed hemlock, beaver workings, goose-nipped arrowgrass), hair, beaver haul-outs, bear trails, marmot tunnels in snow and owl pounce marks. It encourages following trails to learn about behaviour and to separate wolf and coyote from dog.

6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

• Hand-drawn track illustrations with gait diagrams and range maps for each species.
• A habitat table and a distribution table that let trackers narrow down the possible track-makers before identifying a track.
• A scale in inches on the back cover for measuring tracks in the field.

7. Implications for conservation (from the paper)

• Western toads have declined steeply across their North American range over the past three decades; familiarity with their tracks may help survey teams detect them.
• Estuaries are among the best tracking places and also the most critical habitat for bears, geese, wolves, eagles and the weasel family, so the author suggests camping elsewhere and leaving estuaries to wildlife at night.
• Juneau’s master trackers have long noticed that where there are more domestic dog and cat tracks, there are fewer tracks of almost every wild species. A dog broadcasts its scent and displaces wildlife.
• Elk introduced on Etolin Island in 1986 have spread to Prince of Wales and nearby islands, and it may now be impossible to contain their spread.