marks in land

Apart from the most common tracks like the footprints, excrements, rests of food and haunts, there is another series of tracks, much less common, of diverse activities as random as it could come to imagine.

Many of them will be incomprehensible, but with the time, some will stop to be it, but apart from the intrinsic difficulty at the moment of analysing these tracks, there would be necessary to add two factors: the first one is the instability of the populations of mammals, the majority in expansion thanks to the changes produced in the last years for very diverse motives.

The second aspect are the new species that are adding to the Iberian fauna: American mink, European mink, coypu, beaver, Barbary sheep and others that can be added in a close future. On the other hand, there are frequent reintroductions for different motives: bear, Spanish ibex, roe-deer, otter, etc.

Marks in land

This matter is complicated by the multitude and variety of marks and of species that realize them, not only of mammals. By Simplifying it, it is possible to do a division between the marks left by activities related with the soil, like feed, mark or roll about and those who stay by chance as testimony of social conducts: a fight between males of hare, a loving courtship, a throw of hunt, the game of a few puppies, etc. actually, we will often remain that without knowing the meaning of a track in the soil, guessing the causer, is difficult if we don’t have the practice. The marks that leave the activities related to the soil can be simplified in three groups basically.

Scratches

It is not frequent to find a few scratches on the ground, but it is easy to know the author, as the cat urinates but you can see the scratches in the dry soil. Also the otter leaves its nails on the sand; rarely the fox scratches the soil before defecating, thing that also does the wolf. It is in the great canid where the scratches reach range of social expression, being used to mark the heart of the territory, as the dogs do it in the park.

Wallows

Many animals wallow on the ground, but only some smalls ones where this activity has sufficient relevancy as to leave a few showy tracks. Cats loves to wallow very often, sometimes in the same site during long time leaving a circle of smoothed land. The wild boar and the deer like the baths of mud, especially the pig that takes advantage of any rest of mud, leaving a slight mark or an authentic puddle of up to 1m of depth, which he makes himself if it is necessary. The walls of the puddle turn out to be smoothed, with the marks of the fur and stuck in the mud. The wild boar uses the trees, which he finds in the surroundings, to scratch himself and to clean himself from mud and parasites.

Nourishment

Here the thing is more complicated. If there are scratches of great size they can be of the bear, the badger and especially of the wild boar, which turns out to be amazing. A small scratch or dig can be from the fox or the badger digging worms up, the wild boar bulbs a store of food (squirrel, weasel or fox), its content can be a track; a nest of arvicolinae and even a burrow attacked by the fox, the badger or the wild boar, a honeycomb of wasps dug up (fox, bear or badger)...

In some occasions, the author leaves its footprint accidentally, or an excrement on purpose as the fox or the marten. In others tracks, the author do not appear, but generally a shallow hole is not isolated, appearing in the surroundings many nests of arvicolinae,dug up, tens of scratches in search of worms and certainly the wild boar.

Wild boar bath

Wild boar teeth

Roe deer teeth

Deer, normal excrements and excrements of mud

Otter toboggan (foto: José Carlos de la Fuente)

Dog scratches

Otter scratches with excrement

Beaver,marking with castoreum

Roe deer,scratch under one brand

Badger

Rabbit

Key marks in land

The small holes or scratchers of the carnivorous usually show the stamp of the nails and it does not turn out easy at all to differ, as the fox of the rabbit or the badger, though it could seem very simple.

When the animal does pressure, the fingers are deformed and expand.

Attention must be paid in the impression of the nail, thinner in therabbit and the fox, 1-2mm and thicker and blunt in the badger, 2-3mm.

An important part of the scratchers of the rabbit are very typical, oval, others not so much, but the land turns out to be just from the edge separated, not thrown.

Fox and badger throw it, but when it is a question of larvae they separate it but in the shape of hand fan, not elliptical as the rabbit. The thickness of the nails differentiates them. When the wild boar digs often it appreciates the mark of the mug.

Attention to the big anthills in mountain constructed with pines needles and dug by the bear, as also the carpenters dig the birds.