Tracking in the Outdoor Classroom
David Kirk and his 1-year-old granddaughter, Ellie, bundled up for the Valentine’s Day animal tracking hike.
Sisters Sophie, 9, and Lena, 5, get up close to a stuffed bear before shuffling outside in the snow.
“Nature” Don McGuirk demonstrates to the group how an animal’s tracks will be spaced differently if they’re in a sprint.
Don McGuirk points out tracks likely left by a fox. The freshly fallen snow made depressions harder to spot and identify, but a keen eye helped spot them.
McGuirk circles individual tracks in the snow with his finger, isolating the probable raccoon prints for everyone to see.
After he noticed some of the girls thumbing at a milkweed husk, McGuirk explained the plant is a favorite food of the endangered Monarch butterfly.
McGuirk pulls a cottony cocoon from what’s supposed to be a Blue Jay house, showing how even habitats designed for specific specifies can be hijacked by others.
Fresh fallen snow made it difficult to identify specific animals’ tracks, but “Nature” Don McGuirk didn’t leave kids without some practical tips to make some good bets.
“This line through the brush, probably a fox, because they typically run out straight ahead,” he said, “but if you don’t look close, it looks like the beginning of the trail could have been a fallen branch, but it keeps going.”
Lynne and David Kirk carried their 1-year-old grandchild, Ellie, as their two others – Lena and Sophie – skipped ahead, insisting to the Outdoor Classroom instructor that the tracks were left by a bear.
Both girls had just come face-to-face with a taxidermic one before setting out on a roughly one-mile hike to spot tracks of animals more likely to live on the wooded grounds of the Boyce Mayview Park.
Birds and burrowers it seemed were likely candidates to see this Valentine’s Day morning, so McGuirk told the nine-member group to keep their eyes peeled for spots they might hang around
“Think of their needs,” he said, “water, food and shelter. Look near streams, bases of trees. So don’t look for squirrel or similarly sized animal tracks along a human trail in the winter: no reason to be there. Now, animals with fur, they’re living underground. They can slow their bodies’ metabolism down … If you get more than three feet down, it’s 55 degrees, quite comfy for these critters.”
Pennsylvania’s best excavator, but perhaps least favorite forecaster, provides plenty of homes for local varmints.
“Groundhogs dig holes and everybody else uses them. They’ll move out after a season and skunks, rabbits, foxes, even snakes will go in there if they have enough room,” McGuirk said.
McGuirk insists on his “Nature” nickname because of his extensive resume as an environmental educator. His third year with the Outdoor Classroom in Upper St. Clair, he teaches groups in Fox Chapel and astronomy at Community College of Allegheny County as well as preschool at the Jewish Community Center.
There was barely a minute on the hour-long hike that McGuirk wasn’t imparting outdoor wisdom.
“Sometimes, you’ll see back paws in front of front paws,” he said with outstretched arms, “and that’s because it’s running. A dog, you’ll see this, where the back paws come underneath when it’s in a sprint. You can tell movement and weight from a print.”
And he was quick to answer kids’ curiosity.
“That’s milkweed,” he said as 9-year-old Sophie plucked at a seedless husk.
“This is a favorite of Monarch butterflies. There aren’t too many of them around anymore, but they like this, so you should have some in your garden to help feed them,” McGuirk said. (A Feb. 9 announcement from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service said the weed killer Roundup and similar products have been responsible for eliminating nearly 1 billion butterflies, or 90 percent of their population.) McGuirk also stoked their curiosity with riddles.
“What tracks will appear in the middle of a field, then disappear?”
“Birds!,” said Sophie and her 5-year-old sister.
“Right,” said McGuirk. “Robins, blue birds – they don’t fly away for winter.”
He pointed to a birdhouse he explained was modified to specifically attract blue birds.
“These blue bird houses, they’re set up every 30 yards overlooking this field. That’s their range. Go out, get insects, seeds, come back. And the hole on them is tiny, and we put on this mesh wire surrounding the hole. Blue birds fly directly into the hole, whereas other birds need to land onto something and then go inside,” he said.
Yet that did little to keep some sort of insect from seizing the shelter as its own.
“Yeah, something’s in here. Not sure what, but it’s got some sort of cocoon it was living in,” he said as he pulled apart what looked to be a wad of cotton.
As the hike wrapped up, a spate of bundled joggers and their dogs galloped past in the nearly-foot deep drifts of snow.
“You can tell if a dog is trained to go on a run or not,” he said as the joggers ran out of earshot,
“Tracks beside human prints, they’re good. Tracks you can’t make out mean that dog’s pulling that poor owner so fast they’re trampling over the dog’s tracks.”
The Outdoor Classroom hosts programming for children, educators and families year-round. Upcoming events include a Full Moon hike in March. Details at www.theoutdoorclassroompa.org.