Date: Oct 13, 2025 approx noon.

Place: a building site off Kortright Rd W., south end of Guelph.

Conditions: an area of dirt and mud cleared by bulldozers for a new housing development. It had rained quite a lot over the last few days. This area is next to a wetland dominated by Buckthorn, Cattail, rushes, common reeds etc.

Goal: just a quick check for tracks after the rains. This is a nice area for tracks because of the cleared ground.

References:

Eastern Cottontail:

Here are some measurements:

Group length: 11 ”
Trails width: 4 ¹⁄₄ ”
Stride: 27 ³⁄₄ ”
Intergroup distance: 17 ”

Measurements are all consistent with those in Lowery and Elbroch. Tracks come to a point at the forward edge of tracks. 5 toes on the front foot, but toe 1 is greatly reduced and not always seen. We do see this toe in the lowest (front) track of the first three photos above. Hind tracks show 4 toes. I guess to all intents and purposes we can assume there will be 4 toes front and back, and maybe even fewer than 4 toes may show. The tracks are very asymmetric. Note: Lowery calls the above gait a gallop, however I think Elbroch’s designation of a bound is more accurate.

White-tailed deer:

Stride: 22”

Based on the stride and the pattern of tracks (direct register) the deer is doing a diagonal walk. I think these tracks are quite recent as we can see loose dirt fragments thrown up in the 2nd and 3rd photos.

Gray Squirrel:

Stride (inter-group distance): 15”
Trail width: 4 ³⁄₄ ”
Group length: 4 ¹⁄₄”

Measurements and gait pattern consistent with a Gray Squirrel bounding (Lowery calls this gait a gallop). The 4 toes on the front and 5 toes on the hind tracks clearly visible. It’s nice to see that the rule of thumb for the trail width holds (width of 5 fingers).

Domestic cat & cottontail:

These photos are fun because we have two different animals here. There are cottontail tracks (pointed at front), but also what I think are the rounded, somewhat asymmetrical tracks of a domestic cat. The tracks are quite small, so maybe this is from a young cat?

Striped Skunk:

Stride: about 4”
Trail width: about 3”

I think this is a Striped Skunk doing a direct register walk. The claw marks of the front feet are clearly visible. The rough measurements of the stride and trail width are on the lower end (see Elbroch). It is interesting to compare the gait in this post with the one discussed in my previous post (an overstep (pace) walk). Maybe the skunk had to take more care here while walking through mud.

Canada Goose:

Finally, I include some Canada Goose tracks as they were everywhere. As we can see, sometimes the webbing shows and sometimes it doesn’t.

Final thoughts:

I’m getting faster at writing these blogs. This is important because I need to get sufficient dirt-time for learning. However, I should be careful to not sacrifice quality for quantity. Each time I review an animal, even an animal that I think I know well, I learn more – and the information begins to enter my long-term memory.