Track & Sign Evaluation with Nate Harvey

We said we were taking May off of tracking club for "Staff Development." Here is what we were up to: Nate Harvey returned to Minnesota to offer a CyberTrcker Track & Sign Evaluation on May 19-20. Nine members of the tracking club participated, with eight earning certificates in Track & Sign identification. You can download the full-size photo of our smiling group with their certificates here.The evaluation covered a wide range of track and sign. Saturday was an intensive day in the field. Nate put us through the paces with 40 questions, most of them difficult "level 3" questions. Questions covered insect sign, bird tracks, mammal scat, gait patterns, and foot morphology. Sunday was a more relaxed day with just 16 questions that skewed toward easy topics such as the ubiquitous deer trails and browse sign, and familiar woodpecker feeding sign. You can see most of the tracks and sign we were asked about on the Minnesota Wildlife Tracking Project iNaturalist project page. We finished up the evaluation before noon on Sunday and, after lunch, decompressed from an intensive weekend of ID by, what else, going tracking.