Great Scat, What Was That?

GREAT SCAT, WHAT WAS THAT?  

December, 2007/January 2008 issue

As a naturalist, I receive numerous photos weekly by e-mail for identification. Pictures of birds, flowers, insects – they all trickle in from curious outdoor enthusiasts, eager to have a name assigned to an item they have found. I am seldom surprised by anything that comes up on my screen. I once received a photo of a pile of coyote dung beside a deer carcass from someone in New Jersey. When asked how he learned about me, he quickly replied that he typed “fecal matter” into an Internet search, and up popped my name! Turns out I had once written a column on scats, and the column was still archived on my website.

While some might consider such photos repulsive, as naturalists we like to think of them as terms of endearment, you might say. In Nature, nothing we find in the wild is offensive. We poke through animal remains, examine bones, check out owl pellets, and there are very few of us who do not carry a pocket knife. You never know when you might want to peel an apple, or open the stomach of a carcass to examine its contents. And, yes, we pay particular attention to animal droppings, so it didn’t come as a great surprise to open an e-mail one morning, and find a full screen photo of a heap of animal dung staring back at me, actually sent to me from this very newspaper.

Why do we embrace something that most people would find revolting? Attribute it to wanting to be a part of Nature, a natural curiosity about those things around us, and how everything fits into the natural scheme of things. So much so that we want to know at all times, the make-up of everything that is out there around us, or may have passed our way before we arrived. Therefore scats, tracks and signatures that animals leave behind in their day to day activities form important clues from wildlife, since most species have a limited interest in hanging around and making our acquaintance.

I always love telling the story to participants on our hikes, nervous about the possible presence of bears, about the key features in separating black bear dung from that of the grizzly bear. I explain that black bear dung is usually dark in colour and often contains seeds from the berries they eat. As their attention is piqued, I then explain that grizzly bear dung contains small bear bells and smells like pepper spray.

Seriously, there are books out there in the marketplace that assist one in identifying animal droppings. They join the plethora of identification books on other weird and wonderful byproducts of nature such as splay (bird droppings) and flattened fauna (road kills).

Scats are different enough that an informed observer can usually identify many animals by this tool alone. One guide book I own seems to have a penchant for comparing scats to familiar food items throughout its contents. For example, Fall moose pellets are compared to olives or unshelled pecans, those of the snowshoe hare are ‘like plump Smarties,’ the scats of raccoons are ‘sausage-shaped,’ and have a ‘fruity aroma,’weasels leave scats like ‘string beans.’ And in describing the droppings of a deer –   ‘as small as peanuts to as big as jellybeans, often raisin-shaped’.  The only comfort one gets from reading any of this is that the skunk produces something akin to an ‘AA battery’.

Examining dung can tell us a lot about the animals and their movements – pardon the unintentional pun. Bear scats, for example, can tell us what success they have had in finding food. In them, will be berries and seeds, and many of these may be identified with the naked eye, without getting too personal with the scats themselves. I explained this to a grade two student once on one of our hikes who I found playing with a single pellet from a snowshoe hare – of course, he didn’t know what it was at the time.

  Even season dictates what colour these scats should be, and what the animal has eaten. Those of the snowshoe hare are dark brown in winter, and black in the summer. Porcupine scats are soft and smooth and more irregularly shaped in the summer from a diet of leafy, green vegetation, but oval and elongated during winter. And dairy farmers know all too well how the brown cow patties of winter from a diet of fibrous hay, can differ from the green, almost hazardous, patties of spring, after a diet of rich, green grass!

These droppings that animals leave behind are helpful in interpreting who’s out there with us, but probing these signatures is not something that should be done with reckless abandon. Canine scat can contain the eggs of parasites, and airborne eggs can be inhaled if stirred up in old powdery droppings. Such examination should always be done with rubber gloves and a stick, and wearing a dust filter.

Ian Sheldon, in his book, “Animal Tracks of Ontario” admits that the closest we may ever get to some animals will be through their tracks, and these can inspire a very intimate experience. “Remember, you are following in the footsteps of the unseen – animals that are in pursuit of prey, or perhaps being pursued as prey.”
A fresh dusting of snow one day last year provides a magnificent opportunity to identify mammal tracks – the distinctive prints of the snowshoe hare, and the copious amounts of squirrel tracks. Sharp eyes may spot other tracks which “don’t look right.” Weasel tracks we determined one day  judging from the bounding gait. Others in winter turn out to be small rodents – deer mice, we are forced to believe, since meadow voles rarely emerge from their labyrinths to leave prints of any kind.

As with the pursuit of any interest, the more you discover, the more you will want to know, and the more you will learn, and understand. It takes many years to become proficient in the art of interpreting the tracks and scats of animals, beyond the skill of simply identifying their owner, but forming an image of what the animal may have been doing when it passed by. Even bird study requires many years of dedication. Learning their identities is quite straightforward, but committing the songs of more than 300 species to memory is a challenge. Now, after more than 40 years in the field, I can claim that I know the songs and call notes of all 300 and more species in eastern Ontario. But now that I have finally reached that pinnacle in my career, at 63 years of age,  I am finding it more difficult to pick up some of the higher frequencies. With mammal tracks, it is apt to be failing eyesight that adds challenge to tracking.

The forest in winter may look deserted. However, if your senses are still keen, you may be surprised that you are not alone on your winter hikes They’re out there – we just need to probe a little.