Curious people are my favorite

For those of you who haven't been paying attention, I'm currently in West Virginia at the New River Birding and Nature Festival, a week long festival of blissful birding, botanizing and other enjoyments of nature, ecology and natural history.

There are many, many great aspects to this festival, one of which is that we all have one thing in common: a curiosity for the natural world. It might be just birds, or birds and plants, or birds and plant and moths... no matter what the subject matter is, everyone is here to learn something and see something new, and to experience nature in all her glory.

Since I am naturally very curious myself, it makes sense that I like to hang out with other folks who are curious, too. When the curiosity is over a shared interest, then we understand perfectly why a group of people would choose to stand around and look up in the trees for a long, long time in search of a bird.

But for all the time we spend looking up in the trees for birds, we spend almost an equal amount of time looking at the ground for any number of things. Insects. Plants.

Nina photographing cinnamon fern fiddleheads.
Poop Scat.

Geoff Heeter photographs Jim McCormac photographing bear scat.
Not only do we look at poop scat (we need to be adult and professional about this, right?), we get EXCITED about it. This was a big fresh black bear pie. Our field experts estimated it was a few days old, and it was mostly comprised of leafy green vegetation. It didn't take long for the serious investigation to begin. You will notice in the photo above that the fellow in the top left corner is coming at the pile with a stick. It was by prodding into the pile that we could get an idea of what the bear had been eating.

Of course, when you have a find this good, you have to share it with everyone!


Our intrepid scat sniffer and co-trip leader for the day, Rudy Gelis. If you ever want to go birding in Ecuador, Rudy's your man.

So, yeah... curious folk are cool. So is this festival. I'll tell you all the other reasons why in the coming week.

Preoccupied with poo

I apologize, but there will be an interruption in my reporting on my GBBC experiences. I'm preoccupied with poop.


Fresh(-ish) calling card... but who left it?
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we came along some animal excrement while hiking the abandoned rail bed at Lake Hope during day 3 of the GBBC. When I first saw it, I assumed it was someone's pellets (coughed up indigestible matter). I didn't think it was scat because I had never seen such a long continuous strand of poop before! But then again, I've never really seen a pellet before, either, so why did I go in that direction in the first place? I dunno. Birds on the brain, I guess.


Degraded poo
Anyway, this Science Chimp in training could not let a good nature mystery go unsolved, so I hit the ol' Google up for some information. Since I said that the material looked intestinal in shape, I figured it was more likely someone's poop rather than something an animal coughed up, so I started looking for info about scat.

After looking at various photos and reading descriptions, I'm fairly certain it is coyote scat that we're looking at here, for the following reasons:

• The presence of hair would indicate that we're dealing with a predator.
• Somewhere along the way I read that coyotes often follow well-defined paths, and this was right in the middle of the rail bed.
• Coyotes are certainly present in this region of the state.
• It could also be fox scat, but according to info found on the web (sorry, I can't find my source page now) it is most likely coyote scat based on its size (the diameter and length of fox scat is apparently smaller than that of coyote scat). The length of these pieces was surely a good 6", and it was at least 1" in diameter.

I wish I would have taken more photos, but I'm sure 2 poo photos is more than enough for some. By the way, while I was doing various "scat" searches, I came across the most awesome thing: a scat scarf! Check it out!
It is described as follows

SCAT SCARF (DENIM BLUE). This unique visual aid features scat drawings that are twice life size, sketched from samples found in the field. Includes: ringtail, shrew, bat, racoon, armadillo, opossum, mouse and vole, bear, rabbit and hare, prairie dog, porcupine, squirrel and chipmunk, gopher, marmot and woodchuck, beaver, muskrat, pronghorn antelope, fox, weasel, mountain lion, bobcat, mountain goat, river otter, pine marten, skunk, mink, badger, wolverine, bighorn sheep, elk, deer and moose. This wearable field guide is great for field trips, hikes, or as a conversation piece. Measures 21 inches square.

Interesting... no coyote scat on that scarf. Regardless, I still think it's pretty neat. It's sold by Acorn Naturalists. I'll be requesting a catalog from these folks!

All right birdy lovers, sorry for the diversion. Tomorrow we will resume our regularly scheduled program with GBBC day 4!