Fluffy Feathery Post Filler

Hello Dear Readers!

I've been busy with several papers and thesis-related work, so my posting of late has been sparse and sporadic. Once the New Year rolls around (and once I get these pesky papers submitted), I'll be able to focus on some of the really fun things I want to talk about.

Here is a little teaser of one of my planned posts. It's winter, and all the shorebirds have moved on to more hospitable climes. I had a great deal of fun while collecting my neoichnology (a.k.a. modern tracks) samples this summer, and I'm missing my warmer weather and feathered friends.

One of my targets is the Solitary Sandpiper (or Tringa solitaria for the binomial) These are goofy shorebirds: they regularly sit in trees along swampy and marshy areas. They also nest in trees. When they are not pretending to be passerines (they have a hallux, but not one that is in any way useful for actual perching) they spend their time foraging for invertebrates that live on the water's edge.

What did the traces of these particular sandpipers look like? Stay tuned for next time!

These are two Solitary Sandpipers foraging by bill probing the sediment. I was very excited to see this activity up close: Solitary Sandpipers are very shy, and tend to freak out if you get too close to them.

Bill probes left by a different Solitary Sandpiper. Scale = 10cm.

I must not have seemed threatening to these Solitary Sandpipers: once they completed this particular round of foraging, they decided to have a little nap.

Sleepy sandpipers. Canada Goose tracks in the foreground.

Bird traces aren't the only traces I focus on while frolicking around in the mud (Yes, concerned campers and motorists: I am a grown woman who plays in the mud for science.) Our mammalian fauna is also well represented at these sites.

One of the questions that pops up when seeing a large carnivore print is "Cat or Dog?" Many wolf prints are misidentified as cougar prints. Dog prints all have these things in common: they almost always have exposed claws (see the sharp tips at the ends of the toes?) and the almost always have a bi-lobed metatarsal-phalangeal pad - or "heel", but it's not technically a heel, as it is made up of different bones than what make up our heel. It's more accurate to think of it as a palm or sole pad, rather than a heel pad. Regardless, this is a small wolf print. Cats have three lobes in their palm/foot pad, and almost always sheath their claws when they walk.

Stylized BIG cat prints in the cement at the Page La Brea Tar Pits Museum in LA, showing the tri-lobed pad.

Maia triple-cat-dares you to say that she is neither large nor dangerous enough to have made the prints above.

That's all I have time for at the moment. I will add that I'm finally working on a couple of papers that get to use my neoichnology collection, so I am very excited to see them in print.

Cheers!
S.A.S.