I work part time at a golf course, raking the sand bunkers. These are shallow depressions partly filled with fine sand.
We rake the bunkers almost every day to insure a consistent surface. But this routine also means that the bunkers momentarily preserve a record of the footprints, paw prints, claw prints, and slither markings of every creature, great and small, that passes through it. I often find sandy evidence that herons, eagles, killdeer, coyotes, ducks, coots, snakes, and critters unknown have trod through the bunkers in the preceding days and nights.
Here is a sand bunker. It is that brown oval, and is about 20 feet wide by 60 feet long. My golf course has 45 bunkers. These canvases of sand reveal their secrets below the orange nebula.
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Some of you may have read my recent Bucket about glimpsing coyotes on the golf course.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
They are too quick for me to take a photo, but I can take pictures of the left-behind evidence that a coyote stalked through the bunker on its nocturnal rounds. Here is an example:
When I looked at this picture of suspected coyote prints later, I noticed other claw prints, probably killdeer or other robin-sized songbirds. In this close-up you can see a bird clawprint just to the lower left of the coyote print.
The sand retains some heat after sundown, which attracts bugs, which attracts frogs and birds, which attracts their predators.
And here is another, much larger bird claw print, probably a great blue heron. I've placed a golf course plover egg by it, for sizing comparison.
The heron's tracks were somewhat novel; the big bird walked 40 feet through the bunker, then turned around and walked all the way back to its original position. I am guessing it was stalking prey, perhaps a frog, that escaped. Then the heron returned to somewhat higher ground to resume its watch.
I compared these prints to pictures of tracks published by Harper College. http://www.harpercollege.edu/...
Now It's Your Turn What's interesting to you? Please post your own observations and your general location in the comments.
Thank you for reading. I'll work this morning so I'll respond to comments around lunchtime.
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