What a day! When you set a date 6 months in advance so that folks can plan ahead for these outings, you never know what conditions might present themselves. The New Year's Day frozen slurry setting up icy conditions for 2 two weeks had me worried about what we might be able to see on Sunday. Then, a light 1.5" snowfall Saturday morning with a slight increase in temps from the previous 2 weeks must have released the wild ones from hunkering down! On Sunday morning, I poked my head out of my house. Tracks were all over the place and I got excited for the outing ahead.
This photo illustrates the day for me. Probably within 12 hours of the final snow flurry, the squirrel tracks were numerous and animal activity was clearly high. This is a mixture of Red Squirrel and Southern Flying Squirrel tracks (I'll get back to this!).
We started out with our normal name circle routine with the addition of one thing you are grateful for, and also one adaptation animals have for surviving the cold winter temperatures: More hair/feathers, living in the subnivean zone (living in/under the snow pack), a big bushy tail to keep your nose and body warm, hibernating, reducing metabolism, nesting/living communally, putting on fat in the fall (deer/bear) or putting on enough fat during the winter day to survive the winter night (Chickadee), hoarding food (squirrels), migrating (birds), reduced movement (deer), the ability to adjust how an animals blood moves through their body and can keep their body warm (bird's legs, beaver's tails). Peter Marchand's "Life in the Cold" is an excellent read for those that want more details.
Our first trail was a mouse traveling back and forth across the driveway. I forgot to take pictures of the first few tracks but I thought this photo (below) was a good example of all the different shapes and forms the mouse bound takes. The tracks may or may not have a long skinny tail. There may be 2 or 4 indents from the 4 feet for each bound. When there are 4 indents in the bound, the front tracks are smaller and behind the larger hind tracks as they bound. There may be some foot drag on the snow. The body may show up in deep or soft snow. Their trails are are greater than 1" wide. They are NOT as concerned about following a pre-traveled path where the snow may be packed down. They tend to prefer long travel on top of the snow, although they will go under the snowpack for food and shelter.
We then crossed paths with another bounding animal, Gray Squirrel. The photo below shows a Gray Squirrel track that is a full inch wider than what we saw. Our track had a 4 inch trail width. A 4 inch width could be either Gray or Red Squirrel. For the Gray Squirrel, Bill talked about how large/bold the palm pads are, almost cat-like. On the front tracks, the two posterior pads are bold but are proportionately smaller in the track in comparison to the Red Squirrel who has very beefy posterior pads for its track. On the hind tracks of the Gray Squirrel, the toes are proportionately shorter and straighter than the Red Squirrel, giving the hind tracks a more square look from the bottom of the palm pad up, rather than a rectangular look. This track exemplifies a classic bound structure common in rodents, squirrels, and Lagomorphs, where their chest is narrower than their hind quarters so their hind feet are much wider apart than their front feet. This gives them the ability to easily move their hind feet beyond their front feet.
The photo below shows how the toes of the Red Squirrel hind track appear curved inwards.
When the snow is soft, the middle 3 toes of the hind foot can splay from their more common parallel look.
A very fresh Coyote track greeted us just a little ways up the Red Path Trail. Bill noted how he could tell it was fresh because the track edge, which was comprised of light snow, was feathery and muted in texture when freshly moved. After the track sat in the sun for some time, those incredibly small feathers of snow had melted back to form a more defined edge of the track. This happened in the 10 minutes that we were talking about the trail. The large Coyote was moving in a baseline trot, meaning it was comfortably covering ground and as they approached Red Path Trail, they slowed down, looked down the trail (possibly listening to us?) and then went up the trail. This action in the head was captured by the pivoting toes in one front track. The tracks up until this point were well defined, but this one track was muted and undefined as if you placed your hand in soft snow, rotated it one way and then the other way.
Shortly up the trail were Snowshoe Hare tracks in a bound. Their feet are heavily furred, which make them hard to read because the pads are not clearly defined. The first set of tracks had a baseline stride between bounds (18-24")- the animal was comfortable and going about their daily routine. The next set had bounds up to 5 feet apart. Had the little Hare been spooked by something?
Hare sign just beyond the tracks was prominent on a Striped Maple Sapling that had been knocked over. The classic 45 deg cut from their sharp teeth had browsed the Maple buds.
The Hare had also eaten the cambium of the Striped Maple. You can see on the bottom mark, the Hare is getting deeper than just the Cambium and into the wood- a classic Lagomorph sign!
There were beautiful Fisher tracks in a 3x4 lope across the forest towards the patch cut. Some features are 5 prominent toes and a clear arched palm on the front and hind tracks as well as a heel on the front track. Bill suggested that it was a large male Fisher. Weasels/Fishers are sexually dimorphic, so the females are substantially smaller than the males.
Southern Flying Squirrels have a boxy hopping gait, with their smaller front feet landing in front of their larger hind feet. Their feet are heavily furred, which makes seeing their foot pads challenging.
Bill mentioned how Southern Flying Squirrels tend to behave differently. They are less linear in their movements and seem to be nosing around a lot more. You can see the hopping gait here. The trail width is closer to the size of a chipmunk, this one being 2 1/2 inches wide, further confirming the species. A Chipmunk is in torpor in winter and could come out on a warm winter's day. Ned observed how these tracks seemed older than the other Diurnal squirrel tracks. Considering that Flying Squirrels are nocturnal, this could be one more confirming factor.
We didn't see signs of this creature on the Bearcamp Tracker's outing, but we saw this trail the day before during the Tracking Intensive. Someone was tunneling in the 1.5" of fresh snow but could not get through the hard crust below.
A little Vole of the woodlands was trotting and tunneling along trying to seeking shelter in the subnivean zone (in the snowpack). But was restricted by the hard icy layer under the fresh snow.
I will be looking for fishers’ tracks now.