2/14/2023 We were blessed with another beautiful day of wildlife tracking this past Sunday. The hard crust with a dusting of snow on top and the previous days of melting during the day provided everything we needed to get some detailed tracks.
Our journey took us from the Ferncroft parking lot where we followed Spring Brook down to the cabin and finally to the kettle hole where we sat down for a sunny lunch and then finished off with the best tracks of the day.
We must have seen a thousand red squirrel tracks and nothing else for the first hour until we came upon Coyote tracks that were irregularly spaced in this Bounding/Loping pattern that Cindy observed that it may have been sinking in so deep that it was kind of jumping with all its might from group to group more than in a rhythmic lope.
We climbed up the bank to the ski trail and just off the trail we found a squirrel track with associated blood marks. We believe it may have had an injured hind foot.
After lunch we found these iconic Raccoon tracks circling the kettle hole pond
It's not the best photo because of shadows and the sunny snow together but here are the 3 species tracks we saw at the kettle hole pond: Raccoon, red squirrel and either a very large male long-tail weasel or a mink!
There was a lot of discussion of animal gaits this week because of the clear tracks, so we are also attaching an amazing and fun video that explains animal gaits and track patterns really well! Thanks to Katie for sharing it. Animal Gaits a study by Steve Leckman.
Comments