Only patches of snow remained on the ground last weekend, but overnight Monday and throughout the day on Tuesday we received a couple inches of new snow. Yesterday I was amazed to see how many footprints there were in the yard after only one night.
The moles and voles and other burrowers were the busiest. There were little snow tunnels everywhere I looked:
Under one of the birdfeeders some mole/vole tunnels (top) converged with bounding-rabbit tracks (bottom left) and the footprints of a smaller creature that shuffled through the snow (middle).
I thought this might be a house cat but the steps are quite far apart, so it’s possible they were made by a Red Fox, which would make sense since they originated from the area of our neighbor’s chicken coop. The snow was so fluffy that the animals didn’t leave any good identifying foot pad marks.
I got a kick out of these bird tracks:
After he jumped all around the cat/fox tracks he hopped away but left his own unique “twist.” Maybe he was working on dance steps:
These are a mystery to me. White-footed mice leave a single line from their tail, but these tracks had multiple lines. They are too shallow to be from a squirrel, and it looks like there may have been three animals moving together. I probably don’t want to know…
Was this two cats/foxes following each other, or did the second animal come later? They clearly had different ideas about the best path to take.
I saved my favorite for last. It’s a bit hard to see with the shadows, but some creature made an almost-perfect half-circle (okay, oval) around our front yard. I think it may have been hunting or listening for all those tunneling creatures in the center of the oval. At the bottom of the photo you’ll see a dark spot. That’s soil. Maybe the creature caught something, or maybe a vole couldn’t take the stress of being stalked and popped out of the snow to make a run for it.
I really need to invest in a trail camera so I can sort out all the crazy activity that occurs in my yard in just one night!
2 comments
My goodness, there was a lot of activity in your yard overnight! And all of it was done silently!!
Loved the pictures of the beautiful cardinals that visit your feeders. We see one (usually the male) every so often–not daily. He looks so beautiful against the white snow.
I wish the cardinals could stay in a flock all year long, but in the last few days they’ve already separated for the breeding season. At least now we get to hear their loud and clear songs again!
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