I went to centennial woods to track some species for my phenology spot. I wanted to adventure away from Salmon Hole and explore a new area of Burlington that I have yet to track in. I did this tracking on Sunday, the 19th. There was still some snow on the ground, but not a considerable amount; luckily, I got out before the rain came and washed away some of the tracks. Later in the day, there were some flurries. This led to some fresher tracks by lighter animals, but the tracks appeared to be older for the bigger animals. Using iNaturalist for this was fun. I liked looking at similar tracks that others found and compared. I also went to the woods alone, so I had no one to converse with in my observations, but the app communication helped.
The first track I ran into was on the right of the trail around the first curve. Now, these appeared to be canine tracks. The paw had an X shape across and nails showing in the snow. However, I wonder if these tracks were from a house dog, coyote, or fox. These trails were older, so not all the nails were showing. Along with this, there are different paw sizes. I ventured off farther into the woods following these tracks, and they appeared to come from farther in the woods, So unlikely a dog. If it were a pet dog, the track would lead from the trail to the woods, not the other way around. I was not confident in this track, so I could not identify it.
The next set of tracks I found was very faded in the snow. Some more recent snow slightly hid them, but I could still barely see them. I chose to look at these because there were only a few other tracks around this area. From the five back toes, I counted and the four tracks being together, I am making the educated guess that the animal who left these marks was a squirrel. Unfortunately, I could not find other tracks from it, so these potentially melted or got hidden under the snow.
Lastly, I found a fresher pair of tracks in an open fielded area. They started at the end of the field, more towards the urban area, and went into the more wooded section of Centennial Woods. This shows it was heading away from the urban setting, maybe going there originally to eat trash, and returning. The tracks had five twos; the back foot was bigger. It was very similar to the description and looked like a skunk track. Leading me to believe it was a skunk tracks.