2/7/21
The last time I visited my site there wasn’t any snow on the ground, but today there was a white blanket that revealed lots of wildlife activity I would have otherwise missed completely. Other than the snow, my site has not changed that drastically, seeing as most of the trees are coniferous and the deciduous trees had already dropped their leaves before my last visit.
In addition to the phenological changes there are also some human-caused changes on my site, as you can see in the first photo there are the beginnings of a fort being built. Closer inspection at some holes in the snow revealed that small mammals were building forts as well.
The entrances to the subnivean zone were not the only evidence of mammal activity. There were also tracks and scat, which told more of a story. I found some dog-like tracks that I think were either actually a dog, or a fox or coyote. Following these tracks led me to the site of some sort of interaction, but I’m not exactly sure what. Next to an old piece of metal fence was an area of snow covered in some brown brown and larger pieces of scat, as well as bits of wood. The scat itself was full of fur and pieces of bone, leading me to believe it was probably a coyote.
I found other scat around my site as well, which I think most likely belonged to a fox or other small mammal. I also found tracks which I think belonged to a rabbit. I haven’t ever spent a lot of time looking for tracks, but it made me want to develop my identification skills much further because, especially with regards to the first scat I mentioned, I could tell there was a story there and I would have loved to be able to piece it together.
The three images above show the site of the scat with the bones in it, as well as the tracks that were leading to it.
I included this last picture because I was so amazed by how this little yellow birch was growing.