January; Endurance

The pathway that I am used to quickly walking down to get to my site was covered in ice and very slippery. But I think it made my experience better, I was forced to slow down and observe the nature around me. 

When finally got to my site, which hasn’t changed from last semester, I saw that it was all covered in a blanket of snow. All of the late summer and fall growth had been pushed down by the snowfall. Some brown stocks remained standing in pools of ice, near the footbridge but most of the open land was completely covered.

The outside of the footbridge was covered in a couple of inches of snow, but the middle of the path had a slick layer of ice. 

Unlike the past couple of visits, this time I didn’t hear any birds or see any signs of wildlife, within my site. Usually, this area is frequented by small bounders and gallopers, like mice, shrews, and squirrels.  

My site looks very different from summer, fall and even early winter before the break. 

Field Notes

Twigs that we saw:

  • Red maple 
  • Sugar maple
  • Norway maple 

In Centennial woods, there was lots of evidence of winter activity. Deer prints were the most common. The key characteristics that we used to identify the deer included, the two toe print, as well as the fact that there was a straight single line of prints which indicates a diagonal walker, like the deer.

Another set of prints we attempted to identify looked as though it belonged to some sort of rabbit, it had a galloper pattern but was too large to belong to a shrew or a mouse. 

The final set of tracks we were able to identify belonged to a raccoon. It had five distinct toe prints, unfortunately, I was only able to find one print, it looked as though the others had been buried so it was hard to tell what type of walking pattern the animal left behind.