For this Phenology installment, I traveled to Salmon Hole with my NR friends Zoe and Mairin to find some critter tracks.
Salmon Hole on 02/18/24
Arriving to the site, we were greeted with a large sheet of ice across the water of Salmon Hole. The shoreside was completely covered, even freezing over a stream and covering it with a pillowing of snow. Tracks and signs of life were scarce until we were long past the steppes and stream-bridges.
I found this patch of cottontail rabbit tracks. Cottontail is an ID that I’m always 100% sure of because of the unmistakable positioning of the hind and front feet. The loped prints always come in 4’s. You can also see an indent in the snow from where the rabbit leaped(or bounded) from the leftmost print to the rightmost. I made a note of this, and decided to log it on iNaturalist after our outing–mostly due to my cold fingers and lack of service down in Salmon Hole.
These prints I’m more unsure of. They appear to be in a diagonal walker pattern–which limits me to 4-toed mammals. Based on the approximate size of the prints(~1.5-2”), my best guesses are gray fox, bobcat, or domestic cat. I’m leaning most towards bobcat, as nails/claws are not clearly visible in the prints. I’m also hoping this isn’t a lame housecat(sorry to well-loved cats everywhere).
This find was exciting–you can make out an entire body print of a mouse or vole in the snow! Zoe, Mairin and I were also able to make out the critter’s entrance and and exit from its subnivean burrow. Because there’s no actual prints to use to identify this animal, we can’t really make a definite case for either vole or mouse, so we dubbed this creature our “Subnivean Teenie”.
That’s all of our findings from this visit–can’t wait to revisit Centennial for phonological changes as we begin to move towards spring. 🙂