Yesterday morning I visited Salmon Hole- Ethan Allen Park. After light snow which fell intermittently over the past few days, there was a relatively fresh coat of snow which covered the trails and hillside. This snow was about three inches deep. Yesterday was twenty three degrees Fahrenheit, and very cloudy.
Using iNaturalist was very easy, even without a lot of service. It also allowed multiple pictures to be added to a single identification. It also allowed suggestions for identification without outwardly declaring something as such.
With new snow, most old tracks were covered, but we were still able to find some very fresh tracks. We encountered many dogs tracks. We could tell that they were dogs because they often spent a lot of time on the trail and then would venture a short distance off, and come back to the trail. They also had very irregular, circling movements, versus a more distinct, straight path while trying to get somewhere. Lastly, the four toes of the dogs were not pointed perfectly forward as a wild animal’s would be.
We did identify both the tracks of an Eastern Gray Squirrel and an American Red Squirrel. While the tracks themselves appeared the same, with two hind feet just in front of two much smaller back feet, the tracks were distinguished between by looking at their size.
Grey Squirrel tracks can be seen towards the right.
Here, Red squirrel tracks can be seen bounding across the snow.
These tracks on the other hand, were challenging to identify. It appears that the animal went into a large den built of sticks. My initial thought was that it could be a beaver due to the pattern of the tracks and that there was a den of sticks. However, the feet were smaller than that of a beaver and the closest water was a little under a mile away. Due to the uncertainty, I did not leave an identification on the iNaturalist app.
