To find some winter wildlife I decided to venture outside of my phenology spot and visit Centennial Woods. At first it was difficult to find any sort of evidence that was not a domestic dog as a large percentage of the snow has melted and the area that hasn’t melted has had ample time to be stomped on by dogs and humans, leading it to be a slippery layer of ice. At first I was pretty discouraged, but I spotted an area with relatively decent snow cover and less human disturbance across the brook in Centennial. I found a place where I could make a daring but reasonable leap across the stream and I was set. I immediately found my first track.
This track is pretty clearly, at least in my opinion, a deer. Outside of just this picture there was a diagonal walking pattern about the right size for a deer and the hoof print is a clear indicator that it is a deer. It has melted a decent amount, but is still relatively in tact compared to what my other tracks were.
This was a much more challenging track. It has definitely been melting for quite a while, making the shapes quite distorted and large but there was definitely a gallop pattern to the tracks, as there were repeated clusters of four feet with the ones in front being the largest. I think it is some sort of hare or rabbit as the tracks seemed bigger than a squirrel could make and the front paws were not always parallel and were sometimes skewed.
This final track was definitely the hardest one for me to identify. It was moving in a weird pattern that my best guess was a bound but would occasionally look slightly different. It definitely was not a diagonal walker or a galloper. I decided to go with a bounding pattern and when I felt the paw print in the track it had five toes. Based on the size of the tracks and the walking pattern my best guess is a fisher but I could definitely be wrong in my guess. Overall this was a fun trip and despite starting off slow I found my groove and had a good time despite the conditions. iNaturalist was also pretty intuitive and I had a good experience with it.