Last Sunday, February 16, I went to Centennial Woods after our big snowstorm with hopes for lots of animal activity, but I failed to find a single track. Even the animals were staying in. I did find a spot that could have very well been a burrowing spot under the fresh foot of snow. In addition, I saw evidence of a woodpecker on a few trees.
Yesterday, February 22, I traveled out to Rock Point to search for animal tracks. Along the road through the property, we came across plenty of tracks seemingly belonging to a deer. These looked like hooves to me, so I assumed deer, but I feel like they may have been large enough to belong to a moose. I was having a lot of fun identifying with my non-Rubenstein friend and uncovering the mystery.
We didn’t come across a great deal of very clear tracks, I think because of the deep snow. I found putting observations on iNaturalist really easy, especially since I was able to wait until I was back to upload them and they would save my GPS information from the photo, allowing me to save my phone battery.
This set of tracks disappeared into a tree, so I am assuming it was a squirrel. The tracks were too big to be a red squirrel, so I am guessing it is a gray squirrel.
This was a story I had trouble following because I wasn’t quite sure what these tracks belonged to. Most of the tracks I saw did not have any sort of real footprints, but this appears to be an animal that hops and burrows in the snow.
This one I really had no idea, but it appears to be dragging itself a little or maybe has a tail. Maybe something as small as a mouse, but I couldn’t see any clear footprints. Overall, I had a great experience with iNaturalist and loved trying to put the clues together and working with others to rationalize our ideas.