As per the instructions I ventured else where in Burlington to explore for this post. I decided to visit north beach for a little walk along the beach and into the woods towards the cliff jumping point. I went the morning of Friday February 17th, arriving at the beach right 11 am. The beach was covered in snow and many tracks, though once I looked further I concluded that most were human and canine tracks, rather than wild animals. I saw some squirrel, hare, deer, and what I believe to be fox tracks. As I left the beach and entered the woods, the human traffic faded and I was able observe more various wild animal tracks. I wasn’t entirely sure of what everything I saw was as the snow was not fresh due to warm weather and my phone was dead so I could not use inaturalist or take photos. I used my red tracking notebook to help but like I said since most of the snow was melted down, it was very hard to identify the tracks.
Even though I was not able to 100% identify everything I was comparing the characteristics of the tracks to try and narrow it down. I was observing the shape of the track, the distance between tracks, how many feet/limbs the animal has, etc. I really hope that on future phenology posts we have enough snow to see detailed fresh tracks!!