Yesterday I took a trip to Derway Island located near the New North End in Burlington. There were still parts of the area that had snow on it from a few days ago, and under that snow there was a layer of ice. About 10 minutes into my walk I decided to venture off the path and head towards a big patch of snow to see if I could scout out tracks. I first found a gathering of what appeared to be Gray Squirrel tracks at the bottom of a tree trunk. These tracks pointed in a few different directions which lead me to believe that there could have been multiple squirrels jumping around this one log.

Then I walked further into the woods to what looked like a frozen over marsh/pond area. I saw a new trail of gray squirrel tracks that I was able to follow across the area. I took a 7 minute vlog that I will be posted at the bottom of this post. That video is completely candid and my friend and I narrate out initial thoughts on what we saw. (we are quite the jokesters)

Here are highlights from the video:

The animal tracks show a hopping pattern with the hind feet planted in front of the front feet. The tracks were measured to be about 5 centimeters long for the front and back feet. On average there was a 13-14 centimeter straddle. The tracks showed four front fingers and five back toes. With all of these details combined I came to the conclusion that these tracks were made by a gray squirrel.

At the end of the video I saw a set of small tracks near the original squirrel tracks. My first thought was that the tracks could be baby squirrel tracks. The mating season of an eastern gray squirrel is from December through February and the babies are born at the end of August. This eliminates the possibility of those tracks being babies. My next thought for what the tracks could be was pray for the animal to eat. There is a high possibility of this because the tracks were placed in a chaotic way and were very messy. This shows the prey trying to escape the squirrel. These tracks had a galloping pattern and were less than a centimeter long. I think the animal could possibly be a shrew, mouse, or chipmunk.