I chose to look for signs of wildlife in Burlington on our very own UVM campus. I didn’t find them all, but so far on our campus, I’ve only seen 4 significant mammals, those being rabbit, skunk, raccoon, and opossum. Pictured here is a set of rabbit tracks I found right outside of the Marsh Life Science building. I didn’t have a ruler on hand, but the hind prints, in front on the picture, were about 2.5-3 inches long and about an inch in width, while the fore prints were about an inch wide and an inch long. I’ve been using Inaturalist since high school and I use it a lot for my own personal identification, so it was no different using it here. I’m super comfortable with the interface and I think that the system in which people can confirm what species you have and help you identify is super unique and really helpful. I didn’t have any trouble narrowing this down. Rabbit tracks are really distinct and even though the fore prints are so defined, its easy to tell that this is a galloper, and based on the length of the back leg, it is most definitely a rabbit.
This is a photo of a raccoon I saw the other day at like 4 in the morning on campus. It’s low quality but it was still really cool. It walked right past me as I was by the Marche, and we both just stopped and stared at each other for a minute before continuing with our nights. It was a pretty cool sighting, and cool to think that the raccoon was totally in its element, going around in the middle of the night scavenging for food while I was about to call it for the night.
