Inaturalist post 2/20/22
For our phenology walk a couple friends and I went and explored the strip of woods that separates Redstone campus and the golf course. Yesterday, a thin layer of snow had fallen over the frozen ground. Although it was very slippery, there were some great prints in the snow. The cold and wind made our trip short, but here are the prints we found.
Above we see a small track I believe to be house cat, although it could also have been a smaller sized bobcat. The tracks were on the small size but I forgot to measure them when I encountered them.
Above we see some squirrel tracks that we came across, we saw a squirrel in the trees walking to the area we explored. These particular tracks led to a tree the squirrel had climbed. Since we got fresh snow yesterday, we can assume these tracks were made today or last night. They definitely are the best example of prints I’ve seen this winter. The front feet pads are very defined here.
Also, on my way back to my dorm late Friday night, there was 2 massive flocks of birds in the two trees. It was dark, so I wasn’t able to identify them. There were hundreds, and at first I thought they were leaves being blown out of the tree. If I had to guess, these birds might have been crows, who group up during the night time. The next morning there was more than enough sign of their presence on the side walk below.
My experience using the Inaturalist app was slightly confusing. I found the wrong NR group but after looking back at the slides I found the right one and was able to post the squirrel picture. It was interesting to see what others had posted, especially all the beautiful birds posted by catrionagoering. The most surprising thing to me was how many fisher sightings had been reported.