With a fresh blanket of snow on the ground, the morning of February 18th proved to be a good day to search for tracks and signs of wildlife in the city. Before even leaving campus, I saw signs of animal activity with what looked to be domestic canine tracks and squirrel prints. This would make sense as dogs are walked around campus in the mornings and because the paw print shows a slight inward turning of the claws as well as a larger space between the toe pads and the metatarsal pads. The tracks also showed a sporadic walking or bounding pattern. The smaller tracks in the photo above showed a sloppy hopping pattern of four paws. You can also see that the print of the paws in the front is larger and has five toes while the ones in the back have only four indicating the front legs are the hind legs.
We initially considered this to be a red squirrel but since the hind foot seems to be about 5cm in length and 3.5cm in width, it would be more likely a gray squirrel. This also makes sense as gray squirrels are usually found in deciduous forests matching the types of trees found nearby. Recording these tracks on iNaturalist, we saw that Eastern Gray Squirrels were one of the most common species found by peers. The app was fairly easy to use and a good way to see how different creatures fit in the grand scheme of the natural community of Burlington.
While continuing down Main street, we ended up exploring the open field behind the playground of Edmunds Elementary School to see if there were any creatures that had walked through there. There, we found an unusual sight as what would seem like a domestic dog track was 11cm in length, matching the size of a gray wolf. After considering and analyzing the spacing of the toe pads and the state of the claws, we ruled that this must just be a really large dog. Although we had no luck finding more exciting critter tracks, the prints that we found proved to be of pretty high quality.