Wildlife

For this blog post, I chose to return to Centennial woods. Last time, I saw some pretty cool tracks, so I was hoping to see something like them again. It also had just snowed so I was hoping there would be a lot of fresh prints. Unfortunately, I was not as lucky at spotting tracks this time.

While walking through centennial I kept thinking I saw tracks that belong to a coyote or a fox, but I realized they were just dog prints. The toes were more splayed out, which tends to happen with domestic animals, and they were all following the trail.

Likely Dog prints

Then I went back further into the woods and saw more tracks that looked like either a coyote or a fox, but it was hard to tell. The recent snow had made the tracks difficult to make out. As I followed the tracks, there were patches of disturbance and then they kept going. It may have been a scuffle with another animal but there were no other animal tracks around. It could also have been the animal sitting down. At times, it also looked like the animal only had three toes, so I’m not really sure what was going on with that.

Prints 1
Prints 2
Disturbance 1
Disturbance 2

The only other animal tracks I found were of a bird on a log and a squirrel. Though the squirrel was weird because I could only see the front feet. Its possible the snow could have disturbed part of those tracks.

Bird Tracks
Squirrel tracks

I liked using INaturalist to record my sightings. I’ve used this app for a while, so I am pretty familiar with how it works. I love that it helps you identify things outside that you might have never known about otherwise. I wish there were more tracks at Centennial right now, but I might try to go back in the next few days to find more.