Unfortunately I did not get a chance to go out tracking for this project until late in the day Friday, after fresh snow had already fallen. I found almost no traces of animal activity, other than footprints from a small rodent. The prints above were left by the animal in Centennial Woods shortly before I found them on Saturday. I am pretty sure this was just a grey squirrel.
The frequent snowfall over the past two days covered all of the larger animal tracks before I found them, leaving them unidentifiable. If I had to guess at some of these based off of the gait, I would say fox, deer, raccoon, and possibly skunk were some of the culprits. Saturday was a little disappointing due to all of the covered-up trails I came across. I walked all over centennial woods and through the cemetery over to salmon hole, where I found some relatively new beaver activity.
I am not sure how long ago these were chewed, but this was certainly the find of the day. Earlier in the week when all of the snow cover had melted, I saw a lot of raccoon activity up and down centennial brook, as well as some small prints that I think were left by mink. I settled on mink due to their location next to centennial brook and their size. The consistency of the mud made it a little hard to see all of the details, but I researched images of mink tracks in mud and they seem to match.
I also found a set of prints from a small rodent, perhaps a red squirrel, as well as one from a small mammal I am not sure of.
For these last two, there was no snow on the ground, so all I had to go off of were a few prints the animals left as they crossed the stream. I didn’t add either of these to iNaturalist because I didn’t have any guesses for what the species was, and I didn’t record the trails I found on Saturday because they were completely unrecognizable. I didn’t bother with the raccoon tracks in the mud at all as I know other people have already documented the same set. I found iNaturalist fairly easy to use, although the project didn’t update right away and I ended up adding another identical picture for the beaver sign.