This week, I visited my location the day after it had snowed. The ground was mostly covered with untouched snow, broken only by a few footprints and pockets of snow fallen from trees. I was able to find the tracks of a couple animals (pictured below). While I have no prior experience tracking animals, through consulting a track book, I believe that the animals were a small ground animal, such as a grey squirrel or marten.
The landscape has transitioned to winter, with the only leaves hanging on to the trees being a few dingy maple leaves. On the ground, snow has taken over most greenery, but a few ostrich ferns remain alive above the ferns. Previously, I had assumed that my location would be much quieter during the winter, with the snow dampening outside noise, but I found the not to be the case entirely. While there was less sound from from the plants, I found that it was easy to hear animal movements through tree branches and bird calls throughout the forest. Noise from the nearby road was also still audible, although not a large nuisance.
Below are pictured what I saw on my visit:
