Stories in the snow

I've been cruising the trails a bit in the last couple weeks, checking for downed trees, removing downed trees, pruning branches out of the trail, etc. I love doing this, the physical activity makes me feel good, the fresh air agrees with my lungs, and I get to enjoy the beauty of the park while getting paid for it. Another benefit is seeing all the wildlife activity that goes on in the park. Winter is the time when I really get to see what's going on, as everything leaves its story in the snow. That's not to say that nothing happens the rest of the year, it's just not as visible.

Last weekend, I noticed a lot of deer tracks, and realized that the trail I was following goes right through a deer yard. Then I found what amounted to a snowshoe hare super-highway. I never realized that we even had them in the park until I found their tracks in the snow. I found where a hare had been nibbling buds off a beech tree, they make a nice, clean cut, like someone had been out with a pair of pruning shears. There was also the usual smattering of little rodent tracks, mostly red squirrels digging up food caches and little mousie tracks going wherever it is little mousies go and doing whatever little mousies do in the winter. Further down the trail, I was excited to find ruffed grouse tracks under some shrubby little evergreens. My informed source tells me that they eat a lot of buds off trees and shrubs at this time of year, so I'm guessing that it might have been having a snack under there, or maybe seeking shelter from the snow. The best, though, were the fisher tracks that I found. It had travelled along the top of an old stone wall, jumping off every now and then to investigate here and there where a squirrel, hare, or mouse had been, and looking for its dinner. I spotted the tracks where the trail passes through a gap in the wall and traced them forward for a bit and then back-tracked them for about ten or fifteen feet. It was a lovely day to be out and a lot of fun seeing what else had been out before me.

Yesterday, I found where some deer had come into the park right near the entrance, crossed the road to the lower parking area and been digging under the oak trees looking for acorns. They were back last night and dug around the drainage ditch. A fisher had come across the field and poked around the little grove of pine trees behind the manager's house. It had given several trees with significant squirrel activity a lot of attention before heading off across the corner of the manager's lawn and back across the road to the other side of the park. I've also noticed that there is a mouse highway by my outhouse and that they seem to like to shelter in the corners of the outhouse now and then, leaving little poops behind as their calling cards.

Today, I headed back out onto the trails and found I was the first human to walk one particular trail since the snow on Wednesday. The deer had been using it regularly, though, and there were tracks of several different sizes, as well as signs were they had been browsing on the tips of hemlocks and beech trees. Deer tear the branches, as opposed to the hare's neat snip. Lots of hare activity, as well as squirrel (both gray and red), mouse, weasel and fisher. Later, on a more open trail, I came across wild turkey and ruffed grouse tracks. Part of me really wanted to follow the grouse tracks to see if I could find one, but the snow also shows where I've been, and I can't very well lecture people about staying on the trails if I don't do it, now can I? I also found the tracks of what I think were the same fisher as last week, the one on the stone wall. I found fisher tracks going across the trail (different trail from last week, but close to it) and check to see where they were going and coming from. Sure enough, it came off a stone wall and headed back up onto another one. The wall that it had come from was the same wall that crosses the other trail from last week. Fishers have large home ranges and do a lot of traveling, so this might have been the next sweep through. All I know for sure is that it came after the red squirrel and snowshoe hare and before the unleashed dog and the wild turkeys. The other fun thing I found were crow tracks, as well as the marks left in the snow by their wings when they took flight again.

I'm looking forward to the next snowfall and the stories I'll find on the newly blank surface.