Went out tracking today. The snow was good, a layer of powder several inches deep on a layer of crust, then more loose snow. Forgot my snowshoes so it was a bit of work to get around. In the end I walked several miles. Here’s what I saw.
Trailed this deer and the others with it. Not far from the road where I picked up the trail I found them but not before they found me.
I spooked them out of there day beds and watched the last one leave. It moved away slowly, stopping and looking back before bounding away. I did not have the camera out so no picture. It wouldnt have looked like much anyway. The deer were bedded in the laurel on a flat bit of ground on a hillside. As I approached I knew it could be a bedding area and even thought to crawl but felt that if I crawled over every rise I would never see anything. Hard to be patient.
Beaver Brook Pond, sunny and beautiful.
Little mammal tracks. Some others showed a fairly short tail. They are small enough to consider shrew or the smallest mice. They were on the swamp ice. I went through several times and retreated.
Upstream on Beaver Brook a Mink slide. It was the only sign of Mink all day.
On the way out found these older Otter slides. They went on for a couple hundred yards.
Above is where they eventually went into Beaver Brook. Below is as far as I went in the other direction, about 200 yards. I ran out of steam and headed home. The next body of water in that direction is the Farmington River more than half a mile away.
Here some coyotes had wrestled together. You can see some knees and elbows in there.