I love to go out after a snow and view the tracks left
behind by animals going about their normal business at Blue Jay Barrens. I’ve been wondering what animal has been
digging up the mulch in my garden beds.
It looks like it has been Crows.
There has been a group of eight Crows that are always in sight of the yard. I often see them, but they’re quick to leave
if they detect any movement from the house, so I rarely get to see what they
are up to.
The Indian Grass seed is supporting a variety of sparrow
sized birds. The amount of seed produced
this year should be able to sustain the flocks well into spring.
The snow wasn’t deep enough to cover the Voles as they
crossed the mowed paths. Voles traveling
in the open will create an unbroken path through shallow snow.
Mice normally travel through the snow in a series of short
jumps. Individual foot prints are easy
to see along with a mark made by the tail.
It looks like there’s a Domestic Cat in the area. The line of tracks is very distinctive. You can imagine the cat as it walked along in
that line. The individual tracks are
small and will show four toes and no claw marks.
Cottontails have been scarce this winter. I only saw one set of tracks during my
walk. Excessively wet weather often has
negative effects on Cottontail nesting success.
Frequent rains can fill the shallow nest hole with water and cause the
young to die from drowning, exposure or illness.
Gray Squirrels have been active every day so far this winter,
but their numbers are also down from past years. The most common Gray Squirrel nest type at
Blue Jay Barrens is a mass of cedar bark strips placed high in the branches of
an Eastern Red Cedar. These nests would
be susceptible to moisture infiltration from frequent rains. It’s not unreasonable to believe that a few
nestlings were lost because of the unusually wet conditions we experienced
during the last year.
Of course, you don’t have to go far to find Whitetail Deer
tracks. The morning after the snow
showed every trail to the yard filled with deer tracks. There were deer tracks to be found everywhere
I walked. If deer had been this numerous
when I bought the property, I might have named it Deer Track Valley
