January 8, 1999

     Tracks in the Snow

It is exciting to search for tracks and trails of animals imprinted in the snow's surface: the red fox's night wanderings, an American crow's landing in a field, a muskrat;s dragging tail marks near water.  To see an animal requires the chance of coincidence - you and it meeting at the same place at nearly the same time.  But the chances of meeting its tracks are much greater; up to several days of its travel may be recorded, and you need only to cross them at one point.

The snow that fell lately has given us the opportunity to see many animals tracks.  For every wild creature that is seen or heard, at least a hundred pass by unobserved, and it is only when we begin to notice the many and varied tracks in the snow that we realize the amount of activity occuring.  Size and differences in structure and pattern help to determine which animal has passed.  Besides revealing the identity of an animal, observing an animal's tracks can help one discover many things about its habits including what it eats, where it sleeps, where it goes for protection and how it moves through the snow.

The jumpers are out; the track patterns of paired footprints are immediately recognizable.  Cottontail rabbits, red squirrels and gray squirrels are good jumpers.  The rabbit's forefeet are usually not side-by-side but are diagonal to each other.  Squirrels, however, jump with their front feet together, and their tracks are paired side-by-side.  Small bird and mouse tracks in the snow show that they are jumpers too.

The ring-necked pheasant, a ground-dwelling bird, is a walker that travels precisely with one foot ahead of the other, the middle toe pointing straight ahead.  In the right habitat, pheasant tracks are as easy to find as those of another walker, the red fox, who has tracks like a small dog.