The creatures who creep through our yard....

Living in the woods has been such a revelation to me.

I grew up in a very urban environment...but always felt drawn to nature.

I sought out nature...even in the concrete jungle.

Bike trails, creeks, green spaces.

It just never seemed right.

Now that I live in the woods...I revel in all of it.

Last year I snapped an image of the raccoon tracks in our yard.

You can see it's wee fingers so clearly!

These tracks are the same size as a cat's tracks, but with a distinct difference.

These tracks have thumbs.

Can you see them?

Rabbits are frequent visitors to our property.

We saw them the first year, playing and dancing in our garden.

Yes dancing.

If you've ever seen a rabbit mating display...you'd say they were dancing too.

Since we beat back the brush...we see much less of them.

I don't blame them...we took away their cover.  

(We also have loads of birds of prey in the swamp)

I still giggle when I find rabbit tracks in the snow.

To me, these tracks are easy to identify.

They look like two exclamation points side by side.

Another frequent trail found on our property:

Little rodents scurrying about...we have mice, voles and other small things.

The above tracks stumped me.

I had never seen anything like them.

Not true...at first I thought the three fingers looked like enormous chicken tracks.

Was this so sort of swamp monster bird???

Not quite.

I followed these tracks from tree to tree.

I found the end of the trail and then I realized what they were. 

Beavers!

All of the trees it had passed, I had wrapped in chicken wire.

The trail stopped at an area with 5 freshly gnawed off tree stumps.

You can almost see the trail its tail left in the snow...like a kid dragging a sled behind.

Care to take a guess at what this track is?

Here is another look:

This animal usually travels in packs...but I only saw one solitary trail.

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Next time the snow has freshly fallen...take a walk.

Find a trail and follow it.

Imagine what that animal was doing.

Was it walking?  Searching?

Was it racing away from a predator or finding food?

Here are some tracks identification links:

Wild Things Unlimited - for predators

Wildlife Conflicts Information Website - wide variety of canine, feline and rodentia.