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| Around 3 in the afternoon |
Things change. Just a day ago you could see animal tracks in the snow. Four days ago it looked the way it does in this photo, the snow still light and deep. But things change, and it is only January. It may change again.
The snow provided a way of seeing the unseen: on its surface were the tracings of movements in the world outdoors, markings made while we slept or sat reading by the fire. The snow yields its data like a crime investigator's sprinkling of powder yields information about fingerprints. Some footprints seem obvious (a deer hoof, for example) but others are trickier, because much depends on the condition of the snow (hard, soft, mushy?), the age of the footprint (drifted over, melted?), and, most of all, the gait of the animal (running, jumping, hopping?). Was it short, perhaps dragging its tail or body across the snow? Or was it large and heavy, making deep imprints? Did it interact with whatever made the other set of footprints? Who chased whom?
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| In late afternoon, clockwise, small deer, vole, squirrel, vole tracks (I think!) |
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| Deer tracks |
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| A place where a deer has bedded down; other deer tracks to the left |
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| An area where numerous deer bedded down for the night |
It's evident in the above picture that deer can really mess up the snow in an area where they have gathered and bedded down. There were about a dozen signs of bedding down here. Does that mean there were a dozen deer? Or a smaller number, bedding down here more than once?
While driving on a nearby road a few days after taking the pictures above I noticed a large area with disturbed snow throughout the entire field. No cows inhabit this particular field (it's not even fenced), no snowmobiles had been here, no crowd of humans. So what could have churned up several acres of snow? It seemed unlikely, but clear hoof prints in every direction made it obvious: deer. Lots of them. It makes me wonder about the size of the local deer herd.
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| Several acres of mysteriously (or not so mysteriously) trampled snow |
Yet I haven't seen a single deer for months. I haven't seen a rabbit or snowshoe hare either. But the snow revealed where one had been, and where it died. Coyote tracks were nearby.
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| Once was a rabbit, but not much left besides fur. |
Snowmobile tracks are what you usually see in open fields. There are many trails around for snowmobiles and small flag markers delineate many of them. The abandoned road behind our house that once led to what is now route 17 is used by snowmobiles on occasion although it doesn't seem to be marked. We have followed it some of the way on skis and snowshoes. When the snow cover is thin the snowmobiles can be rough on the ground.
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| Snowmobiles churned up the ground at a stream crossing |
The terrain behind us has a lot of variety. The woods are mixed hardwoods and conifers, and there are a surprising number of hills, some steep and rocky, and several ledges, and a couple of small swamps. There are also vestiges of old roads here and there, probably once used for logging.
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| The forest behind us |
Animals that don't leave tracks in the snow are well hidden. In "Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival," naturalist Bernd Heinrich (known for his studies of ravens, among other things) wrote about the many states of hibernation. Not a simple metabolic process, but one of degrees. It's not just the bear who slows down his body in the cold, even birds have ways of staying alive in a kind of sleep-state that uses little energy. All we see of some of the missing animals are disturbances, maybe footprints, around an open space beneath a log. Others are in burrows below the snow, inside the tree hole, under the dried leaves, or perhaps invisible in plain sight.
One day the tracks began to disappear. Warm weather and wind was erasing them.
And then they were all gone. Erased.
But it's still January. The slate was wiped clean, so clean that the grass reappeared for a few days and it looked almost as if the winter was done. Another day, and a fresh coat of snow appeared. We await fresh tracks.
Error on "Hints of Winter" post: A misidentified owl. It was a barred owl I saw, not a barn owl.
