New Snow...New Tracks

A mink with fresh fish.

More snowshoe hare tracks.

A ruffed grouse zigs through the forest.

Where our mink went fishing.

Ruffed grouse.

We got another 4 or 5 inches of snow and sleet yesterday and the day before and the new snow left a smooth, pristine surface that proved to be a perfect canvas for animal tracks. We definitely have a mink that likes to visit the river and pond. Much earlier this Winter I saw a hole he had dug in the snow along the bank of the pond. I'm sure he dug down and then went fishing under the ice. This time Catherine and I saw where he had gone swimming under the ice in the deepest hole along the river that's on our property. The mink tracks are spaced about like those of a fox but are much smaller. In this case the mink's tracks lead up to the edge of the water and then disappear, only to reappear on the other side of the ice sheet covering the big fishing hole. This is the hole where Neil caught a couple of decent sized trout this Summer. Maybe the mink had similar luck although we didn't see any signs of that. The dogs scared up a couple of ruffed grouse the other day and then this morning I saw one's tracks. I had seen one this Summer perched on a big log back behind the house. They are large birds, the size of a really big chicken and are generally solitary. And we're starting to see quite a few snowshoe hare tracks which means there's a reasonable population of them in the area. I don't know if I'll ever get to see more than their tracks since the dogs scare them away whenever we're on a walk. So the list of animals we know we have around the house continues to grow. We can now say that we have turkey, deer, bear, moose, grouse, snowshoe hare, barred owls, flying squirrels, mink, fox and coyote. I've left off all of the birds that come to the feeders as well as the reptiles. It kind of makes you feel like you're living in the wilderness