Every morning I get up before dawn and go for a four-mile walk. In the winter close to Minneapolis, it takes me through some woods and then on a bicycle path; in the summer, it is along a road in the northern Minnesota forest. One of my favorite times is the morning after a light dusting of snow the previous night because the snow bears the imprints of many animals who have used the same pathways during the dark early morning hours. It is amazing to see how often a stretch of pathway is used when no humans are around.
A dark gray early January morning proved to be one of those perfect days for detecting the nocturnal users of my pathway. The ground was covered with less than a half-inch of newly fallen snow. Upon entering the woods, I was greeted with the hoot-hoot-hoot-hoot of a pair of great horned owls that were bidding each other good day as they had completed their night of hunting mice and rabbits. On the ground were the footprints of a pair of deer, which frequent the area and are sometimes seen in the pre-dawn hours.
Now on the bicycle path, I encountered some squirrel tracks near a stand of oak trees. The night was warm enough that the squirrels were still active and not curled up in their nests high in the trees. Squirrel footprints are quite small and are very distinctive, with prints of all four paws close together as they hop across the path. If the snow is just right, one can pick out their relatively long digits and claws that enable them to scamper up vertical walls or tree trunks with no difficulty.
A few hundred yards farther is an area that is loaded with cottontail rabbits. I see many of them if I get there just before sunrise. Their distinctive tracks cross the path, and in a few places one can see many sets of tracks outlining pathways that are heavily used every night. The imprints of their hind feet are easily distinguishable from the front paw prints because they are set farther apart. When a rabbit hops, the main propulsion comes from the hind legs, which land just ahead of where the front paws touch down.
The next nighttime visitors to my path were several batches of mice, whose tiny footprints resemble miniature squirrel tracks. Those with short tails leave only paw prints, whereas others betray their tail by small lines that sometimes appear alongside or between the footprints.
With so many potential meals (in the form of rabbits and mice), it is no surprise that other animals that would like to eat them also make their appearance in the same areas. One of these predators is the cat. Up north, many of the cats are feral, but in the Twin Cities area, they are more likely to be household tabbies out for an evening’s hunt. Cat footprints are very unusual in that they seem to have only two feet. The reason for this is that when they walk, they place their hind paws in almost exactly the same spot where the forepaws had been. Another major nighttime predator is the coyote, which also feasts on rabbits and mice. In an urban environment, it is not easy to distinguish coyote tracks from those of large dogs, but very early in the morning, when one sees large dog-like tracks not accompanied by human footprints, a good guess is that they were made by coyotes because most dogs do not roam about in the darkness.
Upon my return from the walk, I encountered another set of tracks, but not made by night a night animal. A turkey had taken a walk shortly after sunrise and left its unmistakable imprint upon the snow.
Click each image to enlarge and see caption.
