These Are Not Animal Tracks

Before this week's storm, the snow was perfect for tracking. I noted tracks from deer, fisher, mink, red squirrel, grey squirrel, mice, and songbirds - all on the Cakewalk.

The storm created a heavy crust that doesn't show tracks well at all (except for very heavy animals like deer). Until a fresh layer of snow brings new tracks into focus, how about a discussion of depressions in the snow that aren't made by animals?

If you're new to tracking, one of the first problems you'll face is deciding whether snow depressions are actually a set of animal tracks or not.

For example, are these animal tracks?

Nope, they're not. But how can you tell? Notice that the depressions are all jumbled. They're all different sizes and shapes, there's no clear trail leading anywhere, and there's no repetitive pattern.

Animals are usually intent on getting from here to there, and their tracks will form a relatively straight line. Tracks don't tend to meander randomly (unless they're made by a playful dog).

Tracks will also have a regular pattern to them. Think of a person's tracks in the snow: right foot, left foot, right foot, evenly-spaced. Different animals have different methods of locomotion, but they all tend to leave a regular, repeating pattern of tracks behind.

If you can't find a regular pattern in snow depressions, and if the depressions don't seem to go anywhere, chances are, you're not looking at animal tracks. So what are you looking at? In the picture above, the depressions were created by clumps of snow falling off branches. This is probably the commonest creator of non-animal snow depressions.

How about this example? Are these animal tracks?

These depressions are all similar in size and shape, they look like a right-left-right type of walking pattern, and they follow a straight line.

But wait... there's only three depressions, and they're surrounded by a wide area of non-marked snow. If these were made by an animal, where did the critter come from, and where did it go?

Once again, these depressions were created by clumps of snow falling from branches. The clumps just happened to make a regular pattern when they fell.

Clumps of falling snow aren't the only way that non-animal depressions can be made. Take a look at these marks.

They have a somewhat regular pattern, and they seem to be heading at least vaguely in one direction.

This is a set of tracks - but it wasn't made by an animal. A clue to the track-maker comes from the fact that these marks were on a steep hill.

Looking down the hill reveals the track-maker, still sitting there at the end of its trail.

Speaking of steep hills, the preserve has a lot of them. When a hill is steep enough and the snow conditions are right, you may find a delightful type of non-animal track.

These are the tracks made by snow rolls, which you can see at the bottom of the picture. You've probably seen a cartoon image of a snowball growing larger and larger as it rolls down a hill. The reality is even more amusing, because the rolling snow tends to create a cinnamon-bun shape, rather than a round ball.

Snow rolls can be tiny or quite large. Here's a tiny one. You can just make out the little snow roll sitting at the end of the trail in the distance. The roll was no more than an inch across.

And here are some larger rolls.

The best place to look for snow rolls is along the Cakewalk, on the hill above the rocky area where you need to climb around some boulders. That entire hillside is sometimes littered with snow rolls as big as dinner plates. You may also find snow rolls on the first steep section of the Angle Iron beyond the kiosk, although hiking this trail in winter is a bit sketchy because it's so steep.

Finally, here's an image that contains non-tracks, a set of old tracks, and a set of new tracks. Can you pick each of these things out?

Once you've decided that a set of snow depressions was made by an animal, the next logical question is 'which animal'?

Answering that question may be easy or difficult, depending on the type of animal, the type of snow, and how old the tracks are. Future posts will look into this topic.