Back on track....s

Snow on the ground can tell you a lot about what's going on.... provided you can follow the tracks.

We've recently blogged about the hare that came past.... but there were more traces of animal and bird activity to tell us who was around.

Vole tracks under the snow....

The first was some strange lines in the snow near the lime tree.... the crust of the snow had been pushed up and cracked. These were caused by a rodent seeking food under the snow... most probably a vole. There were other tracks on the surface there... definately caused by a field mouse out on the hunt for food.
How do we know the difference? Well, voles tend to create runs in the long grass and thick vegetation... mice tend to keep to the clearer spaces.... so our thoughts are directed by their behaviour. Why were we certain about the mouse... splayed back feet prints and a drag line from the tail.

...Mice above [it hops more than walks].

We could see the tracks of the moorhens, forced to plod from the bief to the feeder out in the field, the slight strip of webbing each side of the toes giving a distinct chubbiness to the print. The pheasants, also around the feeder, had their own pattern... a sharper, slimmer toe line with a longer rear toe... and a drag mark from the tail. Also... they tend to hurry, not plod, so the print has rough edges with traces of snow spread over the undisturbed crust.

A fox trotting... paw marks inline.

We had a fox that came into the bottom corner of the verger, did a short circuit toward the bief and returned almost the same route and over the fence... those tracks were totally different from the coypu [ragondin] tram lines where they had journeyed in convoy from the bief to the fence line... where longer grass had left pockets of vegetation exposed.

The coypu rocks along as it walks...

... here though you can see the lines caused by two tails...
a pair of youngsters went along here [the other tracks are hare].

But perhaps the most vivid was the little vole hole in the snow with a trail of footprints leading from it....

The vole hole is at the top... just beside a line of pheasant tracks.
You can see that these tracks are very different from those left by a field mouse.

You can see the hole here at the right... 
you can also see the toes in the pheasant track.

We followed and found why they hadn't returned... it had become supper for an owl.

The final moments...
the vole track is coming in at the top...
the owl struck from the  bottom right...
the pit is where the feet grabbed the vole...
the wings pushed into the snow as it lifted off to the top left...
and there is a slight disturbance of the snow beyond the wing prints...
probably caused by by the vole's body bumping on the crust.

Like we said... you can learn a lot about who is around and what they are doing.