I met Al at his house at 8 am, and it seemed like we would be hiking in the fog under another overcast sky. We have been enjoying the January thaw with warm temperatures, but fog and rain have been the typical weather during this thaw and we had no reason to expect more on this Monday morning. Less than ideal weather has never kept us from hiking. So, we considered our layers for the day, donned our gators to deal with wet snow and headed out the door.
We hiked into the woods across the street from Al's house, with the initial goal to find the trails which Terry Mednick maintains near his cabin. It didn't take long to find the trail, but along the way, we found tracks of the animal that would dominate our hike for the day: deer, deer and more deer. But where there are deer tracks, there are usually tracks of other less common animals as well. As we followed Terry's trail, skirting around Hardy Hill, or Mount Monednick, as Terry has humbly dubbed the area around his cabin, we scanned the ground for other tracks and animal sign. We were not disappointed to come on bobcat scat early in our day. That was all we needed to leave the trail and take off into the woods to follow the bobcat tracks. The wet snow made tracking fairly easy, except where the snow had melted away. We can't complain, though. Last year, we had so few good tracking days, with little or no snow on most of our hikes.
We followed the bobcat tracks until we couldn't follow them anymore, and found ourselves on a steep slope south of Hardy Hill. At the base of the hill, we came upon a stream which undoubtedly flowed into Silver Lake. Streams are good features to follow as all animals need water and some animals, such as mink, favor small streams and brooks where they feed on crayfish and other aquatic prey. Al followed the stream on the left bank and I on the right, as we continued to scan the ground for interesting tracks. I stopped occasionally to look up as well, since last week, we found so many bear nests and bear-clawed trees, which one does not notice unless one looks up.
Al came upon the bobcat tracks again, at least, we assumed that it was the same bobcat, and we followed the tracks as they wove through the woods, over deer tracks, intersecting with red squirrel, or gray squirrel. We were blessed to have clear tracks to follow--definitely bobcat, with the characteristic "C" shaped pad. Canine tracks have a raised area that looks like an "X", so it is easy, when the snow is the right consistency, to differentiate between the two. It is helpful to have two sets of eyes when tracking, because when a track becomes faint or seems to disappear, one set of eyes can catch a clue that the other person misses. At one point, the bobcat had walked along a stone wall which was snow free and we had to trust that we would find clues to know where the bobcat went next. We were not disappointed; we found a foot print here, another further on and soon, the bobcat left the stone wall and we could follow the tracks through the snow again.
Somehow, we always come to a point where the tracks fade and we have to stop. It's disappointing, but we don't stay discouraged for long. The woods offer up more tracks to follow and we are off again. This time, it's canine tracks following the deer run. Small canine, probably red fox. Actually, we were soon rewarded for following these new tracks. We came upon a kill site, where the fox had fed on a gray squirrel. We found the skull of the squirrel, with dark gray fur in a rough circle on the ground as well as leg bones. The site was not old, as the skull and bones still had a lot of flesh on them. We left the leg bones, but took the skull with us. I have put it outside inside a have-a heart trap (to keep it from scavengers) to decay, with the hope that we will have a nice clean squirrel skull to add to our growing collections.
As macabre as it may sound, kill sites are always exciting finds,because we get a glimpse into the lives (and deaths) of these forest animals that we actually see so rarely. We have often remarked that the animals probably see us more than we see them. They are long gone, for the most part, when we come upon their tracks, having smelled us or spotted us through the trees.Once in a great while, we will see a moose, or deer, a bobcat, fox, or coyote, or even bear. The sight of a fisher, or another of the mustelid family, is so rare, that following tracks and finding kill sites bring a stronger sense of the reality of the creatures.
After finding the remains of the gray squirrel, we moseyed in the purest sense of the word back in the direction of Al's house. Moseying really means moving slowly, observing the tracks we found, which included more bobcat, old fisher tracks, deer, deer and more deer tracks, snowshoe hare, and taking time to enjoy the beautiful sunshine that had broken through the clouds and made the day warm indeed. We took a break to snack on some clementines, cheese, a baked potato, and some trail mix and stretch our tired muscles. At least, my muscles were tired. The amazing thing was that we were just a few feet from the "Old Road to Dublin" trail, but the slope hid the trail from us.
Soon enough we found ourselves across from Wendy Klemperer's house, looking down on one of the large vernal pools in town, a place I have studied for many years, observing fairy shrimp, wood frogs, and spotted salamanders. Last year, this pool had dried up early and probably any amphibian eggs had not survived beyond the larval stage. We hope for more snow this year, so that this vernal pool might prove to be a suitable habitat for the frogs and salamanders to mature.
Our last goal for the day's hike was to find a lead mine which Jonathan Smith had told Al about. The mine was supposed to be located somewhere in the land between Hardy Hill Road and the Nelson Road. Parts of this area were steeply sloped with large boulders and exposed ledge. Based on our experience with the Lead Mine off of Old Stoddard Road, we thought that this would be the right place to look for the mine. Along the way, we found more bobcat tracks, fairly fresh, so, of course, we followed them! The tracks seemed to be following the deer tracks fairly closely. In fact, at one point, I looked over at a spot in the woods and saw a large pile of fur. Another kill site? Well, there was no blood or flesh, but a lot of hair, which we thought at first was squirrel again, but the individual hairs kinked which indicated deer. Following the bobcat tracks further, we found another pile of fur, and another, the final pile clearly deer fur, red, white, brown, and black and long, with hair folicles still attached. No blood or flesh though. We decided that the fur might in fact have been there for a while, but we still hoped to find a carcass.
No carcass, and we lost the bobcat tracks, so after Al found the lead mine and we explored it a bit, we headed with less moseying back to Al's house for hot chocolate, more clementines and a review of a very successful day in the woods, exploring and appreciating more of the land right in Al's own neighborhood.
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