In the middle of January in Minnesota, it can sometimes be difficult to find the motivation to leave your house. Depending on what the weather brings and how tolerant (or intolerant) you are feeling at the moment, the situation outside could be likened to a frozen wasteland covered in snow and ice where nothing could possibly survive. Dramatic? Perhaps, but there has been more than one kid (and adult) to mumble “lucky” after I explain that some animals miss out on winter altogether by hibernating. It makes sense that we wouldn’t want to be out in this harsh weather. And, like the hibernating animals, it is easy for us humans to avoid the majority of this frigid season by hunkering down inside our cozy homes. Looking through our windows, we may find it hard to believe that anything could possibly be surviving out there. But, in fact, there is a lot of life out and about in the winter time and you don’t have to look very hard to find signs of it.
If you’re in an area that sees a lot of animal activity (and most of the time you don’t even have to leave your yard), the signs should be plentiful. Snow covering the ground creates the perfect canvas for footprints, making winter an ideal time to learn how to identify animals from the tracks they leave. Below are pictures of tracks from various animals and tips and tricks for how to know which kind of animal they belong to.
Squirrel tracks (above left) and rabbit tracks (above right) may be in abundance depending on where you live, and they are pretty easy tracks to identify. Both mammals are hoppers, which results in a pattern of clumps of four paw prints separated by a gap. The bigger prints (easier to distinguish with the rabbit) are the hind feet. Squirrel paws have less fur on them than rabbit paws and it is therefore possible to see their individual claw marks left in the snow. The main distinguisher between these two sets of tracks are the shapes that they make. The paw placement of squirrels creates a square pattern (remember: both squirrel and square start with “sq”) where as rabbits leave a triangular shape with their two front paws landing one in front of the other.
Another example of hoppers are mice. White-footed mice and house mice tracks can be hard to distinguish between. They both have four toes on their front feet and 5 toes on their back feet. They have claws but they may not show up. Marks from the tail dragging between the prints is a great hint that you’re dealing with a small mammal that has a tail. If you are seeing a line from a tail drag it is more likely a white-footed mouse than a house mouse.
Not all animals leave marks just from their feet and tails! The picture below shows wing prints from a large bird. Predatory birds such as raptors can leave wing prints when they are hunting for prey, such as small rodents. If you see spots of blood near these prints it’s a good sign that the bird picked up it’s meal there!
Below is a picture of tracks from some more bird friends. Wild turkeys are a very common sighting at Dodge Nature Center and their tracks are everywhere in the winter time. Turkey feet have 4 toes, with the three longest ones pointing forward and the shorter 4th one in the back. This back toe doesn’t make as much of a print as the three other toes make (due to turkeys not always placing their foot flat on the ground) and this ends up making turkey footprints look like arrows. But remember: the arrows that the prints make point in the opposite direction that the bird is traveling. So if you want to follow a turkey, go in the opposite direction of the arrows!
When you ask people to name an animal they might see in Minnesota, you can count on one of the top answers to be deer. If you have lived in Minnesota for long enough you have most likely seen a deer and, unlike with other animals that hibernate or migrate, your chances of seeing one in the winter doesn’t go down. Deer tracks are abundant in wooded areas and even on prairies and ponds. Because deer walk on the toenail part of their foot (also known as hooves), they leave distinctive heart-shaped tracks. Below are two pictures showing what their tracks look like up close and also what their stride pattern generally looks like.
Deer tracks usually end up falling in a straight line, similar to how our footprints fall when we walk. This is because deer (and other animals such as foxes) do what is called “registering”. They place their hind foot in the same spot that their front was in previously. This is an energy-saving technique for walking through deep snow or mud, allowing the animal only have to make 2 holes in the snow for every 4 feet that it has.
Along with registering, deer also work together to conserve energy needed to travel through the woods in the winter time. They create “deer highways” or “runways” by using the same trails repeatedly, gradually stomping down the snow, leading to easier terrain to travel on. Keep your eyes peeled for these runways!
Northern Naturalist 