And I'm Walking...

Finally, we're done shooting deer for another year. So this morning I was back out in the fields again. A light frost coated everything, but green is still common. The mud on the scrape froze last night--I was leaving tracks this morning, breaking through the thin crust, and there were fresh deer tracks as well, a survivor of the season, but other tracks were old, blurred and indistinct. Except for these, from the new mini-scrape in the far field.

Fisher?
The tracks going the other way at the top left are rabbit tracks. The main set of tracks are small, and roundish. They weren't clear enough for an accurate count of nail marks, and the whole path didn't print, so the pattern isn't all there, but I hope that these are fisher tracks. The possible pattern is something of a match, and the size is right. I'll keep my eyes open for tracks on a better printing day.

Now I can see them!
The great thing about leaves is that they hide nests. It has been my observation, mentioned on the blog before, that if I can see a nest, that nesting will fail. The exceptions to this are the nestings in the bluebird boxes in the yard, starlings and house sparrows in cavities, and the time a robin nested in the patio. So, generally, while I like to see a nest, I'm just as glad when I can't. But now, there's nowhere to hide!

Bigger than a chickadee nest, but not all that much. I'd guess from the location, the far field, that this was one of the sparrows' nests.