Yard heart created solely by animals and birds – Photo: L. Weikel

Cool Stories

The snowfall we received over the weekend has yet to melt. There’s been some slight thawing during the day and re-freezing at night and the roads are clear, but overall, there’s still about 4” or so on fields and lawns and edges of forests. And those 4” have revealed some pretty cool stories – and provided fodder for others.

The first amazing story the snow told us today along our walk was that a raptor took a snowy plunge for prey. It was hard to get close to the obvious imprint without messing anything up, but as you can see below, we found footprints leading right up to the ‘kill site.’ (I can’t think of any better euphemism, sorry.)

Raptor Action

As you can see above, there’s an imprint in the snow of where a raptor quite obviously dove headfirst into the snow to snag a meal. Whether or not the creature who created the footprints leading right up to the kill site actually became the meal is unclear.

Taken together, it is obvious that a dive attack was made. The only optimistic prediction I can make (for those who hope the prey escaped) is that there didn’t appear to be a drop of blood or errant fluff of fur or tuft of feather anywhere near the site.

Cool Imprint

One bonus this particular snowy imprint offered us was the wing imprint just above the plunge site. It’s clearly the wing of either an owl or a hawk. I’m in awe that we found such a beautiful site tonight. I only wish I were a better tracker.

 

Yard Heart

Finally, as can be seen in the photo leading off this blog post, I discovered the shape of a heart in our yard, created solely from the footprints of animals. I’m sure it wasn’t the puppies. Perhaps it was created by squirrels. This great big heart was clearly decorated by the prints of lots of birds.

Below is a closeup of the bird footprints and part of the prints of whatever animal it was that created the heart. Perhaps it was squirrels. Could be fox – although there are other prints in the yard that look more like fox. Deer prints, located elsewhere in our yard, are obvious – their hooves each make heart shapes in and of themselves.

Yes, my sense is that the heart was created by squirrels.

And I wonder if they left me a love note. I’ve put out at least 5 lbs. of peanuts in the past two days. A lot, I know. But it was darn cold out. Perhaps this is their way of showing me just how much they appreciated the feast. I’d like to think so. Makes for some cool stories, if nothing else.

(T+56)