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Feb. 2. Animal tracking in a Nor’easter snowfall wilderness - To Egg Rock

Updated: Jan 15

Feb. 2, 1855.

Quite clear and colder, yet it could not refrain from snowing half an inch more in the night, whitening the ground now, as well as the ice. ....

This last half-inch of snow, which fell in the night, is just enough to track animals on the ice by. All about the Hill and Rock I see the tracks of rabbits which have run back and forth close to the shore repeatedly since the night. In the case of the rabbit the fore feet are further apart than the hind ones, the first say four or five inches to the outside, the last two or three. They are generally not quite regular, but one of the fore feet a little in advance of the other, and so with one of the hind feet. There is an interval of about sixteen inches between each four tracks. Sometimes they are in a curve or crescent, all touching. I saw what must have been either a muskrat's or mink's track, I think, since it came out of the water, the tracks roundish and toes much rayed, four or five inches apart in the trail, with only a trifle more between the fore and hind legs, and the mark of the tail in successive curves as it struck the ice[.] Another track puzzled me, as if a hare had been running like a dog and touched its tail, if it had any.

-H.D.T.

A snowy confluence of the Assabet and Sudbury Rivers at Egg Rock after the 2021 Groundhog's Day Nor'easter.

Feb. 2, 2021.

It has snowed heavily all night, and we wake up very excited to a newly transformed world outside covered in about 14 inches of powder! I will always feel the joy of a kid from big snowfalls such as these. The snow makes everyone have to halt, take a deep breath from our artificial schedules and dig out. It is when the wilderness comes to us, transforming even the most manicured of estates and streets into an untamed wonderland to explore. The Groundhog's Day Nor'easter has delivered, and during an extended lunch break it's time to play outside and search for groundhog and other critter tracks in the snow!

From Wheeler Field on the west side of Nashawtuc Hill, I cross-country ski down the less-than-fully plowed Musketaquid Road and Squaw Sachem Trail. With no vehicles out except for a few plow trucks and plenty of snow to ski, these roads serve well (for a fleeting while) for movement on skis. The new scenery, with snow clinging to everything from thick trunks and the tiniest of stems, is stunning. I particularly admire the Brooks-Hudson field and Elm Street bridge over the Sudbury River on my right.

The trail to Egg Rock is completely untracked, and it is slow, tiring work to break trail through the deep snow. I have to continually knock snow off of heavily weighed branched to unblock my path. At Egg Rock, I find numbers of four-printed squirrel tracks; the tracks move between the base of trees, the heights of which contain the animals' leaf and twig nests. At the base of the trunks are holes that the squirrels have dug to their stashes of acorns, seeds and other foods. I take in the silence, hearing only the chittering of small song birds, including nuthatches, interrupted only by the occasional crash of a snowplow in the distance.

I retrace my tracks from the Rock, noticing a blue tinge within the snow. I follow the trail upriver past the stand of snow-laden hemlocks, hoping to see animal tracks by the bank of the river. I see no tracks or blemishes except the dappled pockmarks left by snow falling in clumps from the trees. The river beyond the trees is narrowed and flowing, the white snow on its edges turning a blueish yellow and then brownish black at the center, appearing like strangely mixed watercolors.

As I ascend the hill along the Squaw Sachem Trail looping back to Wheeler Field. I see new kinds of tracks, possibly of a fisher (or mink or weasel). They reveal the movement of a creature between the bases of trees from the forest to a fence; up and over that fence, onto a nearby tree into a yard and to a nearby shed - followed then by a retreat back to the woods. The tracks look like clumped groups of two in a wide (almost three-foot long) bounding pattern. The fineness and deepness of the snow makes the specific footprint type difficult to read. (Full credit to the Winterberry Wildlife blog for helping me to interpret these fisher tracks.)

As I traverse the trail between the stonewall and the hill, I intersect the tracks of another skier and emerge to the joyful sounds and sight of kids, with a day odd from school, sledding down the Shaw Land slope.


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