Walk on the wild side

Critters everywhere...Camera Critters #96

Cats are fed. All is well with the world.

Oliver, who eats twice as fast as the others, did a good job. He appeared sated.

Cats content to sit indoors in the sunshine,

I went for an hour's walk in the forest.

On a Friday morning there were only a few snowmobiles out.

I love the weeping rock, the beautiful colours, brushed with layered snow from our recent snow squalls. It looks like ice cream!

I saw deer tracks coming out of the forest across a pretty slushy bay - they avoid the open lake.

And then more tracks, by a large monster, path soaked by excrement that melts the snow.

The forest opened out onto a shallow bog and lake. You can see where the monsters just missed the trees, and how the shallow bog freezes and thaws at Mother Nature's whim. The shallow bogs have much less temperature inertia of the larger lakes. But I haven't heard that we've lost anyone in these bogs yet...

The wolves (I think they are wolf tracks: large paws, and can't be dogs!) amble across the train tracks and the open frozen lake. It looked like there were three sets of tracks.

You can tell it is a wolf by the size of the tracks and the stride length. They are larger than the size of my palm. I wasn't TOO nervous, except that the monsters keep them more nocturnal than diurnal, and I saw my lone wolf at dusk.

Then, of course, the ubiquitous train tracks! I love hearing the whistle at night.

 

I keep on walking, and I spotted evidence of the hurricane we had. HUGE trees felled in an instant.

Looking behind, my snowshoe tracks!

Mouse tracks...teeny weeny ones. From time to time I spotted more wolf tracks but they tend to avoid midday, since the snowmobiles abound. Very few squirrel tracks. They are more dormant without bird feeders to keep them in food in this remote part of the woods.

More track, or at least evidence of humans: a bridge in the middle of no where

My eagle eye spotted a stream flowing towards the lake. Half hidden by snow.

I made my way back to 'civilization'...and spotted the place where the stream flows into the apparently frozen lake. Watch your step!

It is important that the snowmobiles follow the path created by the OFSC. 

You can see the red stakes that guide them.

And then the thundering herd that motored across. Safety in numbers... 

 Nearly home, 50' from shore, I spotted a small, round, open hole of melted water. I just don't know what it is! But I trod carefully around it!

This morning, I spotted what I think are red fox or coyote tracks. They are smaller than the wolf, and s/he ambles across our property, looking for squirrels and mice. She wanders through our forest almost every day. The tracks are between the triangle formed by the dock, my showshoe prints and the shore.