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It’s In Your Nature: Identifying those tracks in the snow

Published January 17. 2026 08:30AM

I can’t always find a certain bird or mammal on one of my frequent treks in the woods, but I can often rely on finding signs of what I was looking for.

In winter, after a fresh snowfall, I’m like a caged tiger trying to clear the driveway quickly so I can get in my truck and get into that fresh snowfall.

Non-hibernating animals don’t wait for the snow to melt; they have to continue their daily search for sustenance.

Some animals, like our various shrew species, must eat almost constantly. They need to eat their own weight in food each day. A very light snowfall allows me to see a tiny tunnel-like raised area in the snow where one wandered just under the snow. It seldom ventures above the snow cover, but those little raised tunnels tell me one was foraging there.

Most of the other animals are too large to travel beneath the snow. Gray squirrels make a lot of tracks in a few hours, scurrying from trunk to trunk and then stopping at a particular spot where a few leaves are now exposed on top of the snow.

Acorns were intended to drop to a suitable spot to grow a new oak. Most of the thousands get buried by squirrels who sometimes forget where they put them all, luckily for the oak trees. Not this one though; it was clear the squirrel remembered this location. The freshly exposed leaves atop the snow and a 2-inch opening told me a story just as if I was there watching it unfold.

Rabbits, whose numbers seem to be dropping, cover a lot of ground each night, too. In a green briar patch you can see where they sat and nibbled off one of the green thorny canes. Sometimes I find a thorn or two in the snow where it neatly nipped them off.

I enjoy learning more about, and of course, seeing deer, too. A fresh snow, in my healthier knee days, would find me following a few sets of deer tracks for an hour or so to see where they fed and where they would bed down for the daytime.

Spring is another great track finding time. The abundant spring rains leave the soil moist and great for finding tracks. I have a favorite area east and west of Ashfield where I do much of my birding, and the abandoned railroad bed has many puddles. As they recede it makes a perfect area to find tracks.

The soft mucky soil even picks up bird tracks, too. Well, I’ll show you a few pictures of tracks, and maybe they will help you determine what “critters” made them.

Test Your Outdoor Knowledge: _____ will be mating in the next three or four weeks, with their blind, helpless young born about seven or eight weeks later. A. black bear; B. opossums; C. red fox; D. cottontail rabbits.

Last Week’s Trivia Answer: Shortly, both the bald eagles and great horned owls will be the early birds nesting, even as the snow sometimes buries them while on the nest.

Email Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com

A thin blanket of wet snow allows some well defined tracks to be clearly identified. Wild turkey tracks can tell a story, too. Male turkey toes are about an inch longer than the hen’s. If a flock of turkeys leaves tracks, you could identify how many of each sex was feeding in your nature area. BARRY REED/SPECIAL TO THE TIMES NEWS
Some birds, like the dark-eyed junco, which made these tracks, hop not walk. Generally, the smaller and lighter birds use hopping efficiently to move along the ground, or snow.
Mourning doves, unlike juncos or sparrows, walk not hop. For a larger passerine bird they actually take very short steps. If they feed on the ground near your feeders, take a moment and watch how they walk.
Crows are walking birds most of the time. But they are one of the bird species that hops and walks. A light snowfall helped me identify the bird that made these tracks.
If you have a rabbit or rabbits in your yard, check after a recent snowfall how much they move during the night. If you were tracking this rabbit, it is moving from right to left. The front feet land first, but as they hop the hind legs go beyond the front.
A gray squirrel left these tracks in the snow. Their forefeet and hind feet are usually side by side, and much different from a rabbit’s tracks.
A walk on a damp power line utility road on the Pocono Plateau allowed me to find tracks of apparently a days-old fawn. A placed memory card beside the track gives you an idea of how small the tracks were. Maybe this one just took its first walk with mom that evening.
Not only will turkey tracks tell you if it’s a male or female, a snow covered landscape will do the same for deer. A “whitetail” buck is larger than a doe, and in a snow more than 2 or 3 inches deep, the telltale drag marks between steps will identify the maker of the tracks as a buck. Hunters may already know this, but as you meander on your winter nature walks, look at the difference in the tracks.
When snow covers the ground for a few days it can tell you many things. In this suburban neighborhood, deer made regular trips to a small stream for water each evening as indicated by the trail of tracks.
Smaller mammals’ tracks may be harder to distinguish in snow, but a slowly evaporating puddle reveals a raccoon investigated this spot within the last day or two.
Like a rabbit, a foxes travel quite a bit in an evening looking for food, and maybe, that rabbit. A light snowfall clearly shows a red fox track.
Larger birds like egrets, herons, turkeys, grouse or this yellow-crowned night heron will walk and not hop, so look for their tracks in a rather straight route.
Tags:
Barry Reed, Environment