Tracks in the snow

One of the benefits of having the ground covered with snow is the picture it gives you of the local wildlife - and not so wild life. Animals leave traces in the snow of their daily, and nightly, activities.

Take the footprints on the right. We think this track was made across our courtyard by a pheasant. The chasse (the local hunt) has established a pheasant enclosure in the woodland near our house. The idea is that it's a safe, protected environment for the pheasants to breed and raise their young, so that they can fly off into the surrounding countryside and get their heads blown off there.

We often get pheasants on our land. The winding, apparently aimless track left by this bird confirms what we've always suspected: pheasants are stupid. The other thing that struck us about this track was how fake the imprints seem. It's as though someone has come along with a pheasant stamp.

There was more evidence of pheasant stupidity over at the enclosure itself. Above is the fence that runs around it. You can just make out the bird's track coming down from the top-right corner, outside the fence.

The bird reached the corner of the enclosure and made a right turn to continue following the fence. In the picture on the right you can see how it continued until, after about 100 metres of walking, it suddenly thought, "Wait a minute! I'm a fucking bird!" and took off.

The beating of its wings made a fascinating pattern. We saw this repeated on numerous occasions - strange little snow angels. Below is another - note the pattern on the right side of the picture. The other disruptions in the snow suggest there may have been some sort of encounter:

Others are not so easy to identify. We think the tracks in the left-hand picture below are those of a rabbit. The pairs of marks are the hind feet, the other two the front feet. In the right-hand picture, there seem to be at least two rabbits running the same path. Meeting this track is that of (we think) yet another pheasant. The line in the snow is caused by the dragging tail. Either this bird met the rabbits or encountered their trail. Either way, it decided flying was the safer bet.