Mild Winter

Here are a few photos and a 360 video of the spot Teaka and I walk to through my back field.  One morning she chased a beautiful fox along the frozen creek up to the road overpass.  I had a great vantage point to see it unfold but unfortunately didn't have my phone or camera with me to record it. Teaka ran equally fast but was a distance behind the fox so the fox won the race. There are often tracks in the snow on the ice surface indicating it is a well used travel route for animals. This is the route my neighbour said the moose were using in the fall as well, on land since the creek wasn't frozen yet.

In addition there are plenty of mice or voles or shrew in the fields. And recently in my basement!  They ate all of my peas seeds for next year and part of many other packets of seeds.  I had a few traps out but it seemed the little buggers were smart enough to avoid them for the most part. I did manage to catch a couple though and I haven't seen signs that they are there anymore. On one morning walk along the trail, after a fresh dusting of snow, I counted 25 spots where the little creatures crossed my path and two spots where another animal crossed, I suspect a weasel but I'm not sure.

Weasels and foxes are potential threats to the chickens if they ever got into the henhouse but they are also beneficial animals in pest control.  I have not seen the snowy owl yet this year, another hunter who helps keep the mouse population under control. Teaka helps with the situation as well.  On at least three occasions she has killed a mouse that had scurried over the snow.

  

 

Of interest: 

What is the most snowfall in one day? Most Snow Measured in 24 Hours: 75.8 Inches

If you were 6 feet tall and standing outside for 24 hours in Silver Lake, Colorado, April 14-15, 1921, you would've been buried by snow from head to toe. That location recorded 6.3 feet of snow in a single day at an elevation of 10,220 feet in the Colorado Rockies.