The last days of Winter Ecology...

I last left off my Winter Ecology course with pictures of flying squirrels. The rest of the week was a crazy blur, and I will include some of the best pictures!

Scobie and Doug setting their traps.

Petra and Sean in a reed canary grass field.

Mady and I doing work!

Coon tracks

Group picture at Harriet Hollister Spencer State Recreation Park overlooking the south end of Honeoye Lake.

From Left to Right:

Tiger, Alicia, Sean, Tori, Petra, Krager-kins, Sash, Boy, Dougie

And in front:

Madeline, Alyssa

These above pictures belong to a mink. If my entire class hadn't witnessed this animal with our own eyes, we would have been only able to guess that they belonged to a weasel. The Muller Field Station shown here:

...is where we were all hanging out last Friday morning. We were all in the upstairs, where that long row of windows are, eating breakfast and getting ready for the day. As we were sitting there, someone spotted the mink running along the front of the house. We all flew to the window and watched as the mink climbed the willow to the left, and pursued a red squirrel. It was intense, amazing, and so cool to witness first hand. Unfortunately none of us got any good pictures because we didn't want to look away to get a camera. The tracks and the memories are all the proof we had of it happening!

Mink track

As the mink shimmied down the tree (he didn't get the squirrel), we watched him leap off the trunk and literally DIVE into the snow as if it were a liquid medium. It was nice and light and fluffy, so he was able to maneuver easily. Above is a track and tunnel left behind. He was moving from L-->R, and disappeared under that black line, which is the edge of a dock on the pond.

Later in the day, I had to go out to retrieve some camera traps and it was SNOWY!

Keeping VERY warm in my rabbit fur Mad-Bomber hat that I got for Christmas!

Along the way, we found this interesting track on the ice...

we (Sasha and I) believe a river otter made this slide!

Slide action, no?!

This sequence of pictures I borrowed from Jeff Dyck's Flickr page. I did a simple search in Google of otter slide, and this was the best result! I was REALLY hoping to see an otter with my very own eyes this past week, but the potential slide will have to do!

And finally, to end my pictures of the Winter Ecology course, I wanted to share this compilation I made. I stood in the same spot and took pictures. I love the colors and reflections. Right place, right time! By the way, this was taken on my HTC Incredible Android...not a fancy 'real' camera!

PS- Camera trap pics to come! We got ALOT of variety!