Country and Coast: Wildlife on the hunt for food makes its mark in the snow

When someone from the North York Moors describes a covering of new snow as "reg'lar away" it infers it is smooth and quite deep with no drifting, and that it has fallen over a broad area.

Such was the case on my lawn, except that my patch of snow was covered with footprints, evidence of much activity by birds and animals.

The fun is to identify the maker of each set of prints and then determine just what they were doing.

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Some are simple. Our bird feeders attract masses of visitors including five male blackbirds and one female. The males spend their time chasing each other away from female and food but in so doing leave their spoor in the snow. Distinctive prints with three long toes at the front and one at the rear mark their routes and because they hop along, their footprints are side by side. That hopping motion means that the rear claw is drawn along the surface of the snow as they progress, producing miniature tramlines that link their prints.

It is much more difficult identifying the prints of other birds. Blue tits, coal tits and great tits prefer to be aloft on a gutter, tree branch or feeder but robins, dunnocks, chaffinches and larger ones such as wood pigeons and collared doves do spend time feeding on the ground. It results in churned-up snow in which individual prints are lost but when they venture onto the smooth unbroken surface they do leave a trail – but one needs to observe the birds actually making their footprints in order to identify the makers.

Very light birds such as blue tits barely leave a trace on solid snow, robins seem to hop along heavily whilst a visiting crow will stalk mightily along, walking like a farmer surveying his flocks.

Birds such as magpies or long-tailed tits sometimes leave evidence of a lengthy tail whilst a large print made by a bird's foot will usually indicate the visit of our neighbouring cock pheasant. Once he realises seeds are available as fall-out from the feeders, he returns on a regular basis.

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The most common animal prints come from our neighbour's cat, easily identified because cats place their rear feet in marks made by their forefeet to produce a single line that gives the appearance of a pogo stick with pads.

The fox does likewise. Fox prints are larger than those of cats – medium dog sized in fact – but foxes also place their rear feet in the prints of their forefeet while dogs' footprints are apart.

Certainly we've had a fox regularly crossing our lawn but it has produced a mystery. Rabbit marks are easily identified as they hop along with their forefeet prints appearing between those of rear ones but can a rabbit bound along with leaps at least a metre apart? I found such prints on my drive – far too big for a rabbit so could it have been a hare at full gallop? The fact there was also a row of fox prints could be linked to those mighty leaps.

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