Otter track crosses coyote track

[Okanagan]

The coyote tracks travel from the upper right corner diagonally down and out the lower left corner of the photo.  The otter came through later heading from upper left corner to lower right, and crossed the line of coyote tracks.

The otter track below, with his distinctive belly sliding in the snow, has a a size 11 boot print beside it for scale.



Another otter track coming through the woods.

[FinsnFur]

Thats cool.
That reminds me. Discovery's Frozen Planet last night showed a polar bear walking through the snow in another polar bears tracks, followed them step by step to save some energy.

[Okanagan]

Makes sense for the polar bear.  I'd like to see that.   I've done the same while hunting moose on snowshoes with a friend, taking turns breaking trail.  When solo I've followed a moose in snow without snowshoes, using his somewhat broken trail to save some energy.  Wolves in a pack follow in line with the lead wolf breaking trail in the snow and all of the others saving energy until they split up to hunt or chase something.

[FinsnFur]

Wolves in a pack follow in line with the lead wolf breaking trail in the snow and all of the others saving energy until they split up to hunt or chase something.

Yep, they showed a pack of 25 doing the same thing. Very interesting stuff.
I forgot to mention, the polar bear was solo. They filmed him using another bears previous tracks to cross the Antartic, which I thought was pretty keen since he wasnt following anything. And these things were over a foot deep in some places.

[Okanagan]

The otter track came out of woods to the left of this pic, crossed a plowed road as it travelled around this lake, and its trail is faintly visible going across the open snow of the dam.  It shows most clearly right along the edge of shadow and sunlight where that line crosses the top of the dam.  The snow is chest deep to me and I didn't want to put on snowshoes to see where the otter went, but it would have been a cool pic of it's track going across the open snow.



They slide on their bellies a lot and on open snow, they run two or three hops then slide as far as they can.  It makes a kind of dot dot dash (long dash) and their tracks really show up from the air.

Cool lake. Will have to take my wife there for a picnic.  She likes snow mountains and glaciers close-up (if she doesn't have to  hike to get to them!)   I'd never driven up to this lake before, not far from the TransCanada highway.

[HaMeR]

That looks like a wonderful setting for a picnic!! I'm sure she will enjoy it very much. 

[FinsnFur]

That pic looks really cool. No pun intended