Somebody didn't walk away

 Taffy and I went snowshoeing through the back field today. 

There was no shortage of snow.

There was also no shortage of rabbit tracks.  In places, it was a veritable highway, creating a delirious dog with nose buried in the snow.

But under the sheltering branches of one evergreen, there was an abrupt end to one set of tracks.  The rabbit had hopped along, but suddenly and no doubt without sound or warning, an owl had dropped down, leaving a sweep of wing and tail marks in the snow. 



The fox had walked in to take a closer look, but there was nothing left to find.

Just to give you an idea of how much snow is up there, this is one of the horses' cross country fences.  It measures 1 metre by 1 metre in dimension. If you can even find it under the snow...

Winter tracking is one of the great joys of being out of doors -- you can see who the neighbours are. And where.  Earlier this year some of our guests found tracks that we think may well have been left by a lynx, a beautiful and extremely elusive creature.  Brian, grooming ski trails, found where the wolf pack had pursued a deer -- which made an almost clean getaway, leaving only some tufts of fur along the trail.