Birds and Rabbit

Here are some pictures BC sent in. The first one is a rabbit. This is pretty easy to tell even though the prints of the feet are not very clear. It is some sort of a bounder/hopper, a bit too deep in the snow for a squirrel (also not headed for a tree). Weasels also bound, but this is too big for that and anyway weasels are rare. So even without going up close enough to look at the footprints you can figure this out.

But what is this? Yes, a bird. Thank you. What kind of bird? Well, it is pacing rather than hopping, which not all birds do. It's not a junco (click on the link to see junco tracks) or a sparrow or a finch or any of those little hopping birds. Let's look at another picture.

Normally you try to get closer to figure things out. In this case moving back a bit helps. The boot track gives us a scale so we have some idea how big this bird is (You may have noticed some of the pictures have ruler in them. This helps with scale.) This is a fairly big bird. Plus it is pacing around, not hopping. A crow would probably be the best bet. Since he found enough tracks to figure out which was it was going and how fast this counts as an animal tracked for BC, and of course, a picture of tracks.