Stories in the snow

Perks of winter - sketching animal tracks and cool things snow does.

Since it is winter for a while longer I want to share some of my favorite things about winter sketching (my short list includes animal tracks, winter light, and night sky studies, but there are probably more). I used to get bored of sketching in the winter because I thought things looked very similar in the short days covered with snow. In 2020 I started sketching more often, and the more I sketched and looked for things to sketch, the more I found to sketch and be interested in. I love walking around outside and finding all of the stories in the snow. There is a record of who passed by, what the weather was like, and how other creatures live.

Below: studying snowshoe hare highways and other sings:

Porcupine tracks are some of my favorites because I find the shapes pleasing.

I like to sketch, but I also take a lot of photos. Sometimes I sketch from my photos and sometimes I don’t have time, but I like to look back on my observations. Below are some photos of stories in the snow: Travel to a hole or tunnel. A moose slept here. A fox came to eat silverberries and pushed down the branches so they could reach the fruit (and left some behind). Birds ate cranberries and dropped the skins on the snow.

Comparing different animal tracks is a good way to learn to identify them. Size is important as is context. My favorite tracks to find are the prints that bird feathers make with their wings.

My step by step process for drawing animal tracks:

Scale is important so I sometimes try to include something to reference the size of the track. On the left I use my glove which I can measure at home. On the right I use a grid printed on transparency plastic from Roseann Hanson’s book, Nature Journaling for a Wild Life. This is a great tool and I made my own grids to continue using.

Below are some spruce grouse tracks. I don’t know why they turned around. The little bit of snow or frost on a hard frozen surface makes some very nice tracks to study in detail.

Highways to the subnivean (under the snow world):

Squirrel middens are one of my favorite subjects and right porcupine tracks again:

Trying to figure out what happened with some blood, a hare foot, and some wing prints:

Wind or birds scattered alder seeds around the snow and some voles walked around collecting them I think:

My dog Jack and I found some wolf tracks which are always fun to explore and think of stories about:

Each spring we find river otter tracks on the river. I never see them any other time of year. I don’t know if they come here to play, adventure, or hunt certain food, but it looks like fun either way.

Tracks that snow made when it warmed up and rolled down this incline.

Thanks for getting to the end. Today was more os a visual entry, but I think my few years of photos and sketches can provide some interesting examples of different things to find in the winter. Do you have a favorite animal track encounter or story that you found in the snow?