Footprints in the snow

The snow has almost gone, hereabouts.

One of the delights of a fresh snowfall is the sudden appearance of animal tracks, that reveal just how much activity is going on in a seemingly empty winter landscape. Here are a few from earlier this week.

A field mouse, hopping from top to bottom of the picture - you can see the line where it dragged its long tail in the snow.

A grey squirrel, with those prominent claws used for climbing

A moorhen, with that little sideways-facing spur at the back of its foot

A grey partridge. The line between the footprints is where the claw on the long central toe has dragged through the deep snow

A pheasant - similar to a partridge but larger, with a longer stride

A domestic goose - big webbed feet

Mallard duck, webbed-feet turned inwards as it waddled

The ubiquitous rabbit. Fore-feet are placed one in front of the other when they lands, then longer, larger back feet overtake them before they land.

It's an ill wind, etc., etc.

Bad weather sometimes brings unusual birds into our small suburban garden, but this moorhen that arrived the morning was a real surprise. We are a mile from anything that could be described as moorhen habitat, with a lot of roads and housing in between, so it must have been flying over and just dropped in.

First it had a mooch around the flower beds, then ....

...... failed to find anything interesting on the snow-covered lawn ....

.... so then it came right up to the house to pick up food that had fallen from the bird table. I hoped that it might fly up there so I could honestly boast that 'we had a moorhen on our bird table' - but no luck.

So then it just ambled down the garden path .....

.... leaving a distinctive set of arrow-shaped footprints in the snow, 

then ....

.... paused to glance into the pond, which was covered with an inch of ice, before disappearing into the garden next door.

Ryton Willows Pond

Ryton Willows is a small local nature reserve on the edge of the river Tyne, on the western edge of Newcastle, with some woodland, extensive areas of grassland, gorse and very fine ponds that are SSSIs. They're also good feeding and breeding habitat for water fowl.

Like many urban fringe reserves it has its share of vandalism problems and three years ago the family of swans and cygnets that nested there were slaughtered in a barbaric air gun attack.  This year's swans seem to be doing well and have raised two cygnets ...........

....... that are currently being taught life skills by the parent birds.

While we watched the female swam  swam over to the bank, pulled out beak-fulls of vegetation and dropped it into the water in front of the cygnets, presumably introducing them to the concept of grazing.

Across the pond this demanding moorhen fledgling was giving the parent bird no rest and ...........

..... neither were two dabchick chicks, who converged on their mother every time she surfaced from a dive with food.