So- October has joined the 2020 bandwagon and chosen to be totally unpredictable. we started the month with smokey skies; aout 10 days ago, we had a fire weather warning. Then, five days later we received 20 inches of snow overnight from Friday evening to mid-day Saturday. It didn’t really stop until Sunday.
The wildfires are now officially over in Montana. And so is Halloween this year. The streets are currently covered in white ice and the sidewalks are pretty nonexistent. We are predicted to get up into the 50s by Friday. That means that next Saturday – Halloween – will be a sloppy, muddy, wet, full-blue-moon, pandemic-surging, extravaganza.
Nice.
None of that matters to the Labrador. We get out into nature about five times every day rain- snow shine- whatever. Such was the case on Sunday. It was early in the day- the temp was just barely above 0 and we went to the Ponds. We were the first human/dog combo to walk there since the snow started. There were tracks- but they were wild. The first set of track was the Fox. Obi desperately wants to find this Fox, but the Fox is simply too smart. Fox tracks were all over the place. So, Obsidian Black Dog ran and ran sniffing.
I was looking out at the mostly frozen water and seeing only Canada Geese, Ringbilled Gulls, and a very sad looking Red-necked Grebe. With both of us occupied, I simply didn’t notice until it was too late, that I had walked across three separate feather markings in the snow. Something had dropped out of the air and grabbed another something under the snow.
It was probably a Corvid. The feather pattern in the snow looked too big for a Shrike or Kestrel, and too small for a Great Horned Owl- though I do see a GHO in this area sometimes. I inadvertently walked over the best markings, but I was able to get a marginal image of one of the strikes. It has Fox prints running across it.
It was a cold, short walk with not a lot of real time activity, but the tracks told an interesting story.
Nature, every day. 
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