Winter Travel by Wildlife in the Forest

As you've been seeing in most of my photos, travel on anything but the packed paths in our snowy forest is tough.

There's more snow predicted for the next couple of days so it doesn't promise to get easier soon!

A domestic dog like Shyla has energy to burn. She has all the food she needs provided by us so there's no point in her conserving energy even though running on the packed paths is much easier for her.

At this time of year, many of our wildlife use the packed paths too. Except on our land, I don't put trail cameras on paths that people use - so that means that I don't have cameras on the paths that the wildlife are using. Yet, every morning, I see the tracks of the many animals that have been walking on the packed paths throughout the forest.

On our land, the most frequent visitors have been bobcats this year. I'm not sure if it's one bobcat who comes through regularly or if it's multiple cats. Here was one near the beginning of the year.

I got another photo just a few hours later in almost exactly the same pose.

One morning recently, we watched a bobcat hunting first a rabbit and then birds just outside our windows. It all happened too fast for me to get out a hand-held camera but my trail camera captured his photo as he departed our clearing. He was definitely using our packed paths as much as he could.

In the trail camera world, this time of year brings less plentiful photos (I can't even visit some of my cameras because the snow is too deep to walk or ride to them). However, it sure is fun to see wildlife using the paths on our land.

I'm glad that the bobcats like visiting so much!