More snow and footprints

Another snowfall provided an opportunity for a scenic walk along the Ock Valley Walk on Friday:
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Like the previous week's snowfall it presented an opportunity to look for animal footprints to try and work out what had been around in the early hours and the morning
The most common are domestic dogs, these are usually larger than the fox prints, but the most obvious evidence that they are dogs not foxes is there are human footprints next to them:
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The thrushes and blackbirds also leave obvious footprints:
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These hoofed mammal (ungulate) prints almost certainly belong to one of the increasing number of muntjac deer who can be seen along the river Ock.
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Snow

Unlike some parts of the country, the snow in Abingdon wasn't deep, in fact the fields in south Abingdon had only a slight covering:
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But there is enough snow for any animals that ventured out during the night or early morning to leave their marks.
The most obvious footprints and certainly the most common are rabbits:
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In places, the rabbit footprints are crossed by another animal, it appears to have four toes (ruling out badgers or otters, who have five) and the lack of human footprints nearby mean it is probably not a domestic dog, making the most likely suspect a fox.  
The lack of blood stained snow means the fox and rabbit probably didn't meet each other.
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The fields are not the only place to find footprints, the frozen parts of the river also contain evidence of animals, in many places moorhen footprints criss cross the ice.
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Footprints

I received this intriguing comment on a previous post:

I spotted what I think were Otter footprints in the snow beneath the bridge along the Ock Valley Walk - be interesting to see if you can verify they are Otter prints.

Which has inspired me to seek out the various footprints left in the recent snow and to try and identify them:

Birds: Some bird footprints are easy to identify, such as these left by mallards and moorhens along the ock valley walk.

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Smaller birds are harder to identify as they just leave small holes in the snow.

Leporids: The two prints at the front and one behind are almost certainly left by a rabbit
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The other candidate would be a brown hare.  I have never seen a hare in the locality, although I have seen them near Wantage, so it is not impossible that they frequent the area.

Canine: There are two species of canine that can be seen along ock, the red fox and domestic dog.  This footprint is from a domestic dog, taken in a place that is popular with dog walkers.

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Mustelids: There are several species of mustelid that could be found along the Ock - badger, otter, mink and stoats, weasels and polecats.

What differentiates a mustelid footprint from a canine is five toes, whilst a canine has four.  This footprint found in south Abingdon could be a badger, but it is hard to count the number of toes but it was found near where I have seen badgers previously:

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This footprint was found along the ock valley walk, where the previous commenter said they have seen possible otter footprints.

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A close up shows (now circled) five toes, so it almost certainly a mustelid and given it's location it could definitely be an otter and it is where I have previously found a dead crayfish (common otter prey), so thank you very much for the tip-off.

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A good example of an otter footprint is snow is from Charlie Hamilton James' Twitter Feed: http://twitpic.com/3if160

As always, comments are very welcome, especially if I have misidentified something.

More Snow

One of the advantages of living in south Abingdon and working in north Abingdon is the walk to work can be very picturesque after heavy snow and the rivers are at their finest.
The river Ock in south Abingdon:
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Burford Bridge spanning the Thames.

From the footbridge over the Abbey Stream looking towards the Thames weir.

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And the view of St. Helens Wharf  from Burford Bridge is the classic Abingdon Christmas card scene.

Snow!!

Fourteen centimetres (5.5 inches) of snow fell in a few hours on Saturday morning and as expected, this caused complete traffic chaos in this part of Oxfordshire.
However, the Ock Valley Walk was very scenic
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The Lower Ock had even frozen in places:
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And a pleasant surprise of two muntjac deer near the town centre.
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And if the snow persists it will be interesting to see what footprints have been left by the animals who have been struggling even more than the local transport system.
The Abingdon blog has more photos of the snow

#UKSnow

16cm of snow fell in Oxfordshire last night (well in our back garden anyway), so a normal 45 minute walk to work increased to 1.5 hours, the fact that I took 107 photographs probably explains why it took so long.  But opportunities like this must be taken and once again it's also an excuse to play with the panorama software.
Four landscape pictures of the Ladygrove meadow shows a blanket of fresh snow:

The Ock Valley Walk was as picturesque as ever, but interestingly after last weeks flood watch it's not high (http://www.abingdonblog.co.uk/2009/12/mill-stream.html), as the lower Ock shows here:

The Abbey Meadows is always a good opportunity for a picture:

And another panorama of the Thames from the meadow:

Other pictures of Abingdon in the snow can be seen at: http://www.abingdonblog.co.uk/ and http://martingulliver.blogspot.com/

The progress of the snow can be seen on the twitter #uksnow map: http://uksnow.benmarsh.co.uk/