Riverside Ramble

The Housatonic River meanders through the Sheffield Plain, creating diverse habitat for many animals, most unseen by occasional hikers who take their exercise on favorable days such as today, with sun, light breezes, and a high temperature over 60F after a light morning frost. Along its banks, a river rambler finds that the plentiful bank beaver, which lives in the river's banks and builds no dam, have taken a two-inch sapling for its winter pantry, leaving just a stub and a few chips. From the signs, a sizable beaver took down this sapling in about a dozen bites last night.
Farmers often access their fields along the river's banks, where in the tracks of their heavy tractors and wide tires shallow rain puddles may persist for days in the tight river-bottom soil. To our surprise, we spotted this crayfish excavating a four-inch-wide hole in one puddle, where it would dig a bit, then turn and with its tail pump out the mud, some of which fell back on the crayfish as it waited for something tasty to settle into its puddle.
Further along the track, near another wet spot, we noticed many deer track in the fine soil. This track shows the hind footprint directly on top of the fore footprint, allowing us to see the split hooves and the more pointed forefoot print. The slightly brown color of the print suggests that the deer that made it preceded us by only a few hours. Its size suggested that the track was made by a doe or a yearling buck.
Among the deer tracks was one six-inch-long heron print a few days older and revealing that the heron had stalked between the wet low areas on either side of the farm track as it hunted its fish, frogs, and crayfish.
As we stood on the riverbank and watched the water flow by some six feet below, a swimming muskrat came up from the river bottom and quickly swam into its underwater hole in the bank. Over perhaps 15 minutes, it swam out and back again several times without revealing its business. Back in the late 1950s, each season on the river we trapped hundreds of these small furry animals for 50 cents a pelt. They still are abundant along the river banks, perhaps doing the muskrat ramble, they and the beaver protected after Massachusetts outlawed most trapping some time ago.
While studying the water's edge, on the fresh mud of the eroding banks we spotted the tracks of two nocturnal animals, the prints of a small raccoon, and the dog-like print of a coyote, perhaps intent on a dinner of small raccoon, or muskrat, or young beaver.
Our riverside ramble took perhaps a pleasant hour, each track and sighting providing information about the many predators and prey along the river and living in its banks even as over the years it continues to cut deeper into the always changing Sheffield flood plain.