Date: March 3, 2023

Place: Arboretum, University of Guelph, Guelph ON.

Time: 12:45 pm – 2:15 pm.

Discussion: decided to do some quick tracking in the university Arboretum, which is a great place to find animal tracks – one reason being that all dogs must be kept on a leash! The conditions were not great for tracking as the temperature was around the 0 C mark and the snow that fell some 2 days ago had frozen and thawed maybe several times. I was intrigued by some colouration in the snow associated with cottontail scat. The first set of colours are blue:

I seem to remember being told about this before, but I can’t recall. Maybe it is from the rabbits eating buckthorn berries?

The second set of coloured cottontail scat was red:

I have a better idea as to what made the colour in this second set of photos as next to them was the following:

For the last photo I was curious what made the scat shown here:

They are tiny, but round! (I’ve seen small scat before, but it was always oval, e.g. mouse droppings). Maybe this is from a very young rabbit?