I honestly have no idea. I spent years studying plants and insects and have almost never studied any mammals and even less so their prints. But I imagine it’s a raccoon. To me everything is bear, coyote, raccoon, deer or possum and it’s mostly based off of size lol. Whatever it was I think it was being chased.
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Thst bigger smudge print was not from me. It was already there. There is a shoe print up above but I think that was mine. I think I was walking one direction and then noticed this and walked to where the prints were facing away. I guess I forgot to the the other pics but leading up to it there was coyote prints and these prints were zigzagging and had those smudge looks and then at this point I got pic.
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From my hike this morning. Managed to get here at 520am and I’ll be back to my vehicle by 740 and still able to make it to work on time. Found this lovely rough green snake while hiking.
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Beautiful! Thanks for sharing
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On our lane yesterday as I was getting the mail (a largish red eared?). I should have been more patient and waited for it to walk away after bringing it home and showing my wife and then leaving it on the front walk, but I had just finished bouncing around on a rented tractor for four hours doing my annual mowing in prep for winter and putting up snow fence. (The latter includes mowing some corn stubble, seriously rocking back and forth crossing the ridges and furrows at a 30° angle. 
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(Three passes in the field, plus the bank on the north side and under the trees, and multiple passes the whole length on the south, some under lowish trees):
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Well done, Dale. Looks like you have a stream near by and a couple of ponds. That should make some creatures pretty happy. What a great day!
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The creek is my southern property line. Both ponds are ‘sand pits’, common around here, dug by excavators for sand and gravel mostly, but those two were primarily for the water. The north one didn’t cost my late neighbor anything because the sand and gravel company had work nearby and needed the fill.
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The little acreage is mostly ‘waste’ land use, the county assessor finally agreed after my protesting the assessment multiple times and winning. It is accretion land and still shows on some maps as ‘RIVER’. 
If I had known about the flooding potential (and actual since) when we bought it, I might not have – I was young and foolish… maybe just more foolish , ca. 25 yo.
But it has been good. I have felt protected. The flooding that we had 2x last year made national news, but it stopped short of any damage to our house.
The straight line of trees there are the ones on the south side of our lane, and the water to the right is the lower part of the cultivated field where I put up the snow fence. (The photo is looking just about straight west.)
Hopefully your home is well situated for the long run. Looks like you have a good road nearby. All that water no doubt makes you attractive to cranes.
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The “good road” is Interstate 80. But we are a good distance from both it and the railroad and don’t get too much noise from either. The trains are noticeably louder after the corn has been harvested, and of course the trees south of us muffle the interstate, too.
“All that water”, at least in the photo, is unusual since it doesn’t typically cover multiple square miles in my area. But yes, the Platte River to the south of the Interstate visible in the aerial photo is a major draw for the sandhill cranes. We are in the bottleneck of their hourglass-shaped migration pattern, and a big deal in the spring, drawing tourists from across the globe. In the fall I hear them overhead and see them occasionally, a couple of thousand feet up (about this time of year when I’m putting up snow fence), but rarely on the ground.
We’re about a mile off of 80 ourselves. We rarely hear the trains now. Amtrak is the only one that still runs through Berkeley but the Santa Fe ran right past our back fence until it was taken out. In its place we got a new park and the creek which has always run along our northern border was daylighted out of the culvert where the Santa Fe used to run.
This old photo I found online shows where the Santa Fe used to run through our neighborhood. Dingy right? Everything to the left of the large brick warehouse is now a large tree-ringed, grassy field as part of the Strawberry Creek park. Ours is the ‘small’ white stucco warehouse which was built as a lean-to on the next large brick warehouse you see further back. That brick building burned down one summer 25 years ago while we were away camping. Miraculously our wooden post and beam building survived even thought the I-beams in that building melted and burnt to the ground.
This is how that area of the park looks now.
This is a photo I found of them digging up the culvert which they broke up and laid down as rip rap along the bank. The creek beyond along our northern border was never buried but after us it is buried all the way to the bay.
This photo shows the same general area as the last one, but during a very big storm when the creek reached the highest mark I ever saw.
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I’m not sure what order it will load up in or what order made. But the pictures contain
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A cricket frog. Not sure if northern or southern. I think southern.
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A decently sized lion’s mane mushroom I’ll cook for dinner tomorrow.
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A lovely morning glory. Not sure of the exact species. I like the purple throat and the star shape of the folds. I wonder if they are headed towards some kind of carnivorous evolution.
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A bag worm moth caterpillars little home under the bottom of a leaf. I don’t know the plant. I’m think spicebush but I’m not familiar enough with it. I’ll look it up later.
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Not new, so several of you are likely to have seen it, but still cool, even if it’s a rerun (the audio is fun, too):
Mesmerizing, rare dumbo octopus filmed in the deep sea
The frosty leaves are especially nice, and good composition.
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Thanks. All are from a walk in the woods with my son today. He took the photo of the cirrus clouds. It was just the right temperature for walking.
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