I threw that dead squirrel into trackless sand in the wash near Ian’s place, a good respectful distance from the Lair, where I’m accustomed to disposing of rodent bodies without giving scavengers the notion that the Lair is a good place to come for dinner.
I expected the body to be gone this morning, and it was.
It never occurred to me until I looked the scene over that this would have been a really great use for the game camera.
The tracks say it got taken by a coyote, no surprise there. But there are also bird tracks – could be hawk or owl but from the tracks I’m thinking roadrunner. Raptors don’t walk to and from a corpse. But I didn’t know roadrunners would scavenge roadkill.
Game camera. Something to keep in mind next time I need to dispose of a squirrel or big packrat. I could have learned something new, and I didn’t from lack of forethought.
Roadrunner’s leave tracks that show two toes to the front and two toes to the back. Hard to tell for sure from the pic but those are likely raven tracks, ravens are big time scavengers.
For the bird tracks, from just looking at them, I’d say crow or raven. Roadrunners have an X shaped track- two toes in front and two behind. (So do owls, for that matter, but they would look very different from a roadrunner’s track)
We’ve got loads of ravens, and I agree they’re a more logical guess than roadrunner as scavengers except they’re also not big walkers. These tracks walk to and from the scene for a considerable distance.
So that might be a well-fed raven that’s too portly to fly. You’ve got the Michael Moore of ravens! Or the Rosie O’Donnell…