"January can give us interesting days," remarks Larry Weber, dryly. We set a record low of -33 January 18 in 1994, and a year ago at this time, we had temperatures in the mid-40s.
With the sub-zero temperatures behind us (for a few days, anyway), the change in the weather means more critters are out and about. Larry offers some tips for identifying tracks, including this simple formula:
Footprint + gait = tracks
The other part of that, of course, is to get several different views of the tracks, what size they are (you can use a coin to help show scale in a photograph) and where you saw them.