Footprints in the Sand

I started work today on a new archaeological site on the Patuxent River in southeastern Maryland. One of my rules is that I always explore the area around every site I work on, so I fought my way through the dense tangle of brambles and poison ivy growing on the riprap and down to the little beach along the river. All of the shorelines around here are eroding, some of them very rapidly, so the beach next to any archaeological site is usually strewn with artifacts. But today instead of artifacts I found all of these animal tracks.

 Here are the tracks of four animals.

 The smaller prints belong to an adult raccoon and a smaller mammal, I think a baby raccoon.

Those holes in the sand are deer prints, one adult and one young, no doubt a mother and her infant.

The deer prints led to this little spring in the bank. That water can't be completely fresh, but deer living in these coastal environments have adapted to survive on slightly salty water.

A small shorebird.

And all together.