Let's play 'What made these holes?'

[haruka]

There has been evidence of digging in my yard and I'm not sure what's doing it. Most of these are near my bird feeders, which are right next to the woods with the river down the hill.



This one has been here for about a week. It's about an inch across and almost perfectly round. It's also very deep. This is not the first time a hole like this (with an exit hole, as well, although this one didn't have one) has appeared near our feeders, but we filled the others in:




This is about five inches across, not very deep, so just scratching for food?:




looks like some more general scratching, but making a mess:





Maybe this one was the exit hole for the little one, but I couldn't tell how deep it was:




More scratching? Another little hole? I couldn't tell the depth because there's a thick twig or root sticking out of it:




There's no shortage of wildlife around here. Even though we've only lived here since August, I've seen raccoons that were coming every night for a while, but haven't been around in about a month. My wife saw a skunk one night when the garbage was out. I saw a mouse, but haven't seen it again since we put the sonic device and a lot of peppermint oil under our house. There has been at least one squirrel, and a chipmunk, but we haven't seen the latter since around the same time the raccoons left. There's a stray cat that I've seen during the day. Also, there's been a coyote in the neighbourhood, but I haven't seen him personally.

I don't know if what's doing this is any of those, something else entirely, or several different animals. I've never caught any of these animals digging, the holes just seem to appear overnight.

Comments

[nightdog_barks]

Is it possible you've got armadillos? We get holes in our yard occasionally, and they're from armadillos digging for grubs. This site has some examples of armadillo holes, although they're located in Florida (we're in Texas).

[haruka]

I don't know if we get armadillos here in Nova Scotia, but I'll look it up. I noticed that site mentioned moles, too, and that's a possibility.

[nightdog_barks]

Ah, Nova Scotia! Beautiful, beautiful place, and yeah, probably not an armadillo then. *g* Could be moles, or possibly porcupines. Or rabbits, although I'm not sure they would dig that deeply. Good luck in your search! :-)

[haruka]

Thanks, I'll post an update if I ever catch whatever-it-is in the act!

[loligo]

The shallow ones look a lot like the holes that skunks make when they're digging up worms and grubs. But that first one looks quite different.

[haruka]

When my mother-in-law saw them, she said 'skunk' as well. The first ones are real little tunnels, and I'm leaning toward moles for that one.

This is such an interesting location. All I got in wildlife before we moved were seagulls.

[loligo]

We have very heavy clay soil here, so when moles dig tunnels, it looks just like in a cartoon: you see a ridge traveling through the yard right over their tunnel, because they dig so close to the surface. But I don't know if they do things differently in places with lighter soil.

[thistleburr]

The first one looks like it could be a chipmunk burrow to me. They make small but deep burrows that tend to interconnect and have multiple openings. Like this or this!

[haruka]

Wow, it does look similar!

[grackle]

Looks very armadillo to me.

[haruka]

It doesn't seem that armadillos are native to Nova Scotia, although I'd love to see one in person. :)

[grackle]

I'll loan you one. I have them living in my yard. :)

[quarryquest]

Overhere in the UK if we found holes like that it would either be rabbits trying to dig a hole to start a burrow (you should see my BF's lawn!) or squirrels looking to hide / find acorns ...

[haruka]

I think either is a possibility here. Definitely squirrels I've seen around, but not yet rabbits, although I know there ARE wild rabbits in NS (I'd love to see one here, although I guess where there is one, there'll be many!)