Minks. In a recent column I noted that my friend Mickey Gulino had observed a mink swimming in an open river channel north of the Narrowsburg Bridge.

It reminded me that these small, lithe animals, which weigh from one to three pounds, are common along the Upper Delaware River, though rarely seen. They stay close to water, and are mainly active at night.

So it’s a treat to watch a mink close up, as I did last summer, when one appeared outside the kitchen in mid-afternoon—a few hundred feet from the river—and surveyed our small frog pond. It slid into the water, but probably sensed my presence, for I’d no sooner located my binoculars than it was gone.

A few days later we discovered the decapitated body of a missing chicken. Minks typically kill muskrats and other small animals with a bite to the back of the skull, so my surmise is that this local mink was the culprit. Possibly something startled it, and the mink bounded from the garden minus the victim.

	TRR photo by Ed Wesely Brush marks from eagle wing—longest mark is 17 inches. (Click for larger image)

A winter den. Mink dens—commonly burrows in stream banks—are temporary residences in territories that may extend a mile or more along a streamside. I found such a den last week after following tracks across the Delaware River to a steep bank on the New York side. (The ice is still a foot thick where I live.) As the tracks moved onshore they continued to the base of a tree, where I discovered the mouth of a den.

Traveling with a bounding lope, a mink may cover six to eight miles an hour, and maintain the pace for many miles. Thanks to the frozen river with its layer of fresh snow, I’ve had a welcome opportunity to observe this unusual bounding pattern—plus coyote tracks, and the brush marks of an eagle wing.