Here’s what I think are the tracks of a fisher that apparently was quickly bounding along in one of the last patches of the recent snow. One of these shy and solitary animals was seen by our lucky neighbor shortly before this image was taken.
They often are called “fisher cats,” but they’re neither cats nor do they typically feed on fish. They get their name due to their looking somewhat like a “fitch” or “fiche,” a European polecat or its pelt. Fishers (Pekania pennanti) are long, low, and muscular weasels with large claws.
Adult male fishers range up to 47 inches and 13 pounds, while the much smaller females range up to 37 inches and 6 pounds. The adults have no significant predators other than humans. But fishers are very aggressive hunters of other animals. Here’s an image of the tracks next to my boot mark, which is 12.5” long:
They’re perhaps the only regular porcupine predators; they kill the quill-armored porcupines with a series of very quick and vicious face and underbelly bites. Surprisingly, they’re also a leading killer of Canada lynx in Maine, according to state wildlife reports. However, fishers are not at all fussy about their diets. Their diets include hares, rabbits, rodents, birds, fruits and nuts, any domestic cats and small- or medium-sized dogs that happen to come by, and the flesh of dead or dying animals that they find.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 25, 2025.)