Mystery Animal...what do you think it is?

[Catherine]

There is a mystery animal near the lake shore on the east side of Toronto. Someone got a good picture, but no one is sure what they are seeing.  I will definitely say it is not a skunk.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/my...-1.4239025

This is a Fisher



This is a mink



This is a Martin


This is a skunk



This is the mystery animal.



This is another Fisher picture.



It is probably a Mink. I have seen mink in Toronto. I have seen one that was dark like the animal in the picture. It is clearly not a skunk or raccoon. I doesn't look like a Martin.
It would be amazing if it was a Fisher. That would mean they are returning to the area. 
It looks like a Fisher. What do you think?

[Libby]

It looks like a mink to me. Hard to tell in the shadow but it's head shape is very similar.

[Catherine]

It does look like a mink. There are mink around. His presence in the area means the work to restore the wetlands is working.
Wildlife is coming back.

If it was a Fisher it would be even more amazing. They haven't been seen in the area in many years. It could happen. Once you start putting things back the way they should be, the wildlife will follow. Give them a place to live and they will live there.
The whole shoreline has needed to be restored and the rivers needed to be cleaned up and allowed to flow naturally. It is obvious that it is working.
I wish it was a Fisher, but it does look like a mink.

[LPC]

It looks like one of the two, that's for sure. By the way, the photo of the mystery animal appears to have been distorted (probably by accident, but it could be deliberate). I just clicked on image properties and it shows:
620px × 349px (scaled to 796px × 349px)

That means that the mystery animal photo has been stretched horizontally. That makes it look fatter in the face than it really is.

[Catherine]

Even with the distorted image it could still be either a mink or a fisher.  Common sense says it is a mink. The optimist in me says it could be a fisher. All these animal sightings are a sign that the city is cleaning up the mess made of the environment by previous generations. When I moved to Toronto the Don River was dirty and full of garbage. The wetlands near the lake were gone. Now the river valley is a beautiful natural area and the wetlands are returning.








It really is right in the city and major highways cross the valley by bridge. There is a major roadway that runs down one side of the valley, but the valley has returned to nature. This allows wildlife to live in our neighbourhoods. 
For a big city we are fairly green.

[Tobi]

The Fisher has a wider face. The Mink has a more sharp muzzle. But my guess is it's a Mink, if the photo has been stretched. Why would somebody stretch it? It does look a lot like a Mink in one photo, a Fisher in the other!

[Catherine]

The picture might have been taken with a cell phone and somehow got resized as it was uploaded.

You are right, the mink have a narrower face and the Fisher, a wider face. It's a mink. But for one brief moment, it could have been a fisher. 

If I actually believed it was a fisher I would be over there looking for it. I have never seen a fisher in the wild. They are so uncommon that I will probably never will see one.

[LPC]

Here is the photo correctly sized (I have adjusted width to original settings shown in properties)

[Catherine]

That is one of our mink. I have seen one up close. The Fisher is bigger and I think Tobi is right, the face is wider. It is still a good sign that there are mink back in the area. It means we are returning to biodiversity. We have ravines and river valleys all over the city. They should be full of wildlife. Now that they are being respected as natural spaces and cleaned up of garbage, we are getting a whole range of animals.

We are a city that is recovering from the mismanagement of the environment by previous generations.
We have a number of small creeks that were channeled through pipes and buried under landfill. In some places they put houses over them. It hasn't worked well. The houses are leaning badly because there are creeks running under them. We also have localized flooding problems because those creeks were part of the natural drainage system for the area.  I think we should open up the creeks in the areas where they pass under parks. It is a partial solution that will help channel runoff rain water. We could end up with a mink in my back yard if we opened Garrison Creek in the park nearby. The creek could become a feature of the park.

I have a good shovel. I would help dig.