What ate that?

I have a book called What Shat That? It's an identification tool for scat. I actually use it some times........ <heh>.

Anyway, I came across a little midden pile today. I was walking around Great Meadow National Wildlife Refuge in Concord, MA. This is a series of large pieces of land along the Sudbury River watershed. Here there was a fresh water marsh and several small pools. Humans have erected dikes, docks and watch towers. Trails run through and around the marshes (on the dikes) and around the pools. Between two of these pools where water shrubs criss-crossed the bank and a culvert ran under the dike, I came across several fish skeletons and empty snail shells. There were layers of the stuff.

Beavers and muskrats are rodents and eat vegetable mater. So, this must have been some animal in the mustid family (weasel, fisher, etc). Does anyone have any better idea than I what ate the following? Or for that matter, what type of fish this was?

Backbones were between 12 and 16 inches long and I found around 8 of them here




The heads were about as big as my fist