Some animals bulk up to make it through winter
February 24, 2002

How does animal life obtain enough food to live in winter? Different species have "adapted" methods that are certain to enable them to survive.

Some animals such as certain species of bats, birds, and insects migrate to warmer, frost-free climates where needed foods can be readily found.

Animals like woodchucks and ground squirrels hibernate. They prepare for winter by putting on extra layers of fat which they can use slowly during the cold months of sleep. Their body temperatures often drop to 40 degrees and their life processes are greatly slowed down.

In dormant woodchucks, for example, the heartbeat can drop from 80 per minute to four and breathing from 25 per minute to once in five minutes.

In very cold weather, raccoons, opossums and skunks sleep or remain very quiet for days or weeks and live on their stored fat reserves. But when the weather warms they are out and about, looking for seeds, grain and wild fruit. These three species will also eat mice, insects and birds---it they can catch them.

Black bears are not true hibernators and are known to leave their dens during mild winter weather.

The animals that are active in our area throughout the winter are obvious because we see them, their tracks and other signs. Squirrels and rabbits winter diet consists of twigs, buds, bark, seeds, nuts and almost any other type of plant material they can find.

The diet of the white-tailed deer is not much different. They use their hooves to paw down through the snow to find green evergreen wood ferns and club mosses and they also love to munch on twigs---many times found around our homes.

Be a nature detective. Next time you take a hike in he winter woods, spend time looking closely at trunks of trees. You will discover many "tiny" things that small birds like chickadees eat.

Many insect eggs look like small white dots. There are more brown dots than white, but they are harder to see. You may find small slowly active spiders. Look closely at what appears to be black pepper sprinkled in the snow. If the pepper dots are moving, they are snow fleas.

Many times when hawks are seen flying low over wintry fields, they are looking for lunch. Harrier love voles.

This curious naturalist has watched a harrier pick up an entire, fist-sized grassy vole nest that was exposed when the sun melted its protective cover.

As the hawk slowly flew away, it used its feet to sort through the grass. It was noted that if all of the grass fell from the sky, the hawk did not find lunch.

This was observed three times. The third time was lunch time!

This would be like you or I going to McDonald's a third time before we got something to eat.

Would you like to be a harrier?