“In winter, things are down to their essence and their bare bones,” said David Lamon, manager of Fields Pond Audubon Center in Holden, Maine.
For those in northern climates, the outdoors in winter, with few flowers bursting or bees buzzing, might appear to be ... dead.
“People think it’s too cold and there’s nothing much going on,” said Sarah Gladu, director of education and community science for the Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust. “In nature, there’s actually a lot going on. People just need to slow down and look closely.”
What is going on in your backyard or nearby park?
Gladu leads winter nature walks in the Midcoast region of Maine, where she points out the dark red of a Hemlock varnish shelf fungus, the spots where porcupines have stripped the bark off trees and the distinctly large tracks left by a snowshoe hare.
The hares often seek shelter under fir and spruce trees, where the branches have been weighed down by snow, making a little tent.
Deciduous trees have dropped their leaves, but that makes it easier to see their branching, shapes and bark.
Conifer trees appear especially green against the snow, their waxy needles still photosynthesising through the winter months.
Woodpeckers forage. Small rodents can use these holes for dens in spring, their chew marks sometimes visible around the edge.
Hopefully, there is snow.
“No two snowfalls are exactly the same,” Lamon likes to say.
Digging down into the season’s snowpack shows how each layer has a different moisture content and accumulation.
Isolating a few snowflakes, such as those caught on a branch, reveals the hexagon structure they all have in common.
Fresh snow is ideal for spotting animal tracks. A jumping mouse can leave its trace before burrowing down.
In the subnivean layer below, where the warm earth melts the snow, small mammals can spend the whole winter tunnelling between dens and seed caches. A spider can hide out in a barn. Some spiders do survive outside in the cold, relying on the glycol in their blood to keep their cells from freezing, similar to the chemicals used to keep your car running in the winter.
Now, there is more sunlight every day and nature is responding. A tree, bare but still alive, radiates heat that melts a circle of snow around its trunk. A female bufflehead — a small diving duck — will soon head back northwest to breed.
The ice is letting go. — NYT
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