[audio:http://wamcradio.org/EarthWise/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/EW-03-12-13-Winter-Mammals.mp3|titles=EW 03-12-13 Winter Mammals]
I go birdwatching at least once a week, even in the winter. When I’m walking on unplowed roads or trails, I see lots of animal tracks. It seems that our northeastern forests are lively places even in the winter.
Some of our mammals spend the winter in hibernation, as a way of adapting to scarce food supplies. Once our flowers and vegetable gardens go dormant, woodchucks go underground to snooze. Bats, chipmunks, skunks, and some mice hibernate in winter, as do reptiles and amphibians.
Other animals have different mechanisms for surviving winter. When they’re not raiding bird-feeders, squirrels eat food that they stored away in the fall.
The mammals that don’t hibernate or store food supplies sometimes adapt their diets. Anyone who has landscaping here in the northeast knows that deer who are deprived of their leafy summer diets will eat just about any plant in the winter.
As for those animal tracks that I see on my walks, some of them are from bobcats, who conserve energy in the winter by using roads and trails instead of hunting in the deep snow. They feast on rabbits and other small mammals, and they’re even known to take down a deer occasionally.
Winter can be tough for these animals, and we have to admire the way they adapt to this brutal season.
**********
Photo, taken on July 17, 2009, courtesy of Jason Empey via Fickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. Support for Earth Wise comes from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY, with partial support from the Field Day Foundation.