Author: egawarkiewicz

Four Winds has been offering mini grants for nearly 20 years to help make schools better places to study nature year-round. Our hope is that funded projects promote school-community interaction and enhance the outdoor learning opportunities provided through the Four Winds Nature Program. 

Here are examples of previous projects: 

If you are interested in applying for a mini grant for your Nature Program-enrolled school, please check out our application guidelines online. You can submit your completed proposal through this google form (preferred method), email it to erika@fwni.org, or mail it to Four Winds Nature Institute, 4 Casey Road, Chittenden, VT 05737. Applications must be received by March 31, 2026.

We look forward to reading your applications!

Snow and sunshine = the perfect day for a winter picnic with friends!

Moving children and supplies over snow and ice can be a challenge, but much easier with the right equipment. That is where a good pulk comes in handy! A pulk is basically a sled rigged with a harness and rigid poles for more stability and control. Pulks are used across the north to carry equipment and supplies.

There are lots of pulk designs online for a wide variety of uses. Here’s a simple and relatively inexpensive do-it-yourself pulk set up, just right for hauling kids, tarp, food, and hot cocoa to your favorite snowy picnic spot.

What you’ll need:

A sturdy 5’ plastic sled – this one has two nice reinforced eyelets for attaching the carabiner;  

A 10’ piece of ¾” PVC – you’ll cut this in half and sand the inside of all the ends so no sharp edges slice the paracord line you’ll run through them;

A spool of paracord (rated for 500 lbs) – for this one we doubled the cord through the PVC (here’s a learn knot tying resource); 

4 carabiners – these have “SAFE WORKING LOAD 150 lbs” stamped on the side;

A 2”-wide webbed-canvas belt with reinforced eyelets and buckle  – this one was $20 from the local Army Navy store.

Children love to have their own pulk so they can invite their friends to the picnic, too!

As hearts pop up all around us at this time of year, wonder what is going on with our animal neighbors’ hearts? 

Try to put these animals in order from the fastest heartbeats to the slowest heartbeats in winter. Check your answers below. 

Shrews are active in winter and have a heart rate of over 700 beats per minute. If a shrew does not eat within a few hours, they will likely die.

A hibernating black bear’s heart rate drops from an average of 55 beats per minute down to about 14 beats per minute.

A hibernating woodchuck’s heart rate drops from around 80 beats per minute to as low as 4 beats per minute.

A painted turtle’s heart beats about 40 beats per minute when they’re basking in the sun in the summer. But during the winter, when they’re buried in the mud at the bottom of a pond, their heartbeat drops to as low as 8 beats per hour.

Wood Frogs have NO heartbeat in their frozen winter state.

What is this hollow brown capsule attached to a twig? 

An empty sawfly cocoon! Sawflies are wasp-like insects who get their name from the saw-like female ovipositor (egg-laying structure) they use to cut into plant tissue and lay eggs. Many sawflies lay eggs in the spring from which caterpillar-like larvae emerge (sawfly larvae have six or more pairs of prolegs, while caterpillars have up to five pairs). 

Elm sawfly larva and adult

Many sawfly larvae spin a cocoon and overwinter as pupae. The cocoons can be in soil or attached to branches. The cocoons are important winter food for small mammals. Tracks & Signs of Insects and other Invertebrates notes, “It has been estimated that a single short-tailed shrew consumes twenty-three thousand pine sawfly cocoons in a year.”

In the spring, the new adult sawflies chew a circle at one end of their cocoon to create a flip-top lid (which often stays attached) and emerge as adults to continue the cycle.

If the exit hole is smaller, circular, and off-center near one end, it’s likely a sign the sawfly pupa was parasitized by an ichneumonid wasp.

Four Winds Nature Institute was founded in 2006 by a dedicated group of naturalist-educators striving to provide people of all ages with meaningful opportunities to explore the natural world. Writing curricula, drawing puppets, collecting hundreds of pinecones and galls and birds’ nests – with a deep love for children and the environment, and through countless creative hours, the group has offered beloved programs like The Nature Program, Knee High Nature, and Linkages for Environmental Literacy that continue to this day. 

Four Winds proudly carries out community-based natural science education and research with the support of a cherished network of volunteers, parents, teachers, principals, and benefactors. We couldn’t do this important work without you!

Ten years ago we celebrated our 10th birthday with music, games, and cupcakes at Silver Lake State Park. This year in June, we plan to continue the tradition in the same location. Please keep an eye out for a ‘save the date’ coming soon, and mark June 27th (with a rain date of the 28th) on your calendar. 

Do you have favorite memories to share of Four Winds? We’d love to hear from you. If you have any stories from your time as a volunteer with The Nature Program, or experience in other programs, please reach out to erika@fwni.org to be featured on our blog. 

Brush up your outdoor play materials with a variety of brooms and brushes this winter!

Small brushes could be used for dusting off trees, making intricate patterns in the snow, or painting.

Hand brushes could be used for clearing off snow, and a dust pan could be used for transporting snow.

Brooms could be used for sweeping entrances, clearing snow off cars, and making large patterns in the snow. 

Provisioning your winter outdoor space with a variety of brushes and brooms provides opportunities for fine and gross motor skills, creative play, and meaningful work. 

Whose foot is this? Notice the fringes on the edges of the toes.

A ruffed grouse’s foot with their winter snowshoes! 

In the fall these pectinations (latin for comb-like structures) begin growing on the sides of grouse toes. Like a snowshoe, these fringes increase the surface area of the feet. With the bird’s weight more distributed, grouse are able to walk across the snow without sinking in as much. Pectinations are thought to help the grouse grip onto icy branches when feeding on their winter diet of buds and twigs as well. 

Grouse also grow gaiters on their legs (feathers) and a balaclava for their face (nostril feathers that slightly warm the air they breathe). In the spring, grouse shed their winter adaptive “gear.” 

As snow blankets New England, how do voles, mice, and shrews stay warm? They burrow under the snow, into a hidden world of tunnels and rooms – the subnivean zone. 

Named from the Latin “sub” (under) and “nives” (snow), the subnivean zone is a space that forms between the ground and the bottom of the snowpack in two ways. With the first snowfalls of the season, vegetation and rocks act like umbrellas, blocking snow from piling up underneath. The snowpack also holds in the earth’s heat like a blanket, heating up the snow that does make it to the ground and transforming it directly into water vapor (a process called sublimation). The warm water vapor rises and freezes onto the bottom layer of the snowpack like a ceiling. The subnivean zone offers shelter from cold and wind, and provides access to food caches stored in the fall. With eight inches of snowpack, the subnivean zone stays right around 32 degrees Fahrenheit, regardless of air temperature. 

Subnivean-dwellers dig a series of long, narrow tunnels under the snow, connecting known sources of food to chambers for sleeping, eating, food caching, and defecating. Most tunnels begin at a bush, tree trunk, or large rock, and these entrances double as ventilation shafts.

While small rodents in the subnivean zone are hidden from view, they are not safe from predators. The ermine’s slim build allows them to follow prey right down into their tunnels, sometimes napping in their victim’s tunnel before moving on to the next meal. Fox can hear their prey under the snow – tilting their head to triangulate the sounds (and perhaps tuning into the Earth’s magnetic field), leaping and pouncing head first into the snow. Owls are also tuned into the subnivean sounds, plunging into the snow talons-first.

Winters of repeated thawing and freezing can be difficult for subnivean-dwellers. Their winter homes can be flooded by abrupt snow melt. Sudden ice formation or snowpack collapse can trap animals in their tunnels and lead to suffocation. The hard ice layer that accumulates on top of snow during repeated freeze-thaw cycles makes hunting challenging for subnivean predators. Overall a thinner snowblanket is less insulating, and requires animals in the subnivean zone to eat more food in order to maintain their body temperature.   

See our previous blog post about making a snow cave, or “quinzee,” to have your own experience of getting cozy under the snow!

This Sunday, 12/21/2025, the winter solstice marks the first day of winter, the day with the shortest amount of daylight in the northern hemisphere. The sun rises on the solstice at 7:22am and sets at 4:14pm (in Montpelier, VT). This Monday the days will begin to get longer (up until the summer solstice where we’ll have 6 hours and 40 minutes more day length!). Enjoy this transition point in the year, from darkness to light, with some books: 

While barred owls are common in New England, and we often hear their “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?” hoots in the dark, actually spotting these nocturnal predators in the daylight is a delightful surprise. Barred owls are named for their horizontal throat and chest barring with vertical stripes below. You will also notice their large round head lacking ear tufts, pale facial disc, and those wonderful dark brown, forward-facing eyes.

With these big eyes, owls can see in very dim light, but they are also quite capable of seeing in broad daylight. Owl eyes, like ours, have both cone-shaped and rod-shaped photoreceptor cells. The cone-shaped cells help with color vision while the rod-shaped cells are important for seeing in dim light. Barred owls have lots more rods than cones, some 30 times more, assisting them to see at night when their prey tends to be most active. However, in daylight, owls’ pupils can adjust to allow less light in. They might also partially close their eyes to block some sun, making it appear as if they are snoozing even though they are fully alert.

Their typical habitat is mature mixed deciduous and coniferous woods, often near water, where they can roost camouflaged in the dense trees. So what would cause an owl to be active during the day? Perhaps the owl was spotted sleeping by some crows who chased the owl away from a quiet roost. Perhaps the hungry owl wasn’t successful hunting for food last night and is still on the prowl. Or, depending on the time of year, perhaps the owl was awake defending territory, searching for a mate, or protecting young. 

How good is YOUR eyesight? Can you spot the barred owl in this photo?