The otters seem to be able to tell where the ice is thinnest in the lake and come up from underneath to keep it open. They use these holes for breathing breaks and also as a place to eat their aquatic catches.
While birches bow under the weight of snow and ice, what makes these “straighter darker trees” stay upright?
These are conifers, trees that produce cones, and many have a conical shape. Their tapered form is designed to shed snow and ice and is a result of their growth pattern. Many conifers (such as pines, firs, and spruces) grow in annual spurts, putting on a circular pattern, or whorl, of branches each year from a single shoot. As the tree grows upward adding whorls, the whorls of lower branches stretch further outwards. This shape allows these conifers to shed their load of snow and ice while keeping their stable cone structure. As ice and snow collect on the branches, they droop until touching the supportive whorl of branches below. The more ice and snow, the more the conifer is folded in, and the more ice and snow slides off the steep sides.
This whorling growth pattern also allows us to estimate the age of young conifers, usually up to around 15 years old. Start by counting the whorls of the tree. Look closely for any circular arrangement of stubs and/or knots at the bottom of the stem where early branches had grown and then died and dropped off, and add that number to your age count. Add two to four years for the time of seedling germination to branch whorls to get your final age estimate.
What’s your age estimate for these two young white pine trees?
Snow blanketing the landscape illuminates the movements of our animal neighbors. It is a wonderful time of year to become a track detective – following in the footsteps of wildlife and piecing together clues to their identity.
Becoming a track detective is like learning to read; in fact, it is reading, but with a different set of symbols. Every set of tracks tells a story. Here are some books to inspire reading the stories of wildlife in the winter woods.
A systematic review by Lee et al (2020) found that unstructured play, particularly in natural settings, had a positive effect on reducing young children’s symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression.
Read more about the researched benefits of nature-based play and learning in this updated literature review from PEER Associates.
CRUNCH! The sounds of puddle stomping brings delight to a winter walk. But where is that crunch coming from?
Under the layer of ice, the puddles are hollow. When the surface of the water freezes, the water underneath slowly recedes into the freezing ground around the puddle. The water flows back into the puddle depression when the ground ice melts. Crunchy hollow puddles do require the water to be able to flow out the sides of the puddle; they won’t form if the sides are sealed.
Often these crunchy puddles have swirling contour lines. One name for this ice is “cat ice” – as the surface is so fragile it could support the weight of nothing more than a light-footed cat!
Try picking a puddle to watch and notice the changes between freezes and thaws. Happy puddle crunching!
A ruffed grouse has spent time resting and digesting here before flying off! Ruffed grouse feed mostly on the buds of aspen, birch, alder, beaked hazelnut, and ironwood in the winter. They have a large crop (a pouch-like part of the esophagus where consumed food is stored) and can load up on all the buds they need to make it through the day in 30 minutes or less. Then it is time to seek a cozy, safe place to digest.
When snow depths are around a foot or more, the chicken-sized grouse dives in and uses their wings and feet to create a snow chamber. This is a warm place for them to digest hidden away from predator great-horned owls and goshawks. Susan Morse, founder and program director of Keeping Track, measured the temperature in a snow chamber 18” under a fluffy snowpack at 29℉ compared to -22℉ above the snow.
Counting pellets also can give you insight into the grouse’s story. Naturalist Bernd Heinrich correlated length of time in the snow chamber to the number of pellets. He found that grouse produce on average 3.7 fecal pellets per hour. Grouse scat can be a fibrous dry pellet (buds, twigs, leaves, catkins that pass directly through the digestive system), or a more liquified darker dropping (cambium of woody plants and fine material broken down by bacteria in the caeca before passing through the large intestine).
Ruffed grouse’s more common, cylindrical dry scat pellets.
Tomorrow is the first day of winter, the winter solstice! This will be the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere – with the sun setting at 4:14pm and rising at 7:23am in Montpelier, VT. With the moon nearing full – Full Cold Moon December 26 – there is good light for night time explorations.
A bobcat was sitting, and a vole or mouse was scurrying between tunnels! Bobcats’ typical hunting method is sitting patiently and ambushing prey. As they spend time in the same position, the details of the tracks are left in well-defined prints in the snow. This bobcat was sitting facing to the left of the photo, towards the vole or mouse tracks between tunnel holes. Perhaps the bobcat was waiting to pounce on an emerging vole or mouse! Voles and mice are a significant part of a bobcat’s diet, along with hares and cottontails. When there is deep snow to allow for easier predation, occasionally a large bobcat will also feed on deer.
Look for a few tale-tell signs to distinguish this cat track (left) from a dog track (right):
🐾Four toe impressions are asymmetrically arranged, unlike symmetric dog tracks you can make an x through without touching the heel pad or toe impressions.
🐾The heel pad is flat or bi-lobed, unlike dog tracks where the heel pad is pointed.
🐾Fine and retractable cat claws often aren’t visible in tracks, unlike the thicker blunt nail impressions of dogs that usually do appear in tracks.
🐾In light snow, you can see a fur impression around cat tracks, absent in dog tracks.
“Children find sticks an endless source of make-believe fun. Sticks can turn into swords, magic wands, majorette batons, fishing poles, and lightsabers. When children pretend with sticks, they cultivate their creativity and develop their imaginations. They explore as they search outdoors for just the right one. Children build with sticks, bat balls with them, and walk with them. They are the original building blocks for creative play. Sticks also promote free play—the freedom to invent and discover. They encourage playing outside instead of inside. Sticks are all around us; they are natural and free. … Sticks are not only possibly the oldest toys, they’re possibly the best!”
-The Strong National Museum of Play
Happy stick season! Four Winds has created a guide to creating an open-ended outdoor play space anywhere with sticks, including materials to have on hand, adult role, benefits, and books. Check it out here. What will you do with a stick!?
Who made these winding designs on this birch tree?
A snail has left a feeding trail! The birch tree is covered in an algal film, fine food for a snail. The snail’s radula, a tongue-like organ covered in small teeth, scraped off the algae in an intricate pattern of rows of short lines undulating from side to side.
Richard S. Houbrick, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Snail radula magnified 400x.
This snail scraping might be beneficial to the birch. Clearing the bark could allow more sunlight to penetrate the birch’s thin outer bark and enable late-winter photosynthesis. The bark scrubbing could also help the bark reflect light, keeping the tree from heating and expanding on a sunny day and “frost cracking” at night.
While the snails are likely now sealed in their shell and snuggled under the soil for winter, we can still read their stories on trees.
