What do you love about being outside? Here are children’s perspectives:
“We love making kitchens in tree roots!”
“Breaking ice is fun and getting my anger out. If you’re angry you can just bang ice. Getting pressure makes you feel good. It’s just fun to hear the sound also. I like the sound of the ice going. I like how the water absorbs all the stuff. It’s like it absorbs all your angry thoughts. It’s like the snow absorbs your anger somehow. You just feel better after.”
“I love climbing trees.”
“Um, play, play puppy, I mean kitty. Play puppy and kitty. And play lions.”
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.
Eyes, a nose, a mouth – it’s a pattern most of us recognize from an early age. Research shows that even newborns prefer to gaze at faces over other objects. That makes sense, given that we humans are a social species. The ability to recognize and distinguish the faces of those who care about (and for) us is an important social skill. With experience, most of us get pretty good at it.
It’s fun to look for that familiar pattern in nature, too. And early winter is a great time to go exploring for faces in the forest.
Look closely to see who you can find in the bare trees. Or, if you are lucky, who you can BE in the bare trees!
Imagine what it would be like to stand quietly in one spot all year long watching the changes through the seasons and through the years. Just imagine.
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.
What is YOUR favorite way to enjoy these early snows of winter? Building snow critters? Catching flakes on your tongue? Making snow angels? Sledding?
Lots of research points to the importance of unstructured play time outside for children’s health. And it’s fun for the whole family. So, put on your mittens, boots, and hats, and go enjoy the season!
