WINTER WAYS OF ANIMALS
On the way home one winter afternoon I came upon a beaver colony a
little below timberline. In the edge of the woods I stood for a time
looking out on the white smooth pond. Lines of tracks crossed it from
every point of the compass. Two camp birds alighted on a tree within a
few feet and looked me over. I heard a flock of chickadees going
through the woods.
A lynx came out of the willow clumps on the opposite shore. He walked
out on the snowy pond and headed straight for the house. He was in no
hurry and stepped slowly along and climbed on top of the house. Here
he sniffed a time or two, then raked the house with right forepaw. He
sniffed again. Nothing in reach for him.
Climbing down off the beaver house the lynx walked around it and
started for the woods near me. Catching my scent he stopped, took a
look, then went full speed into the Engelmann spruce forest. Other
lynx had visited the top of the beaver house and also prowled along
the bottom of the dam. A number of mountain sheep had crossed the pond
a day or two before.
The pond was in a deep gulch and a goodly stream of water out of sight
beneath the ice and snow was running into it. The concentrated outflow
burst out over the top of the south end of the dam through an
eighteen-inch opening. This pond was frozen over for five months. For
these five months the beaver each day had a swim or two in the water
under the ice. When hungry he took a section of an aspen from the pile
on the bottom of the pond. This was dragged under the ice up into the
house, where it afforded a meal of canned green bark.
Most summer birds fly away from winter. Other birds and a few animals
travel a short distance--go to a place where food is more abundant
although the winter there may not be any milder than in the locality
in which they summered. Birds that remain to winter in the locality in
which they summered, and most of the animals, too, go about their
affairs as usual. They do not store food for the winter or even for
the following day. The getting of food in the land of snows does not
appear to trouble them.
But a number of animals--squirrels, chipmunks, conies, and
beavers--store food for the winter. Generally these supplies are
placed where they are at all times readily reached by the owners; on
the earth, in it, in the water; the place depending on the taste and
the habits of the fellow.
Upon the mountain tops the cony, or Little Chief Hare, stacks hay each
autumn. This tiny stack is placed in the shelter of a big boulder or
by a big rock, close to the entrance of his den. While the beaver is
eating green canned bark the cony is contentedly chewing dry, cured
hay.
The beaver is one of the animals which solves the winter food and cold
problem by storing a harvest of green aspen, birch, and willow. This
is made during the autumn and is stored on the bottom of the pond
below the ice-line. Being canned in cold water the bark remains fresh
for months.
Squirrels store nuts and cones for winter food. Most squirrels have a
regular storing place. This covers only a few square yards or less and
usually is within fifty or sixty feet of the base of the tree in which
the squirrel has a hole and a winter home.
Commonly, when dining, the squirrel goes to his granary or storage
place and uses this for a dining room. A squirrel in a grove near my
cabin sat on the same limb during each meal. He would take a cone,
climb up to this limb, about six feet above the snow, back up against
the tree and begin eating. One day an owl flew into the woods. The
squirrel dropped his cone and scampered up into the treetop without a
chirp.
Another day a coyote came walking through the grove without a sound.
He had not seen me and I did not see him until the squirrel suddenly
exploded with a sputtering rush of squirrel words. He denounced the
coyote, called him a number of names. The coyote did not like it, but
what could he do? He took one look at the squirrel and walked on. The
squirrel, hanging to the cone in his right hand, waved it about and
cussed the coyote as far as he could see him.
A number of species of chipmunks store quantities of food, mostly weed
seed. But no one appears to know much of the winter life of chipmunks.
Chipmunks around my home remain under ground more than half of the
year. Two near my cabin were out of their holes only four months one
year. They were busy these four months gathering seeds and peanuts
which they stored underground in their tunnels. Twice by digging I
found the chipmunks in a sleep so heavy that I could not awaken them,
and I believe they spend much of the eight months underground
sleeping. Digging also revealed that they had eaten but little of
their stored supplies.
When food becomes scarce and the weather cold and snowy, a number of
animals hole up--go into a den. By hibernating, sleeping away the
weeks the earth is barren and white, they triumph over the ways of
winter. Bears and ground-hogs are famous hibernators. Many chipmunks
and some species of squirrels hibernate for indefinite periods.
The Bat and the Bear, they never care
What winter winds may blow;
The Jumping-mouse in his cozy house
Is safe from ice and snow.
The Chipmunk and the Woodchuck,
The Skunk, who’s slow but sure,
The ringed Raccoon, who hates the moon,
Have found for cold the cure.
--SAMUEL SCOVILLE, JR., in _Everyday Adventures_.
Animals which hibernate, fast and sleep through much or all of the
winter, are not harmed and possibly are benefitted by the fasting and
sleeping. Bears and ground-hogs are fat when they go to bed in the
autumn and fat and strong when they come out in the spring.
A snowy winter gives a bear den a cold-excluding outer
covering--closes the entrance and the airholes. Most bears and
ground-hogs appear to remain in the den all winter. I have known an
occasional ground-hog to thrust out his head for a few minutes now and
then during the winter, and bears may come forth and wander about for
a time, especially if not quite comfortable. I have known a number of
bears to come out toward spring for brief airings and sunnings.
Mid-winter a bear wanted more bedding. In fact, he did not have any,
which was unusual. But the winter was cold, no snow had fallen, and
the frigid wind was whistling through his poorly built den house. The
usual snow would have closed the airholes and shut out the cold. He
was carrying cedar bark and mouthfuls of dried grass into the den.
This same winter I came upon another bear. Cold or something else had
driven him from his den. When I saw him he was trying to reopen an old
den which was back in a bank under the roots of a spruce. He may have
tried to dig a den elsewhere, but the ground was frozen almost as hard
as stone. While he was working a bob-cat came snarling out. The bear
struck at it. It backed off sputtering then ran away. In tearing out a
root the bear slipped and rolled down the bank. He went off through
the woods.
Late one February I came upon a well-worn bear trail between the sunny
side of a cliff and an open den. In this trail there were tracks fresh
and tracks two or more weeks old. Elsewhere I have seen many evidences
that bears toward spring come out briefly to sun themselves and to
have an airing. But never a sign of their eating or drinking anything.
Near my cabin I marked four ground-hog holes after the fat fellows
went in. On September tenth I stuffed a bundle of grass in the
entrance of each den. Sometime during the winter one of them had
disturbed the grass and thrust out his head. Whether this was on
Ground-hog Day or not, I cannot say. The other ground-hogs remained
below until between April seventh and twelfth, about seven months. And
these seven months were months of fast, and possibly without water.
The raccoon, who ever seems a bright, original fellow, appears to have
a hibernating system of his own. Many a raccoon takes a series of
short hibernating sleeps each winter, and between these sleeps he is
about hunting food, eating and living as usual. But I believe these
periods of hibernating often correspond to stormy or snowy periods.
While trying to see a flock of wild turkeys in Missouri one winter day
I had a surprise. The snow showed that they had come out of the woods
and eaten corn from a corn shock. I hoped to see them by using a
near-by shock for a blind and walked around the shock. The snow over
and around it showed only an outgoing mouse track. No snow had fallen
for two days.
I had gotten into the centre of the shock when I stepped on something
that felt like a big dog. But a few seconds later, when it lunged
against me, trying blindly to get out, it felt as big as a bear. I
overturned the shock in escaping. A blinking raccoon looked at me for
a few seconds, then took to the woods.
Deep snow rarely troubles wild life who lay up food for winter. And
snow sometimes is even helpful to food storers and also to the bears
and ground-hogs who hibernate, and even to a number of small folk who
neither hibernate nor lay up supplies.
One winter afternoon I followed down the brook which flows past my
cabin. The last wind had blown from an unusual quarter, the northeast.
It made hay-stack drifts in a number of small aspen groves. One of
these drifts was perhaps twenty feet across and about as high. The
treetops were sticking out of it.
On the top of the snowdrift a cotton-tail was feeding happily off the
bark of the small limbs. This raised platform had given him a good
opportunity to get at a convenient food supply. He was making the most
of this. At the bottom he had bored a hole in the snow pile and
apparently planned to live there.
While peeping into this hole two mice scampered along it. This snow
would protect them against coyotes. Safe under the snow they could
make their little tunnels, eat grass and gnaw bark, without the fear
of a coyote jumping upon them.
Tracks and records in the snow showed that for two days a coyote did
not capture a thing to eat. During this time he had travelled miles.
He had closely covered a territory about three miles in diameter.
There was game in it, but his luck was against him. He was close to a
rabbit, grabbed a mouthful of feathers--but the grouse escaped, and
even looked at a number of deer. At last, after more than two days,
and possibly longer, he caught a mouse or two.
Antelope in the plains appear to live in the same territory the year
round. Many times in winter I have been out on the plains and found a
flock feeding where I had seen it in summer. But one snowy time they
were gone. I found them about fifteen miles to the west, where either
less snow had fallen or the wind had partly swept it away. The
antelope were in good condition. While I watched them a number started
a race.
The wolves had also moved. A number of these big gray fellows were
near the antelope. Just what the other antelope and the other wolves
who used this locality did about these new folks, I cannot guess.
Mountain deer and elk who usually range high during the summer go to
the lowlands or several miles down the mountains for the winter. They
may thus be said to migrate vertically. One thousand feet of descent
equals, approximately, the climatic changes of a thousand-mile
southward journey. They may thus winter from five to twenty-five miles
from where they summered, from one thousand to several thousand feet
lower. The elk that winter in the Jackson Hole region have a summer
range on the mountains forty or fifty miles away. But elk and deer
that have a home territory in the lowlands are likely to be found
summer after summer in the same small, unfenced pasture.
Moose, caribou, deer, and elk during heavy snows often resort to
yarding. Moose and caribou are experts in taking care of themselves
during long winters of deep snows. They select a yard which offers the
maximum food supply and other winter opportunities.
One snowy winter I visited a number of elk that were yarding. High
peaks rose snowy and treeless above the home in the forest. The
ragged-edged yard was about half a mile long and a quarter of a mile
wide. About one half the yard was a swamp covered with birch and
willow and a scattering of fir. The remainder was a combination of
open spaces, aspen groves, and a thick growth of spruce.
Constant trampling compressed the snow and enabled the elk readily to
move about. Outside the yard they would have bogged in deep snow. In
the swamp the elk reached the moss, weeds, and other growths. But
toward spring the grass and weeds had either been eaten or were buried
beneath icy snow. The elk then ate aspen twigs and the tops and limbs
and bark of birch and willow.
Ease of movement in this area enabled the elk to keep enemies at bay.
Several times I saw from tracks that lion had entered this selfmade
wild life reservation, and on two occasions a number of wolves invaded
it. But each time the elk had bunched in a pocket of a trampled space
and effectively fought off the wolves.
One day late in February I visited the yard. The elk plainly had lost
weight but were not in bad condition. While I lingered near the entire
herd joined merrily in chase and tag, often racing then wheeling to
rear high and fence with heads. If I counted correctly this herd went
through the entire winter without the loss of an elk.
But the caribou appears to be the only animal which migrates between
summer and winter ranges, that is, which makes a long journey of
hundreds of miles; as much change of place as made by many species of
migrating birds. The main cause for this migration is the food supply,
but myriads of mosquitoes in the woods may be one cause of the moose
moving each summer far into the north where there are grassy prairies
and large openings in the woods. But for winter they seek food and
shelter in a yard in the forest.
While snowshoeing in the forested mountains to the southeast of Long’s
Peak I came upon a mountain lion track startlingly fresh. I followed
it to a den beneath a rock pile at the bottom of a cliff. Evidently
the lion was in. Seeing older tracks which he had made on leaving the
den, I trailed these. After zigzagging through the woods he had set
off in a bee-line for the top of a cliff. From this point he
evidently saw a number of deer. He had crawled forward, then
back-tracked and turned to the right, then made round to the left. The
snow was somewhat packed and his big feet held him on the surface. The
deer broke through.
The lion climbed upon a fallen tree and crept forward. He was screened
by its large upturned root. At last he rushed out and seized a near-by
deer and killed it, evidently after a short struggle. He had then
pursued and killed a young deer that had fled off to the left where it
was struggling in the heavy snows. Without returning to the first kill
the lion fed off the second and returned to the den.
I followed the other deer. In a swamp they had fed for a time on the
tops of tall weeds among the snow and willows. I came close to them in
a thick growth of spruce. Here the snow was less deep. A goodly
portion of the snow still clung to the trees.
These deer circled out of the spruce swamp and came into their trail
made in entering it. Back along this trail they followed to where the
lion had made the first kill. Leaping over this dead deer they climbed
up on the rocky ridge off which so much snow had blown that they could
travel speedily most of the time over the rocks with only now and then
a stretch of deep snow.
Often during my winter trips I came upon a porcupine. Both winter and
summer he seemed blindly content. There were ten thousand trees
around, and winter or summer there were meals to last a life-time.
Always he had a dull, sleepy look and I doubt if he ever gets
enthusiastic enough to play.
Birds that remain all winter in snowy lands enjoy themselves. Like the
winter animals, usually they are well fed. But most species of birds
with their airplane wings fly up and down the earth, go northward in
the spring and southward in the autumn, and thus linger where summer
lingers and move with it when it moves.
Around me the skunks hibernated about two months each year; some
winters possibly not at all. Generally the entire skunk family, from
two to eight, hole up together. One den which I looked into in
mid-winter had a stack of eight sleepy skunks in it. A bank had caved
off exposing them. I left them to sleep on, for had I wakened them
they might not have liked it. And who wants to mix up with a skunk?
Another time a snowslide tore a big stump out by the roots and
disclosed four skunks beneath. When I arrived, about half an hour
after the tear-up, the skunks were blinking and squirming as though
apparently too drowsy to decide whether to get up or to have another
good sleep.
Many tales have been told about the terrible hunger and ferocity of
wolves during the winter. This may sometimes be so. Wolves seem ever
to have good, though not enormous, appetites. Sometimes, too, they go
hungry for days without a full meal. But generally, if the winter is
snowy, this snow makes it easier for them to make a big kill.
Deer, elk, and mountain sheep occasionally are caught in deep snow, or
are struck by a snowslide. A number sometimes are snowbound or killed
at one time. Usually the prowling wolves or coyotes discover the kill
and remain near as long as the feast holds out.
Once I knew of a number of wolves and two lions lingering for more
than two weeks at the wreckage brought down by a snowslide. I was
camping down below in the woods and each evening heard a hullabaloo,
and when awake in the night I heard it. Occasionally I heard it in the
daytime. Finally a grizzly made a discovery of this feeding ground. He
may have scented it or he may have heard the uproars a mile or two
away. For the wolves and the lions feasted, fought, and played by the
hour. The row became so uproarious one night that I started up to see
what it was all about. But the night was dark and I turned back to
wait until morning. Things had then calmed down, and only the grizzly
remained. After he ran off I found that from fifteen to twenty deer
had been swept down by the slide and mixed with the tree wreckage.
The right kind of winter clothing is an important factor for winter
life for both people and animals. The clothing problem perhaps is more
important than the food question.
Winter in the Temperate Zone causes most birds and animals to change
clothing--to put on a different suit. This usually is of winter weight
and in many cases of a different colour than that of the summer suit.
Bears, beavers, wolves, and sheep put on a new, bright, heavy suit in
autumn and by spring this is worn and faded. The weasel wears
yellow-brown clothes during summer, but during winter is in pure-white
fur--the tip of the tail only being jet black. The snowshoe rabbit has
a new suit at the beginning of each winter. This is furry, warm, and
pure white. His summer clothes are a trifle darker in colour than
those of other rabbits. If there is no snow he eats with his feet on
the earth or on a fallen log or rock pile, but if there is a deep snow
he has snowshoes fastened on and is ever ready to go lightly over the
softest surface.
In these ways--hibernating, eating stored food, or living as in summer
time from hand to mouth--the animals of the Temperate Zone go
contentedly through the winter with a change of habit and all with a
change of clothing. The winter commonly is without hardship and there
is time for pranks and play. Winter, so the animal Eskimos say, and so
the life of the Temperate Zone shows, will bear acquaintance.