Nadya's Nature Notes - December '99/January 2000

By Nadya N.

Christmas is here, and exams are looming just around the corner. Outside it's cold, on most days everything is covered with snow, barren and still. In the woods you won't hear songbirds chatting cheerfully - unless they're chickadees, nuthatches, juncos, blue jays or starlings, that is. The trees are leafless and dark against the sparkling snow - it seems everything is asleep.

Wait, not everything! Just open your eyes and ears wider. If you look on the snow on the ground, you just might see some animal tracks. There, hiding under the bushes - aren't those the long-legged footprints of rabbits? You're very lucky if you actually see them hopping around - Snowshoe Hares change their fur color to white in the winter (but rabbits don't). Here's something fun to do if you like nature, or even if you just want to get away from studying for a little while - find some bunny-rabbit footprints and follow them around. Rabbits use a lot of funky techniques with leaving tracks to confuse predators like foxes - see if you can decipher them!

And those small dog-like footprints over there? That's clear evidence that a fox has been here. Here we don't have wild wolves, but we do have some areas where coyotes live. We don't have lions and tigers and bears (oh my! Well we do have bears, but they're asleep right now) around here, but we do have wild cats like lynxes. Their tracks look like cat footprints, only bigger. Here's an easy way to tell if you're seeing cat footprints - cats retract their claws, so they don't leave claw marks.

So just what are these predators hunting in the winter? Well, their diet isn't very varied this time of year - it mostly consists of unlucky or sick rabbits, deer, raccoons, mice and squirrels. Speaking of deer - see those footprints of long hooves with two halves over there? Yep, those are deer tracks. Or if they're bigger - then moose have probably been around here. Another sign to look for if you want to know if rabbits or deer have been around - if the bark on trees looks like it has been eaten. There is no grass in the winter, so plant-eating animals that aren't asleep have to eat tree bark. Not very tasty, but hey - whatever fills the tummy and keeps an animal warm works!

So next time you're out in the forest - keep your eyes open for animal tracks! There are a lot of interesting stories written in Nature's Winter Book, and a new page is turned with each snowfall. Now this is a book that's definitely fun to study!