Outdoors - When its cold outside

   Sometimes it makes a person wonder how wildlife can survive when things are frozen, covered with snow and the wind chills are brutal. Most people have sense enough to come in out of the cold, but the wildlife does not have that option.

   Three requirements for cold weather survival are food, water, and shelter. Food can be hard to find when the ground is covered with ice or snow. Some animals stockpile supplies when they have the opportunity. Between our house and the storage shed, there is a stand of forty to fifty hickory trees. In the fall, when the hickory nuts have fallen, it is like walking on marbles to get to the shed. The ground is totally covered with nuts. By early winter, there are few if any nuts left on the ground. Squirrels pack them away for safekeeping. I must admire their ingenuity but do not always appreciate their hiding places. Whenever I go to use the tractor, I need to check in all the openings and cervices for hidden hickory nuts. In the spring when I get the lawn mower out for the first time, it is necessary to check the machine thoroughly so as to not suck a hickory nut into the engine. The nuts buried in the flower beds and forgotten will sprout in the spring and be weeded out. The leftovers buried in the timber can grow into new trees for future generations of squirrels.

   Nut trees scattered about the farm serve as a food source for deer, turkeys, squirrels and other animals. Turkeys and deer can plow down through a foot or more of snow to find walnuts, acorns, and hickory nuts. 

Turkeys will also eat weed seeds and an occasional mouse. Deer will browse the tips of branches and rake the snow off protected grass.

   Water can become a scarce commodity when the temperature gets well below zero. Open water will remain in the bottom of the ditches up to a point. When it becomes cold enough to freeze there, the only liquid water is found in the few springs on the farm that brings water to the surface from deep underground. Traveling long distances to get to the water presents a hardship for the thirsty animals. For predators, it is an opportunity to see all the wildlife in the area as they congregate in one spot to get a drink. 

   The weak or slow are picked off by coyotes at these oases in the cold. The spring is also a great place to set up a camera to watch wildlife come and go.

   Finding shelter from the cold presents different challenges for different animals. A squirrel can curl up in a hollow tree and withstand the coldest of weather being insulated from the cold. Deer will generally seek refuge in dense cedars or a steep ditch where they are protected from the wind while they ride out the cold snap. I am not sure why turkeys survive. On the coldest days with the wind howling making forty below zero wind chill factors, I see turkeys fly up to roost among the branches of a bare oak tree where they will spend the night fighting to keep from being blown away. They have no protection on their lower legs and no more feathers than they have in July. A person would think they would freeze their legs off at the knees and be walking around on stumps.

  One way or another, animals have a coping mechanism when it comes to surviving the extreme cold weather. They do better than I do. When it gets that cold, I stay inside and complain a lot.