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THE WINTER OF OUR NORTHERN NATURE

Hard midwinter/animals:

Sorry but some parts and links are not yet translated!

The link to the hard winter of plants above.
Other topics on our northern nature are found from the picture above.
For other topics on our northern nature nature, go to Main menu!

In this part: 'Hard midwinter/animals', part 1.

See also Means of overwintering of animals and
preparing for winter!

...and also:

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Hard midwinter/animals:

Animals either wade in snow or float on it...

Mammals that move in the snow are either floaters or waders. Snow carries floaters, whilst waders sink into it so deep it reaches their stomachs. See: classification of animals! in relation to snow. See also: surface pressure!

Floaters include animals such as the shrew, the weasel and small moles. The hare, the fox and the lynx also stay on the surface of the snow as long as the hardness of its top layer is at least 40-50 g/cm2. Large animals such as the elk have to wade in snow. If the snow cover reaches the elk's stomach, the animal seeks its way to areas with less snow. (Otherwise it can only move on a very small area.)

In the soft snow, many animals have to walk in their own tracks or even in those of other species. The hare and the fox, for instance, create pathways this way. Elks and reindeer also often proceed one after another in the snow. See: animals' tracks in snow!

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Disadvantages of snow:
- Nutrition is hidden under snow (gallinaceous birds, the brown hare)
- Moving from one place to another becomes difficult (the wolf, the roe deer)
- Without camouflage an easy catch for predators (the brown hare, the partridge, the black grouse)

Advantages of snow:
- Provides shelter from the cold (small mammals, birds which spend their night in the snow)
- Easiness to move on crusted snow (the fox, the deer)
- Provides a hiding place (birds' caves in snow, small mammals' tunnels in snow)
- The possibility to reach higher branches of trees for nutrition (the reindeer, the hare, the willow grouse, moles)

Winter's day is short to diurnal animals, long to nocturnal ones...

During the winter, most birds move at daytime, whilst most mammals are nocturnal animals. Owls mainly hunt in the twilight hours, the hawk owl, however, hunts during the day –as do some other owls in midwinter. Unlike most mammals, the squirrel is a diurnal animal. Some small mammals, however, move at all hours during the winter period. In midwinter months some of these are even more active at daytime than during the night.

In midwinter, diurnal birds have only a few hours to find nutrition whilst birds that are active in the twilight hours can spend more time on looking for food. Indeed, many small birds use all of the daylight hours looking for nutrition. The great tit and the jackdaw, for instance, even do this during twilight hours. In Northern Finland, in January, tits are only active a mere five hours each day while in the south of Finland they are on the move for seven or eight hours. See: length of the day!

Winter's night is long and freezing, animals shiver form cold...

Large mammals rest in snow pits, which are formed when the animal lies down. The resting place is often merely a spot near the area where they eat; it is not chosen according to any specific criteria.

Even the hare can survive in an open snow pit but any smaller ground mammals must rest in a warm place, in other words, either under the snow or in a hollow or a nest of a tree. When the squirrel is in its nest, the temperature there stays between ten and twenty degrees centigrade despite low temperatures outside.

The crows and birds of prey, among others –excluding the smallest owls– overnight on tree branches. Out of the hibernating small birds, the yellowhammer, the waxwing the pine grosbeak and crossbills do this as well. In freezing temperatures some small birds (tits, the bullfinch, the goldcrest) might even seek cover from hollows in the snow or from snow tunnels made by small mammals.

All woodpeckers including the black woodpecker, as well as most tits, seek their way to nesting boxes and hollows of trees for the night. Temperatures in the tree hollows are not much higher than in the outside air, but the hollows do provide shelter from the wind. In the Southern Finland, the pine marten can tolerate the low temperatures of winter nights in hollows of trees, nesting boxes or squirrel nests, whilst in the Northern Finland it often seeks its way under the snow to, for example, boulder fields for the night.