Preparing for Winter

By Elaine Farragher


For me, autumn is a time of intense excitement, even more so than spring. Like spring of course, it is a season of dramatic change, but unlike spring, which brings with it a sense of relief, of have “made it” through the winter, autumn has an aura of imminent danger, of bracing oneself for the onslaught ahead.

For most of us in northern climates, winter survival means making sure we have warm clothes and enough money in the bank to pay our heating bills. But for the creatures of nature, such as the squirrels, ground hogs and geese, the proper preparation for winter is a matter of life and death. Watching these preparations, I find myself tensing in sympathy for their coming ordeal.

In late summer, geese finish their molt and start trying out their new feathers and exercising their wings in preparation for the marathon flight south. When I watch geese at this time of year I become greatly affected by their energy and exuberance, as they flap their wings, shake their bodies and take practice runs across the water in preparation for take off. For the ones for whom this is the first attempt at flight, all this wild wing flapping and pattering across the water may end in a comical dunking as they fail to become airborne. Once in the sky however, there is nothing more beautiful than a goose in flight. They add unmistakable drama to the fall scene.

Another animal worth watching in the fall, for entirely different reasons of course, is the squirrel. The squirrel’s preparations always seem to be rather haphazard for such a successful animal. Squirrels store nuts for the winter by burying them in the ground. After burial they are promptly forgotten and found again later in the winter only by smell. The lawn destruction that goes along with this burial makes them extremely unpopular with many house dwellers. Some other squirrel with an overlapping range is just as likely to dig up this hoard as the squirrel that buried it, just as it in turn will probably dig up some other squirrel’s hoard at a later date.

Squirrels always seem to me to be especially vulnerable to weather. Those which have not been able to find access to a handy attic or chimney, build those large, loose-looking nests of sticks and leaves, high up in trees. After assembling its nest in an inexpert-looking pile, it takes a flying leap into it, like a little kid in a pile of leaves, squirming and kicking into its centre. It then hollows out a little room for itself which it lines with softer materials. Sometimes two squirrels will bed down together for extra warmth. It is no wonder that squirrels will seek the more solid accommodation of our homes when given half a chance.

The chipmunk, by contrast, has a much more substantial dwelling. This cute animal starts digging its home beneath a rock or tree root, excavating all the way down to below the frost line. Rooms are added off the main corridor for food storage. When everything is complete, it digs another shaft up to the surface, which is tiny and hidden, unlike the original opening which now has piles of earth outside. For further concealment, it fills in the original opening and scatters this pile until very little evidence of his operations is left. Unlike the squirrel who will remain active all winter, the chipmunk will sleep the winter away, awakening occasionally for a feed from his ample food supply stored in his burrow and only infrequently venturing outdoors during a warm and sunny day to dig up a little extra nourishment that it didn’t have room for in his burrow.

Animals are at their fattest at this time of the year and the ground hog is certainly the fattest of them all. The ground hog uses his own body as a food storage unit, storing nothing in his den since his hibernation is so deep he doesn’t waken enough to eat. Late August sees an increase in excavation activity and more fresh earth appears outside the dens. But by September, these fat and lethargic creatures have turned in for the winter.

One does not usually think of birds as storing food for the winter, but there are a few that do. In the fall, the nuthatch wedges seeds and bits of nuts into the crooks and crannies of tree bark for later retrieval. The blue jays and grey jays also do this, but after sticking away the bits, they are just as likely to forget about them and lose their cache to some other bird or a squirrel.


Elaine Farragher, August 1988



Subject headings

Nature – Winter