A Look at the Season's Main Events
By Virginia Barlow
January
In bad weather, turkeys conserve energy by laying low. They may roost for more than a week without feeding / On cold nights a chickadee’s temperature drops by 20˚C. The birds are sluggish but burn far fewer calories – apparently this is a successful trade-off / The woolly leaves of common mullein repel water and are now fresh and dry beneath the snow / Old man’s beard looks much the same, summer or winter. This lichen festoons trees wherever cool fog visits
Raccoons and skunks are avoiding the cold; look for their tracks when the thermometer rises / Winter finches – siskins, redpolls, pine grosbeaks, crossbills – arrive in northern New England when the spruce and fir trees in eastern Canada have low seed production / Downy woodpeckers are digging out wood-boring beetle larvae from tree trunks – a favorite fat-rich winter food / Birdfeeders may be allowing goldfinches to winter farther north than in the past
January 22: average start of the January thaw / Ivory-colored poison ivy seeds are still on the vine and are a nutritious food for many birds / Coyotes form pair bonds in winter, and they may be pretty vocal about it / Listen for the deep, penetrating hoots of courting great horned owls, one of the earliest birds to breed in New England / Try chick feed, a cracked corn and wheat mix, at your birdfeeder. It costs less and produces less waste than typical birdseed
January 28: average end of the January thaw / Stonefly larvae are active all winter and sit out the summer buried in stream bottoms, perhaps a strategy for avoiding predators / Look for the paired tracks of fisher zigzagging through the woods and along wooded edges / Male dark-eyed juncos are wintering farther north than the smaller females / Cedar swamps provide cover and a favorite food source for deer. Moose don’t like cedar; for them it’s starvation food
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These listing are from observations and reports in our home territory at about 1,000 feet in elevation in central Vermont and are approximate. Events may occur earlier or later, depending on you latitude, elevation - and the weather.
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© 2004 by the author; this article may not be copied or reproduced without the author's consent.
