Link for you to check out: Hibernation
This pdf can be printed out and shared with your children.
Ideas for you to try:
1. Keep a record of animal tracks you have observed in the snow or mud. Record your findings in your nature journal along with a drawing, the date, the weather, the time of day, and the type of animal if you have identified it at this time.
2. Compare a dog’s and a cat’s footprints in the snow or mud.
3. Research an animal that hibernates and record what you learn in your nature notebook. You can also sketch your animal and what its tracks look like.
Last night my boys were going down after dark to put our cats in their basement room for the night. They have to walk right past our bird feeder along the way and this night they saw some kind of creature inside the feeder eating.
They ran back up and had me go outside to see and by the time I got out there the creature was climbing up the supporting rope and up into the tree. I got just a glimpse and I actually saw two critters climbing up. The boys were sure it was something like a possum or rat but I didn’t think so from what I had seen.
We pulled out our mammal field guide and started paging through. What was the tail like? How was the head shaped? How big was it? What color was it? We went through all the pages and decided it had to be some kind of rodent.
I crept back to the door with the flashlight and quietly tiptoed out to the deck rail. I flipped on the switch and there in the feeder were the biggest mice I have ever seen. They looked straight at me a few seconds and then made a leap from the feeder to the tree, out onto a branch, and then hopped over to another tree and out of sight.
As long as they stay outdoors I can live with a few mice in my feeders.
This morning we woke up to snow on the ground and more coming down as daylight broke. I was so glad that I had gone out yesterday and cut a lot of my tulips and daffodils to bring inside. The ones left outdoors look so sad.
Our dog thinks this is perfect weather to be outdoors. It brings out the Labrador in her.
We are off to enjoy our very snowy day….I think hot cocoa is in order since this will more than likely be the last of our snow for the season.
Yesterday we were able to take a hike out in the snow at our favorite spot. It felt like spring and the sun warmed my neck in a welcome way. I realized I can smell the forest again. This is the first time I noted that during winter there are far less fragrances in the air. Yesterday we smelled the piney woods fragrance of the evergreens in the warming sun. It smelled delicious.
We tried to focus on finding signs of mammals on our hike as part of the Winter Series Challenge for mammals.
The squirrels have been busy munching on cones.
Isn’t this just the most wonderful cone you have seen in a long time?
The snow is melting a little on this familiar hike. The beaver dam is still visible with all the leaves gone from the trees and bushes.
Here you can see the snow pulling away from the creek water and exposing the grasses underneath. It feels like spring here for the first time.
I am thinking these are dog tracks but perhaps coyote since we have seen them in this area before.
Now these I am pretty sure are rabbit tracks…or perhaps snowshoe hare tracks.
We spotted this trail of tracks to the left of the snowy log and if you look carefully you can see them disappear in the distance. I have no idea who made them but they were fun to see and to talk about.
Here are some more tracks down by an icy spot on the creek.
We came home and decided to look up and learn about a mammal from our field guide. There are quite a few to choose from that live in this particular area, but we chose the Douglas squirrel (or Chickaree). We often hear squirrels in the trees and now we know that in this particular area, the only tree squirrel is the Douglas squirrel. They have a chattering sound that is distinct, making it easier to identify even if we don’t actually see them in the trees. Our mammal field guide says that they are active all year long, but they still store a winter cache of cones. We also learned that the piles of leftovers where a squirrel eats are called middens. There is an actual name for those piles we see under trees!
“Nature has made him master forester and committed most of her coniferous crops to his paws. Probably over fifty percent of all the cones ripened on the Sierra are cut off and handled by the Douglas alone, and of those of the Big Trees perhaps ninety percent pass through his hands.”
John Muir on Douglas squirrels, The Mountains of California.
Isn’t that interesting? I love when we take a few minutes to learn a little more about something in our nature study that really is meaningful and will help us understand our local environment better.
This was a great challenge for us this time around.
The sun was out and we jumped on the chance to go to the snow for some fun and refreshment.
Let’s just say it was breathtaking….far too awesome for words.
(Not sure if you are on an email subscription if the video shows up, but you can click over to my blog and view a 30 second video of the landscape.)
It was so quiet and we had the whole place to ourselves. This is the best kind of hike…time to enjoy the quiet and the beauty. Look at those cattails. It reminds me that in the summer this place is hopping with red-winged blackbirds and egrets. This day we saw nuthatches, mountain chickadees, and a raven. It was surprisingly quiet.
The beavers have actually dammed up the regular waterway and it is now flowing around the right side instead of straight through. Fascinating.
Some of the creek is actually all covered over with snow…you can see openings where the water is frozen over. As many years as we have been coming here in the winter, we have never seen this before.
Not very many tracks in the snow this time…
As usual, we end up spreading out and just taking the trail at our own pace. We are usually all within eyesight of each other but keeping a nice distance in between.
As much as I hate to miss a day of regular schoolwork, we really needed this day to wander out in the sunshine and fresh air.
It was a day of hiking in the aspens and pines….there is something so refreshing about hiking in the snow on a sunny day. The light must be different or perhaps it is the air. Whatever it is about winter hikes, I feel more alive. The indoor life does not suit me very well and getting the chance to spend a few hours hiking with my family makes me smile even now just thinking about our time outdoors.
Although there were no other hikers on the trail this time, we knew there were other living creatures near-by. The snow recorded their activity for us. We always have a great time imagining who the tracks belong to and then discussing what they may have been doing out here in the woods.
Many times as we hike along we spread out and have some alone time. I love to walk and pay attention to the crunching of the snow under my boots. There were a few birds that showed their faces while we walked and a few that just let us know they were there by knocking on the tree or whistling a little tune.
These ducks don’t seem to mind the cold, cold water.
Our Bird List for the Day:
Mallard ducks
Ravens
Steller’s jays
Red-breasted nuthatches
The creek was flowing along with crystal clear water, much deeper this time of year than in the summer and fall. We observed lots of tracks on the other side of the bank….big tracks where it looks like someone came to get a drink perhaps.
I told the boys to be on the lookout for interesting tracks in the snow and if they found some to call me over. These are the “dinosaur” tracks they found….very funny.
Seriously though, this photo shows the most interesting and most abundant track we noticed through the trees. It looks like footprints with something that made a line to the side….a tail perhaps? I would love to know what made this track in the snow.
Maybe this is why I love winter hikes so much….there is an air of mystery and awe to them that I love and crave. We are looking forward to more snowy hikes in the near future.
Winter Wednesday
Week 9 Winter Mammals 1. Read chapter nine in Discover Nature in Winter. Mammals in general tend to be shy of humans. In the winter, it is even more difficult to observe mammals. The chapter suggests looking for signs of mammals instead like tracks and scat. Highlight ideas for your family to try this week while you are outdoors and looking for mammals.
2. Our family is going to review the chart showing different animal tracks on page 182 and 183. We might try sketching some of the tracks into our nature journal as a reference for future outdoor time. In our area, we often come across animal scat as we hike and we are going to familiarize ourselves with the various kinds of scat by studying the illustrations in this chapter.
For families wanting to participate that do not have the Discover Winter in Nature book, I will list a few simple nature study ideas that you can try with your family.
1. Keep a record of animal tracks you have observed in the snow or mud. Record your findings in your nature journal along with a drawing, the date, the weather, the time of day, and the type of animal if you have identified it at this time.
2. Compare a dog’s and a cat’s footprints in the snow or mud.
3. Research an animal that hibernates and record what you learn in your nature notebook. You can also sketch your animal and what its tracks look like.
Here is a link that will help you out with animal tracks: Animal Tracks at Beartracker
I think this is a fantastic online resource for nature study!
You might want to pull your copy of Fun With Nature out and read over the chapter titled: “Rabbits, Squirrels, and Chipmunks” and also “Tracks, Scats, and Signs”. I know a lot of us have this terrific resource on our shelves and we are not using it as much as we should.
Both Jennifer and Theresa suggested that the mysterious fur on our trail could be from a rabbit. I thought they were onto something because the fur was so soft, just like a rabbit’s fur.
We were able to hike the trail on Friday after the big snowfall and we were amazed to see that the trail had many spots that you could clearly see rabbit tracks.
I think our mystery is solved.
Thanks for all the ideas and help in figuring out our mystery fur.
We had another chance to take a walk up in the high country yesterday. The boys were snowboarding but we preferred to take a slower approach to our day. We took two hours to tramp around in the woods and see what we could find.
Here was something we found interesting. It looks as if an animal scratched the bark off this Jeffrey pine to get at something underneath…insects? If you look closely you can see the chunk of bark sticking out from under the snow.
Here is a close-up.
Lots of prints in the snow…..dogs and otherwise. We aren’t sure about these. They seem too close together to be a dog and there are no marks for the claws like dogs have.
We think these are squirrel tracks.
Some squirrels had a feast on this stump that we came across as we crunched through the snow. I have come to appreciate that there are animals that depend on this food source in the middle of winter. As we stopped at one point along our walk, a huge cone came crashing down just a few feet from us. As you look around the forest floor, you see cones just about everywhere in various stages of being eaten.
Somehow we lost the trail as we wandered around looking at various interesting things. Yes, that is my hubby looking for a way back to the trail. He assured me he knew which way to go. 🙂
If you have to be lost, can you imagine a more peaceful place? It was quiet and sunny and warm and we knew generally that we needed to head towards that mountain to get back to the main trail.
We eventually found our way back and it was a really good thing because I was getting tired and hungry. We saw so many other things but I will share those in another post.
We have had our eye out for critter prints but the only one we have seen that has been clear enough to really recognize is this dog print along our walking trail. We are not giving up though, the winter is still young.
From the Handbook of Nature Study, page 254:“The dog’s feet are much more heavily padded than those of the cat, because in running he must not stop to save his feet. Hounds often return from a chase with bleeding feet, despite the heavy pads, but the wounds are usually cuts between the toes. The claws are heavy and are not retractile; thus, they afford a protection to the feet when running, and they are also used for digging out game which burrows into the ground. They are not used for grasping prey like those of the cat and are used only incidentally in fighting, while the cat’s claws are the most important weapons in her armory.” The Handbook of Nature Study has many suggestions for observations of dogs. The section starts on page 254 and ends on page 260.
The most exciting news is that our birdfeeders have been very busy. We even identified a new bird. It was the Cassin’s finch. It looks very much like the purple finch but the coloring on the head is much more pronounced. I also found a great new bird identification site that not only is an online field guide, it also has a button to hear the bird songs online. Eureka! I have wanted to start to learn to identify birds by their songs so this is perfect.
Have you ever seen a guard llama? We were out on a new section of our local walking trail and this is the scene that we observed. My son told me that he had seen on a nature show that a llama will actually guard a herd of sheep. I had never heard of this before so I had to come home and research it. He was right! Here is an article that I found on this subject. Guard Llamas You learn something new every day.
There is no information in the Handbook of Nature Study on llamas…not surprised at that. There is a section starting on page 270 that talks about sheep.
From page 273:“The dog is the ancient enemy of sheep: and even now, after hundreds of years of domestication, some of our dogs will revert to savagery and chase and kill sheep…..The collie, or sheep dog, has been bred so many years as the special caretaker of sheep, that a beautiful relationship has been established between these dogs and their flocks.” Well, that sort of catches you up with our nature study for the past week or two. We are still busy catching up on our drawings in our nature journals for animals we have seen. It is a really good activity for these long, cold afternoons.
. Mammals in general tend to be shy of humans. In the winter, it is even more difficult to observe mammals. The chapter suggests looking for signs of mammals instead like tracks and scat. Highlight ideas for your family to try this week while you are outdoors and looking for mammals.
