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Hibernation habits of cottage country animals
Long time no see: the winter ways of our outta-sight creatures
By Catherine Collins and Liann Bobechko
Busy as a beaver
Like its bucktoothed buddy, the muskrat is unseen but on the go all winter, swimming beneath the lake ice, feeding on cattail roots. When it wants to rest, it slips up into its water-access lodge of reeds via a porthole in the floor. If you spot something that looks like a haystack in your cottage marsh, a muskrat may be snuggled up inside.
Snoozing in ooze
Both hibernators, the painted turtle and bullfrog are conked out on their lakebed, lightly covered in muck, appendages mostly tucked in. The current brings oxygen, which the frog ”breathes” in through permeable skin and the turtle via its mouth and cloaca (anus) that are richly lined with blood vessels to allow the gas exchange.
Litter bug
Much as it loves to stalk around the dock, the dock spider actually hibernates up to a kilometre away from its summer stomping ground, chilling out under a blanket of leaf litter. So don’t be too enthusiastic about raking up your late-fall leaves for fear of kicking off the arachnid’s covers.
Undercover agents
Unbeknownst to us big-foots on high, the red-backed vole and other little animals remain fully operative in an insulated space between snow and ground called the ”subnivean” level (literally, “beneath the snow”). Voles keep to their own network of runways, socializing, scavenging for vegetation, and occasionally surfacing for a breath of cold fresh air.
Bumblebed
The only bumblebee to survive winter is the queen, who, having mated in fall, has the royal duty of producing next spring’s brood. Her Majesty finds or digs a cavity in the ground about 10 cm deep and barely bigger than her body. Though the chamber isn’t below the frost line, the snow above keeps her from freezing. A hibernating queen can’t get too warm, however, which is why she locates on a northward slope that doesn’t receive sunshine.
Think everybody’s been sleeping? Think again
Den mother
Talk about laid-back parenting: In a snug hollow beneath a tree, the black bear mom dozes through the winter birth of her cubs. Granted, these newborns are very small – only 1/300th of Mama’s size. A light hibernator, she still has the instinct to tuck her almost-hairless, blind, but wakeful babies under her forearms where they can latch onto her nipples.
Tunnel visions
Just beneath the subnivean level, the hairy-tailed mole patrols underground passages it excavated last summer with its mitt-like front paws, while the short-tailed shrew travels its own airway, sometimes trespassing into mole holes to steal earthworms and larvae. Both insectivores, they compete for eats.
Group hug (no arms)
To escape killer frost, garter snakes slink into rock fissures, forming hibernaculums of 10–15 cold-blooded bods or so. With wound-down metabolisms, the reptiles don’t eat but they can move, loosely coiling together as they dream of baking under a hot summer sun.
Grouse in a house
To endure frigid nights or cold snaps, the ruffed grouse dives headfirst into deep fluffy snow and works it into a cozy warm air pocket. The bird can remain several days in its instant igloo, but flies the coop if predators come snooping around its snowbank.
Frogsicle
When it’s freezing outside, why work to stay warm inside? Crouched under leaves, the wood frog turns to 65-per-cent ice. Only its cellular fluids remain liquid, thanks to high levels of glucose “antifreeze.” This frozen froggie will show no vital signs until it thaws.
Ladies in waiting
Congregating by the tens to thousands, native ladybug beetles pass the winter under the shelter of leaves, in rock cracks or under bark (and sometimes inside your cottage walls). Why so many beetles bundled together? Hibernating en masse, with males and females in ready proximity, may help the ladybugs get a jump on spring mating.
- Catherine Collins and Liann Bobechko
