Ready, Set, Sleep!
Did you ever wonder why you don’t usually see chipmunks in the winter? It’s because they spend most of the winter underground, sleeping. That’s just one of many strategies that animals have adapted for surviving winter.
Here are a few animals and their winter survival strategies:
- Eastern Chipmunk –
Store food and sleep. The Latin name Tamias striatus means striped storer. Each chipmunk constructs their own burrow up to 3 feet deep and 30 feet long with an insulated nest, separate bathroom, and a pantry where they can store over a bushel of seeds and nuts. They sleep for long periods, awaken, eat, then go back to sleep. - Black Bear – Eat a lot of food, put on fat, and sleep. Black bears are semihibernators that sleep in their dens for up to 3 months, but can be waken if disturbed. Their body temperature and heart rate is lowered, conserving energy, so they can live off the fat that they’ve stored.
- Woodchuck – Store large amounts of body fat, sleep up to 6 months. Woodchucks are true hibernators, going into a deep sleep in their underground burrows. Their body temperature drops to 40 degrees F and their heart rate drops to 4 heart beats per minute.
- Gray Squirrel / Red Squirrel – Store food, eat / be active, insulate. Red and gray squirrels are active most of the winter, eating nuts and seeds that they store in the fall. Gray squirrels are scatterhoarders, storing one nut at a time in the ground around their territory. Red squirrels have many large caches around their den, under tree roots or in underground burrows where they store evergreen cones. Both squirrels have dens in trees, lined with leaves, bark, and other plant material for insulation.
- Osprey –
Migrate. Ospreys from Maine migrate in the fall to the Gulf Coast south to Argentina. They follow the Atlantic coastline, stopping to rest and feed along the way. It can take over 2 months to make the journey, flying over 2,000 miles. Mated pairs spend winters separately, but rejoin in the spring at their breeding grounds, reusing the same nest year after year.
Special thanks to Andy Hutchinson, Park Manager at Wolfe Neck Woods State Park for providing this article.
Get Outside!
Get outside this winter and look for animals and their tracks, homes, scat, food sources, or other signs of wildlife. To learn and see some other ways that animals and plants survive winter, visit Wolfe’s Neck Woods State Park in Freeport; guided nature walks are offered on Sundays at 2:00 p.m..
Family Activities
Are you looking for activities for your family to use in the outdoors? Project Learning Tree has put together a collection of fun and engaging activities to help young people gain an awareness of the world around them.
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