Recently, a snowstorm raged beyond the living room window inches from my nose. As icy flakes sailing parallel to the ground ticked the glass, the pellet-stove fan 20 feet away made a comforting, susurrant sound, sending a steady stream of warmth into the house.

As nature flexed her muscles, I marveled — once again — at the durability of Maine’s wild animals that fight winter snow and cold. For the last 10,000 years, our wildlife has endured brutal weather, and most species have survived. Some stayed here through the last Ice Age.

My yellow Lab stood with her front paws on the sill, looking out between glances up at me. Dogs are more pragmatic than humans, so she assumed a squirrel, songbird, deer or cat had riveted my interest.

A meadow vole interrupted my thoughts as it darted between two conifer shrubs directly below me. The little guy quickly crossed the narrow opening and disappeared into a hidden tunnel beneath a thick bough without the Lab spotting it — practically under her nose.

Each winter, occasional vole sightings occur below this window, often in a snowstorm. I suspect deepening snow arouses them from hibernation long enough to move into new quarters, but I don’t know definitively why these creatures scurry around in such abhorrent conditions.

The tiny rodent sent my mind reeling. This species and similar ones endure winter’s tough habitat by taking refuge next to the subnivean layer of icy crystals between the ground and fluffier snow scant inches above.

One point about voles, lemmings, mice and moles in Maine impresses me: They form an integral cog in the food chain, feeding weasels, fishers, coyotes, avian predators, bear and all the usual suspects between.

When unseasonable warmth brings excessive winter rain, it drowns huge numbers of rodents that live at ground level. Their winter-shelter choice puts them in danger, but it’s the best option for making it to spring.

I strongly suspect that a rain-induced rodent shortage moves predators such as coyotes and fishers closer to suburbs and exurbs, explaining why house cats may disappear without trace, leaving a family brokenhearted.

Everything in nature has consequences.

Meanwhile, while rodents hunker below snow, varying hares survive in food-rich fir thickets and swamp edges, while whitetails find shelter under conifer canopies where their packed-down trails give them mobility.

Through the white season, ruffed grouse perch on sturdy limbs of trembling and large-toothed poplars to pluck buds, and in fact, this bird’s range coincides with the two tree species — a documented symbiotic relationship.

Grouse can eat birch buds, too, but the weaker, flexible birch limbs bounce up and down under the 11/2-pound weight, forcing grouse to flutter to maintain balance. This uses precious energy and attracts avian predators.

Songbirds flashed through my mind, too, white-breasted nuthatches, tufted titmice, black-capped chickadees, blue jays, hairy and downy woodpeckers and juncos. They eke out a living now.

Evolution has provided our species with strategies to survive until spring increases food supplies, or they wouldn’t be here.

However, we have lost species forever, including sea mink, Labrador duck and passenger pigeons. Neither you nor I nor anyone will see one alive again. Woodland caribou also succumbed here, but they thrive north of us.

Right-wing zealots minimize extinction and extirpation, saying that’s nature. Indeed, a species dying off may be natural, particularly on a regional level, but humans can eliminate a population that would otherwise endure.

There’s nothing “natural” about woodcutters decimating wintering whitetail habitat in northern and eastern Maine, where they destroyed the deer herd. Interestingly, it may take global warming to bring deer back to these vast areas.

Lack of suitable conifer canopies in the north country and Down East makes whitetails vulnerable in winter and increases the impact of coyotes, predators that have replaced timber wolves, the latter an extirpated species, too.

Deer must now concentrate into smaller areas through winter, allowing coyotes to key on yarded deer. (More on this topic in a later column.)

If the woodcutting industry hadn’t eliminated winter deer yards in these two sections of Maine, then the deer-hunting economy would still be strong there. The herd thrived in the 1950s and into the 1960s, but now, deer average two per square mile in these regions. Hunters no longer flock in droves to these places each fall for what was once a world-class hunt.

These thoughts occupy our minds as we stare out windows on a winter morn, watching nature deliver the year’s worst weather.

Ken Allen of Belgrade Lakes is a writer, editor and photographer. He can be contacted at:

KAllyn800@yahoo.com

 

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