Even when a thermometer drops to zero, then jumps to 40 degrees, bald eagles, white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, and some plant growth occurs in the dead of winter.
While we may be satisfied to watch, investigate, and photograph from a vehicle, a building window, or ice-fishing shelter, others have the urge to step out albeit for a moment and see turkeys displaying, smoke climbing from a chimney or buck deer jostling one last time before dropping their antlers.
It seems that it’s too early for tom turkeys to gobble and display in the presence of a raft of several hundred hens, some have been seen doing just that. Undaunted by cold and unimpeded by deep snow, wild turkeys are eager to do this and that. Many animal activities are cued to photoperiods and less to actual temperatures or other weather conditions.
Seeing these sounds and sights of turkey activity quickly places one ahead to March or maybe to the first spring time, Period A, on April 16.
Wild turkeys have been known to relish a patch of skunk cabbage shoots as soon as the growing plant melts the snow that covered the leaf shoot and hooded flower cluster in marshy areas.
It’s still weeks away from a subterfuge of “Jimmy” or “Phil” waking to come above to show, but not for an eastern chipmunk to stand proud and see nothing but white before yawning and crawling back underground for another few weeks before doing it all over again.
Yearling bucks, some still with slightly enlarged necks and antlers only they could be proud of, close their eyes, bump heads before stepping back to eating exposed blades of grass instead of tougher hazelnut, oak twigs and white cedar leaves . Some antlers are so small one might suspect they were broken, but nothing that small could tangle and snap. Still there is something attached to the animal’s skull and it will eventually fall away.
Deer registrations are all but complete and totaled 320,375 animals from all hunts; 65 percent were taken during various gun seasons, and 35 percent by archers and crossbowers. Within the archers and crossbowers, 101,586 deer were registered, 62 percent by crossbowers.
Bald eagles must be enjoying an ease of finding carrion and new sticks to refurbish their perennial nests, but not finding small patches of open water where fishing is usually better than if the entire body is free of ice.
Eagle courtship is another activity worth noticing. Sometimes it appears that two birds carrying the same branch or woodbine vine is part courtship, part construction material.
As soon as eggs are laid, one of the adults will be warming the single or pair of eggs to keep the egg from freezing. This egg laying and immediate incubation of course leads to asynchronous hatching, which in turn can lead to food fights and the smaller chick losing a meal and even its life. Adult birds seem to have a way of keeping things fair, however, because many nests have two, even three, birds fledging about Independence Day.
The events going on in the nest bowl can be interpreted just by watching the adults’ actions.
In addition to skunk cabbage, a few other flowers, usually in catkins, grace a countryside long before tulips bloom and morels show their wrinkled faces.
Winter is not free of insects, either, although most of what we see are flies and ladybugs coming out of walls, ceilings, and attics and clinging to windows to get outside. Opening windows is rarely as successful as using a small vacuum.
Don’t let winter keep you from looking out a window or traveling the backroad. A snowy owl may be perched waiting to be noticed.
Contact Jerry Davis, a freelance writer, at sivadjam@mhtc.net or 608.924.1112.
