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A Walk at Rock Point
Lorna Dielentheis, local naturalist & contributing writer
In summer, we bear witness to action– buzzing insects, gurgling streams, the unfurling fronds of ferns. The sounds of nature form a wild chorus that accompanies any time spent outdoors.
Winter invites us to experience nature in a completely different way. In the absence of obvious activity, our senses attune to the landscape, and to our own animal bodies. The snow-covered earth becomes a blank canvas, then a record: the ghostly imprint of a great bird’s wings, the purposeful tracks of a fox, the swollen subnivean tunnels of shrews.
Last week on a bright, still day we walked Rock Point’s trails to interpret the stories told by the snow. The brilliant winter sun accompanied us as we set out, led by Rock Point’s trail steward Tyler Pastorok. We hoped to find signs of foxes, a desire stoked by their recent appearance on the trail cam footage. Two red foxes are present in the video, likely a mated pair. Red fox’s peak mating season is January-February, and mated pairs will stick together until the pups are reared. Once the kits are grown, the family parts ways and each returns to a solitary lifestyle.
from left to right: small mammal tracks-- perhaps a mouse, an unearthed cache, and squirrel markings
As we walked, the secrets of the seemingly empty landscape began to reveal themselves to us. We found tracks from a neighborhood cat, squirrel, deer, skunk, and mice. We also found tracks we could not confidently identify. We peered into the bases of hollow trees and up into their bare branches as a flock of robins sang their cheerful tune. Tyler led us to a clearing where deer tend to congregate in the winter, explaining that they prefer areas with denser canopy cover because there’s less accumulated snow on the ground for them to trudge through. He showed us where winter buds had been nibbled by these deer. Deer only have front teeth on their lower jaw, so the top of the twig gets stripped rather than cut through, leaving a telltale ribbony bit behind.
Details like these are easily missed. Most of us have no doubt walked past trees without thinking to check their buds. But the closer we look at the winter landscape, the more there is to see, and each piece of evidence we find tells us something about the creature who left it.
old and new buck rub in the same cluster of saplings
Eventually, we came across a set of canine tracks that veered from the manmade trail directly into the woods. Canine tracks are oval-shaped with four toe pads, claw marks, and a heel pad beneath. An X shape is usually visible at the center of the imprint.
Once we determined the track was canine, we moved onto figuring out what animal it came from– fox, coyote, or domesticated dog. When assessing any kind of track, it’s helpful to think about animal behavior. For example, a domesticated dog is not worrying about its energy expenditure, or where its next meal will come from. Dogs are focused on enrichment and have plenty of energy to spend, so their tracks tend to be haphazard and meandering. In contrast, wild animals are focused on survival, and in the winter this means conserving energy. You’ll notice many wild animals use pre-existing paths to avoid slogging through deep snow, and the trails they make are more direct and purposeful than those of dogs.
canine tracks in the snow
The canine tracks we found traveled in a relatively straight line. We examined them up close and looked at the distance between each set of prints, estimating the size of the animal that left them. Tyler even sunk into the snow to mimic the gait indicated by the tracks: the quick, decisive trot of a fox.
Warmed by their thick winter coats, foxes remain active in winter. They mate, hunt, and leave scent markings. You might see their tracks or scat, or find a shallow indentation where one has curled up and slept in the snow. A musky, skunky odor along the trail indicates red fox urine nearby. If you live near a wild space, you might hear their screams pierce the dark winter night– an assertion of territory and also a mating call.
While animal behavior in the winter varies greatly, there are some key commonalities. Conserving energy and adjusting to available food sources are specific examples, but the overall theme is striking: wildlife, collectively, doesn’t fight against the season. They adapt to it. Not to say that animals don’t struggle in winter; on the contrary– they do. But they respond to the hardship they face by adjusting their habits and behavior.
There’s a lot we can learn from this. In winter many of us wake up before the sun rises and work until after it sets, intent on sticking to the same hourly schedules year-round, while the wild animals orient themselves to the changing patterns of daylight and darkness. As animals adapt their winter diets to available food sources, we have produce shipped from halfway across the world for the sake of personal convenience.
Though there is more conversation now around topics of “wintering” and seasonality, our societal structures largely ignore nature’s guidance. It makes me wonder what it would feel like to follow the seasonal inclinations of our bodies. How can we honor winter’s pull towards quietude and rest when we exist within a system that demands constant productivity?
I think again of the fox. Like us, it does not hibernate. It is driven by the endless search for food, the quest to find a mate. Yet unlike us, the fox does only what it needs to survive. It diversifies its food sources, eating everything from insects and nuts to voles and carrion– whatever is available. When a fox needs rest, it simply curls up in the snow and sleeps.
There is something comforting in knowing this kind of existence occurs alongside our own. If you find a fox trail, follow it for a while and let yourself sink into this way of being. Let the snow absorb the weight of your body as you observe the soft crunch of your footfall. When you become tired, find a sunny spot to curl up for a minute and practice letting yourself rest.
from left to right: a hollow at the base of a tree, deer tracks, Tyler investigating a squirrel cache