Stories in the snow

By Eileen Sutter –

Stories of animal lives are written in new fallen snow. The snow’s surface tells stories that are invisible to us the rest of the year. Of short lives, quiet wings, superior eyesight and keen hearing.

A small track of bounding footprints in groups of four leads to a place where a scuffle took place. No tracks lead away. To the side, a large wing print.

In our woods, most small tracks in snow are made by white-footed mice and meadow voles. Both are active all winter, most often at night. In the wild, most live less than two years. They share some of the same predators: owls, hawks, weasels, snakes, and red foxes.

Meadow voles are more likely to be seen in grasslands, while white-footed mice live more often in wooded areas. In heavy snow, meadow voles stay beneath the snow’s surface, tunnelling to their nests of dry grass and cached food. White footed mice make their homes around stumps and logs, sometimes repurposing a bird’s nest by roofing it over.

Owls are well adapted to stealthy capture of prey. Their wings have stiff leading edges and soft fringes on the trailing edges, muffling the sounds their wings make. Their eyes are quite large for their body; if our eyes were comparable to owls’, they would be the size of grapefruit. As a result, owls can see well in 1/10 to 1/100 of the light we need. Owls hear a range of sounds comparable to us, but at certain frequencies, their hearing is much more acute than ours. They can detect the slightest movement of their prey in leaves or snow; great horned owls can hear a mouse stepping on a twig from 75 feet away.

Did the mouse escape? The snow says no.