Its nice to be able to deal with the cold weather by building a big fire, curling up under a thick blanket or turning up the thermostat. But what do critters in the wild do? They deal with the cold in many different ways.

We all know bears hibernate, but they don’t, really. Bears sleep though the winter but they can wake up. Their heartbeat slows way down but nothing like true hibernation. A ground squirrel does hibernate. Their heartbeat is around 300 beats per minute in warm weather but it slows down to only one beat per minute while they are hibernating. You can not wake one up until you warm it up.

Bugs like wasps deal with the cold by finding a protected area to hide in. At my farm, where the heat does not stay on, they find a good place to hold up during the cold by coming into my room in the barn. If I turn on the heat they start moving around when it warms up. Those don’t survive the winter.

Hornets abandon their paper hives in trees and the female will find a hole in the ground or a hollow tree to spend the winter. Then when it warms up it starts a new hive, just like the female wasps that survive. As they build the nest and lay eggs their hive grows and gets bigger and bigger.

Most warm blooded animals and birds have to stay active and find food all winter long. Some birds migrate long distances to avoid the cold When I was growing up we read about robins being the sign of spring, but that seemed silly since robins were around all winter long. The reason is robins from northern states, where the ground stays frozen for long periods of time, have to fly south. It is real hard to find earthworms, robins’ favorite food, when the ground is frozen.

So here in middle Georgia we will see robins all winter long. They head back north with the spring and really are signs of spring up there, but not here.

For a while I could not understand why I saw so many blue herons in the winter, then I realized there is no way they could get fish from frozen lakes. So they fly south to find open water where they can feed during the winter. As lakes and ponds thaw further north they head back that way.

Geese, ducks and many other kinds of water birds also fly south for the winter, then head back north as it warms to nest and start the cycle over again. Some birds do stick around in the winter and find food the best they can. Wild turkey can’t fly long distances so they have to scratch in the snow to dig up food.

Squirrels are famous for burying acorns and they do it to have a food supply during the winter. They don’t remember where they bury their acorns, they find them by sniffing them out. So they may eat other squirrels acorns if they find them. That is one reason they are so territorial in the winter, trying to run others off.

Deer and other big game have to eat foods they ignore in better times. They will feed on honeysuckle, green briar and other evergreen plants during the winter. But they depend on their fat supply, too. Deer feed heavily on acorns in the fall and build up layers of fat to sustain them all winter long. That is the reason a good acorn crop is so critical to deer herds.

Cold blooded animals like fish just get real inactive. They go to deeper water and hold near the bottom, feeding rarely. They will eat an easy meal if one comes close but bass and bream don’t move around a lot in real cold water. Other species, like hybrids and stripers, are more adapted to cold water and feed all winter long.

Some species of trout, like steelhead, feed in very cold water. Steelhead are just rainbow trout that are hatched in streams but swim out to lakes or the ocean, live a grow a few years then go back into streams to spawn. They get big and fight hard, and live to spawn many times, unlike some species of salmon that die after spawning.

You may have noticed hawks on power lines along roads recently. This behavior happens each winter. You won’t see many until it gets cold. They move to roadsides to catch mice and birds that live along ditches since food in the woods gets scarce this time of year. Many get hit by cars as they swoop across roads to grab a mouse for lunch.

Critters have it much worse than we do. They have to adapt to the cold. We can just throw another log on the fire and be glad we don’t have to sleep outside!