Pennsylvania Game News - January 2025 - 55

mother's hibernation.
If you're a deer hunter who hunts
where the ranges of gray squirrels and
fox squirrels overlap, you may have
witnessed an experimental sampling of
dormancy as you scanned the woods
for whitetails. Gray squirrels might have
entertained you with frenzied forays all
day in falling snow. But you won't see a fox
squirrel there until the sun shines. Like
human loungers around a woodstove,
fox squirrels curl up in a den when the
weather is harsh. Is the fox squirrel's
shunning bad weather the entry-level
beginnings of future hibernation? Not
likely, but such traits are fascinating to
ponder.
Adaptation as a strategy is equally
varied. Some winter adaptations are
biological, hard-wired into a species'
physiology. Ermine can't decide not to
turn white. A white-tailed deer's pelt
shiſt s its tint, too, but less starkly, from
summer's cinnabar red to winter's gray.
You can feel the change with your
own hands. If you skin a deer taken in
the early archery season when summer
is scarcely past, the hide gathers easily in
your grasp like a fl annel sheet. But a hide
from a winter fl intlock hunt feels like it
came from a diff erent beast. Its bulk fi lls
your grip, like a quilt meant for January
comfort. As you clutch it, refl ect on the
marvel that your deer's coat transitioned
from gracile to substantial in the span of
two months, a biological adaptation.
Other adaptive strategies are
behavioral, like a red squirrel's hoarding
hundreds of walnuts, cherry seeds and
pinecones in a hollow log. Blue jays cache
acorns, but not in central hoards. Th ey
scatter them throughout their home
range for retrieval during winter, more
than a hundred a day and a mile distant.
Because jays fi nd only a fraction of those
JANUARY 2025
seeds, their winter preparations helped
spread oaks across the continent.
White-footed and deer mice keep
warm on the coldest nights in " huddles, "
of up to a half-dozen mice, clustered for
warmth in a nest of leafy debris.
Migrators accepted the greatest risk.
Th ey brave perilous fl ight guided by stars
or a signal beyond our senses, Earth's
own magnetic signature, for their balmy
reward.
Diff ering radically from most bats
here, some bat species migrate. And
about a third of North America's 1,000
bird species migrates southward every
autumn.
We know some bird migrations
by sight, like the " V " of geese. Others
are invisible to us but prove incredible
feats of endurance. Tiny ruby-throated
hummingbirds migrate southward from
Pennsylvania before crossing the Gulf of
Mexico, a non-stop maritime fl ight of
500 miles.
Some bird journeys blend migration
with adaptation. Studies affi liated
with Powdermill Nature Reserve in
Westmoreland County examined hermit
thrushes' dietary shiſt from insects to
fruits and seeds during fall migration.
Researchers observed that fruits
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Pennsylvania Game News - January 2025

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