Forest Stories to Observe or Imagine

Photo Credit: Margie O’Loughlin

Lynette Anderson is an interpretive naturalist/restoration specialist with the Belwin Conservancy in Afton, MN. She regularly takes groups out for winter wanderings, and finds there are plenty of things to see and hear – even when there’s little or no snow on the ground.

Anderson said, “From a naturalist’s perspective, it’s all about honing awareness and observation skills. Everything in the forest tells a story.”

In our conversation, I heard her making some of the same recommen-dations I used to give my nature photography students. Look low, look ahead, and look up. This is big part of paying attention, and seeing the forest for the trees.

One thing she recommends, especially when hiking with children, is to stop for quiet minute-long observations.

She talked about a benefit of hiking with children: by virtue of their being smaller, they see different things than grownups do. Simply put, they are closer to the ground.

Anderson used a word I hadn’t heard before: a midden pile is leftover food scraps discarded by rodents, and it can tell an interesting part of the forest story. Rodents eat all kinds of things: conifer seeds, acorns, mushrooms, nuts, and maple seeds, to name a few.

I learned that one of the more creative eaters in the forest is the red squirrel. They sometimes leave midden piles of shredded cones, husks, and hulls that stand more than a foot tall.

Small rodents like mice and shrews can also leave clues in dry grass or snow about their tunneling behavior. It makes you wonder, where are they going and what are they doing?

There can be evidence of predation on the ground as well. Watch for tracks of fox or coyote in even light snow. You might find a spot where one has made a kill; tufts of fur or even blood may be all that remains of a meal.

Looking ahead on the trail, draw your attention to small trees about an inch in diameter. Look for scruffy marks on the bark where male white-tailed deer have rubbed off velvet from their antlers in the fall. The bucks leave their scent on the trees, and also in a scrape they make on the ground to attract females and to mark their territory.

Interested females will respond in a most surprising way.

White-tailed deer have what is called an interdigital gland, located in-between, of all places, their toes! A female will respond to the male’s scent by leaving her own at the site of the scrape, and this is the start of their courtship communication.

Your interest might be drawn upward by hearing a flock of crows cawing in the treetops. They often gang up on raptors, who are capable of killing juvenile crows.

Anderson described a pecking order in the woods where blackbirds pick on crows, crows pick on raptors, and so on; the smaller birds using their larger numbers to counter their smaller size.

While the winter activities many of us look forward to are not happening this year, notably cross country skiing, show shoeing, and sledding, there are still excellent reasons to bundle up and head outdoors.

Consider making mental notes on what you see in the forest. There are riddles to be solved around every corner. Watch for bird and animal activity that strikes you as interesting or unusual. Study it, or maybe make up your own story about it?

This is part of what makes looking at the world through the eyes of a naturalist so much fun.