Resolve to get out this winter

Herrick Fen's boardwalk provides a winter walkway
© Randall Edwards/The Nature Conservancy

Start with a visit to a property protected by The Nature Conservancy

Don’t wait for warm weather to make your first encounter with nature this year. On winter rambles we’ve witnessed the powerful drama of a feeding hawk and the delicate ice sculptures known as frost flowers. If you’ve resolved to see more of the natural world, a winter’s walk is a good way to begin. And if you’re looking for a good location, The Nature Conservancy’s preserves and project areas offer a variety of terrain for the winter wanderer.

Winter weather usually means fewer people on the trails – reason enough to launch a hike in January. But while the trails are quiet, there’s a lot of life happening in winter, and much of it is easy to see.

“True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow,” Edward Hoagland writes. His words came to mind during a recent snowy day at Herrick Fen. This Conservancy preserve, located at the edge of the Lake Erie snow belt in Portage County, had just received a foot of fresh powder, but the sky was blue and the sun was out, making it easy to see the various tracks in the snow.

Tracks of birds and mice and other small-footed mammals were easily seen, as were all the beaver-cut sapling stumps over by the dammed sections of the fen. The beaver dams were covered in snow, but still visible, and we could hear the water flowing through the branches.

Although we had the preserve to ourselves, the boot prints on the boardwalk told of at least one other human visitor that day. And humans were not the only one using that path. The most dramatic story told in the snow was the circle of smashed and bloodied snow where a hawk, most likely a sharp-shinned or Cooper’s hawk, had dined on a small bird. We saw the hawk lift off from the boardwalk, clutching its prey, while we were still several yards away, and by the time we reached the spot, a pile of feathers and some brushstrokes of raptor wings in the snow was about all that remained to tell the story.

“Winter is a good time to see the lay of the land,” says Dave Minney, the Conservancy’s land steward for southern Ohio. “Without all the vegetation, you can see through the woods and get a sense of what the place is like.”

Some examples of this phenomena from the Conservancy’s Ohio portfolio include Brown’s Lake Bog, where winter’s fading light makes this vestige of Ohio’s glacial past seem even more unworldly, or the Edge of Appalachia Preserve, where the more open woods in winter shows off the limestone blocks along the Wilderness Preserve trail.

Experienced birders will be able to spot a different suite of birds in winter, as species that nest further north fly “south” for a milder Ohio winter. Closer scrutiny and an interest in wildlife biology will reveal less obvious sightings, such as mammal bones, discarded antlers, and other evidence of the area’s fauna. “It's always fun to look for tracks in the winter, but there are other signs to look for, as well,” explains Karen Adair, the Northeast Ohio Land steward. “It's always interesting to see signs of turkey scratch, or where deer have bedded down.”

Or, if winter wanderers know where to look and the weather conditions are just right, they can see a delightful, if ephemeral, winter wonder we most recently witnessed while Nature Conservancy volunteers were helping clear the backpack trails at Shawnee State Forest. Frost flowers, delicate ribbons of ice squeezed from the stems of certain plants, decorated the ground like ribbon candy. They wouldn’t last long in a strong sun, but until they melted, they added a delicate beauty to the trail’s edge.

In Ohio, The Nature Conservancy maintains trails for the public at Herrick Fen, Edge of Appalachia, Brown’s Lake Bog, Morgan Swamp and Kitty Todd nature preserves. See "The Nature Conservancy's Open Preserves in Ohio" page of the Ohio Chapter’s web site for visitation information. Other preserves may be visited with written permission (pdf), or see the web site for local and state parks, forests, and other public lands the Conservancy has helped to protect in the past.