In the depths of winter, when the wetlands have sealed over with ice and the woods are hushed under snow, our staff still head out to track turtles. Using radiotransmitters glued to the shells of individual turtles, we’re able to pinpoint exactly where they’ve settled beneath the ice to overwinter — information that helps us better understand their habitat needs and more easily find them again come spring.
Yet even when the turtles themselves remain out of sight, the landscape offers up a surprising wealth of clues about the other animals sharing the woods and wetlands. Every walk becomes a lesson in reading signs, subtle hints that reveal who’s been moving, resting, and working while everything appears still.
One of the first things you learn to spot are deer beds, the shallow ovals pressed into snow where white‑tailed deer have rested. At first glance they’re easy to step right past, blending into the soft unevenness of the winter ground. But once you learn to recognize them, you’ll see them everywhere.
A typical deer bed looks like a neat, body‑shaped depression, sometimes with a slight rim where the deer’s warmth partially melted and refroze the snow. Often, you’ll see several clustered together, evidence of a small group hunkering down for the night. The position of the beds can tell you a lot: tucked behind a stand of white pine to block the wind or placed on a south‑facing slope to catch the weak winter sun.
Among the quiet details of winter wetlands, beaver‑maintained openings in the ice stand out as especially remarkable. Made and tended by beavers themselves, these small patches of open water give them access to fresh air and a brief space to groom or rest, even when the rest of the wetland is sealed beneath ice. The beavers also use this opening as a vital ventilation hole while traveling to their winter food cache, a neatly anchored pile of branches stored underwater. Typically the beavers swim from the lodge to the cache beneath the ice, then carry branches back inside to eat. In this way, the ventilation hole becomes an essential lifeline, supplying oxygen that allows their underwater routine to continue safely through the coldest months.
Early in the season, or during brief winter thaws, beavers may come up on land leaving behind packed trails through the snow. They use these warmer windows as chances to add to their winter food cache, cutting down saplings and hauling them back toward the water.
Once deep winter sets in, however, they shift almost entirely to underwater travel between the lodge and their stored branches. These are reminders that while turtles rest motionless beneath the ice, beavers are very much awake, tending their lodges and ensuring their food supply will sustain them through the winter.
Winter tracking is about patience, but it’s also about presence. You enter the woods expecting turtles, and instead find a world of wildlife going about their winter routines.
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