Warm spells and nature events perk up winter

Wild Ideas

When I was freezing my rear end off on the high plains of Wyoming years ago, I longed for a Virginia February. While this can be our snowiest month and any joy I experience in winter is waning rapidly at this point, warm stretches are common this month, and some species take advantage of them to start reproducing.

On Sunday (Feb. 3), the second day after we climbed out of the deepfreeze into temperature hovering around 60 degrees, my dog, Mollie, and I headed up the mountain. I knew it was undoubtedly too soon after the preceding bitterly cold stretch to see species emerge to reproduce, but it was nice just be able to walk up the mountain, now snow free, to see what might be happening. A surprising number of species can start their reproductive activities during warm stretches in the dead of winter.

Reaching the small, fishless pond up there, which is a favorite spot to breed for our earliest anuran, the wood frog, I could see that the surface was still mottled with ice and no creatures were stirring. But a sustained warm spell forecast, including rainy days, dozens of wood frogs could suddenly congregate from the surrounding forest, as they do many years. I’ll be revisiting the spot this week to listen for their quacking calls for mates. With relatively brief breeding windows in winter, wood frogs will breed during the day, unlike many anurans. After dark, another early breeder — the spotted salamander usually joins them.

Above the pond, tiny hepatica wildflowers can also suddenly pop here and there during warm stretches throughout the winter. I saw no sign of the pretty little flowers yet but remembered when they bloomed during a sustained warm spell in late December 2015. While male wood frogs also congregated at the upper pond, females apparently decided it was not time to mate, judging by a lack of eggs in the pond until later in the winter.

Other species start reproducing in winter and in early spring, as I’ll explore in my next column. Meanwhile, beat the winter doldrums by taking advantage of several nature activities coming up this month (see sidebar).

PHOTOS BY PAM OWEN Hepatica, one of the first wildflowers to bloom during warm stretches in winter, as these did in late December 2015.

The upcoming Woods and Wildlife Conference will feature a talk on the health of Virginia’s deer.

The skunk cabbage above bloomed in the third week of February in a previous year.