Canadian Lynx

Well-Camouflaged Snowshoe Hare

 

Living Planet

For forests in the northern hemisphere, time has run out. Every day the sun sinks lower in the sky. Winter. And on the face of it, all of the life here seems to have just gone away. Those truffles and the seeds, they’re locked away underneath all of this snow. The salmon run is over. Leave forestation… Look at it. It appears to have shut down. Even the water is in short supply – it’s all frozen. All of those connections appear to be broken.

The fungi have reduced their recycling to a bare minimum. And the trees they are connected to are producing little in return. The deciduous trees pre-empted the winter by shedding their leaves. The conifers are slowing down too. The waxy coating on the needles protects their leaves from the cold. But not everything here can exist in a state of suspended animation. Some of the animals have to remain active, and surviving in conditions like this isn’t easy.

The icy cold is the cue for the bears to leave the forest altogether. With the salmon run over, they’re retreating to their winter dens up in the mountains. They must spend the entire winter living off their fat reserves gained from feeding on all of those salmon.

The squirrels and other small mammals must keep activity to a minimum, only occasionally venturing out to retrieve their autumn caches. The lower the temperature falls, the more vulnerable creatures become. Winter has been too brutal for this young white-tailed deer, but at least it’s an opportunity for some nocturnal scavengers. A raccoon. Out of the forest, the Fisher – a relative of martin’s and weasels. And it’s smart enough to keep this meal to itself!

But there is more to this lifeless-looking forest than just the scavengers. For most creatures, winter is a brutal and unforgiving time. But others actually thrive in these conditions. You see, for animals that are adapted to live in winter, this stripped-down forest ecosystem, well, it’s a wonderland.

In winter, here, there are beautiful connections, between some of the forest’s most enchanting characters.

There is one predator here, an incredibly important animal that has no intention of avoiding the snow, because, unlike me, it’s perfectly adapted to it. But it’s an enigma, a really, really shy animal, one that’s difficult to study. Having said that, scientists have been tracking them through the forest here for more than a decade. Researchers from the Maine Department of Fisheries and Wildlife have set a trap to catch one alive.

With those distinctly pointed ears, it can only be a Canadian lynx. Lynx are the world’s most northerly-dwelling cats. This particular lynx is well-known to chief scientist Jen Vashon. The ear tags are blue with white. That indicates its L1-11. He’s called L1-11 and was born in May 2004. They’ve discovered that he is just one of hundreds of lynx living here. In fact, there are more lynx living in these Eastern forests than anywhere else in North America.

Now, the fact that L1-11 has lived all his life in this frozen forest has to mean that this is a perfect place for a lynx to live. But how can a top predator like this survive in such a stripped-down environment, when there appears to be so little else here?

The tracks of their prey are everywhere, but actually finding one is a real challenge because it’s winter camouflage is perfect.

It’s taken some finding but it’s there – the snowshoe hare! You can just make out its beady little black eye, and the black tips to its ears. And these things form 80% of the lynx’s diet. But, as you can see, they don’t make it easy for that lynx.

Their camouflage is astonishing. In the summertime they’re brown, but in the winter they moult through to a white coat. But they also use this thick brush. The provides them with excellent cover to hide from the lynx, and hide from the elements, but it’s also crucial in keeping them alive, because they climb on top of the snow and nibble at all of the shoots and the bark growing from all of this brush. Look at that! Beautiful, and with those big snowshoe feet, it just sort of floats across the surface of the snow. But what the snowshoe hare needs most to survive the winter is a specific type of vegetation. It must be the right height to eat, and provide enough cover to hide from all those lynx. So, the vegetation here, must be perfect.

And the reason that it does grow into this perfect environment, well, you could never guess.

The most beautiful thing about this story is that the lynx, the hare, patches of cover like this amongst the forest, didn’t happen by chance. They are all controlled by the most unlikely of creatures, a tiny thing, less than the size of one of my fingernails. And at the moment it’s hiding, having borrowed into the bark of one of these trees, or perhaps in a crack in a log on the forest floor, covered with frozen snow.

But it’s there, and it’s waiting. It’s waiting for springtime.