Cold, snow, and scarcity shape the extraordinary strategies that carry life through winter.
Peterborough Examiner – December 19, 2025 – by Drew Monkman
As the calendar turns to the deep stillness of winter and we hang festive lights against the long nights, our thoughts naturally drift to warmth, gifts, good food, and family. But step beyond the glow of your window and into the hushed woods and fields, and you’ll encounter a different kind of wonder — a quiet, breathtaking demonstration of perseverance in the face of cold and scarcity. The natural world around us is not dormant; it is simply practicing its greatest winter art: enduring.
Symbolizing life’s vigour, the balsam fir — my favourite Christmas tree — fills our homes with a resinous northern fragrance. These evergreens provide a living lesson in endurance, remaining vibrant through months of cold and darkness. By sealing moisture behind waxy needles and slowing their metabolism, conifers embody resilience and hope.
The natural world also supplies a host of other Yuletide adornments: radiant cardinals, chickadees fluffed like ornaments, hoar-frosted windows, and shimmering icicles. Nor should we forget nature’s seasonal soundtrack — the cracking and booming of forming lake ice, the shrill scolding of red squirrels, and the deep croak of ravens patrolling winter skies.
At the heart of this season lies the winter solstice, the quiet astronomical hinge when the sun appears to pause and the longest night finally yields to returning light. Although December feels like an ending, it is neither end nor beginning. Like every other month, it is simply one point in a continuous cycle.
This Christmas, let’s look beyond our homes to how other species survive the season’s cold and lack of food — and prepare for renewal. Their strategies reveal the ingenuity of evolution and the quiet power of patience.
Masters of the deep doze
Many mammals survive winter through prolonged torpor — a deep sleep that is less rigid than true hibernation. Black bears are the most famous practitioners. In their dens, they spend months with only a slight drop in body temperature, allowing them to awaken quickly if disturbed. Remarkably, bears can recycle urea in their urine back into protein, preserving muscle and bone despite months of inactivity — a biological feat that would be impossible for humans.
Other mammals rely on similar strategies. Raccoons and skunks retreat to sheltered dens during cold spells, emerging only during milder weather. Chipmunks alternate between deep torpor and brief awakenings, periodically rising to feed on seed caches stored in their underground dens.
True hibernators
True hibernation involves a dramatic physiological shutdown. Body temperature drops to just above freezing, heart rate slows drastically, and metabolism falls to a fraction of normal levels. The groundhog is the most iconic example, retreating to deep burrows where its heart rate plummets from 80 beats per minute to just four.
Some bats like the big brown and little brown are also true hibernators. They gather in caves, mines or, in the case of the big brown bat, buildings. They lower their body temperature and reduce their heart rate from over 1,000 beats per minute to about 25. Living entirely off stored fat, they remain inactive until spring insects return. Disturbance during hibernation, or disease such as white-nose syndrome, can be fatal.
Frogsicles – evolution’s miracle
Among the most astonishing winter survival strategies belong to a group of frogs whose biology seems to defy life itself. The wood frog is the most famous example. As temperatures drop, it allows up to 70 percent of its body water to freeze. Its heart stops, breathing ceases, and the frog becomes essentially frozen solid.
It survives because its liver floods cells with glucose, acting as a natural antifreeze that protects vital tissues from ice damage. When spring arrives, the frog thaws and resumes life as if nothing happened. Spring peepers, gray treefrogs, and chorus frogs use similar strategies. Hidden beneath leaf litter, these frogs are among nature’s most remarkable examples of resurrection.
Under the ground and water
Other amphibians avoid freezing altogether by overwintering underwater. American bullfrogs, green frogs, mink frogs, and northern leopard frogs settle at the bottom of lakes, rivers, wetlands, and permanent ponds that don’t freeze solid. Entering deep torpor, their energy needs drop close to zero.
Contrary to popular myth, these frogs do not bury themselves in muck. Instead, they rest atop sediment or among rocks, keeping their permeable skin — which functions like a lung — in contact with oxygen-rich water. Cold water actually holds more dissolved oxygen, allowing them to “breathe” through their skin. Turtles use a similar strategy.
Some species seek refuge underground. American toads use spade-like hind feet to dig below the frost line. Eastern garter snakes overwinter communally, sometimes by the hundreds, in shared dens called hibernacula. These sites include rock crevices, abandoned burrows, wells, old foundations, and even septic systems. Huddling together helps conserve moisture and heat.
Salamanders slip through root channels and soil cracks to find damp, unfrozen pockets. With hearts beating only a few times per minute, they wait in suspended animation for spring.
Birds: Flee or adapt
Not every creature sleeps, and not every creature flees. Winter birds prove that colour and vitality persist even in a monochrome landscape.
The black-capped chickadee combines ingenuity with physiology. It caches thousands of seeds and relies on remarkable spatial memory to retrieve them. During bitter nights, chickadees can lower their body temperature by up to 10°C, entering a controlled torpor that conserves energy.
The ruffed grouse — Ontario’s “partridge in a pear tree” — grows comb-like fringes on its toes that function as snowshoes. It dives into soft snow to sleep, using it as an insulating blanket against the cold.
However, approximately 75% of Ontario’s bird species are migratory and avoid the deep freeze entirely. These include almost all our warblers, flycatchers, and thrushes. It’s not the cold that sends them scurrying, it’s the lack of food. Some, like the ruby-throated hummingbird migrate thousands of kilometers to Central America, while others, like most of our local Canada geese, simply move as far south as necessary to find open water and uncovered grass or crop fields.
Fish: Hunt or sleep
Beneath the ice, fish employ different survival strategies. Pickerel (walleye) remain active, using specialized low-light vision to hunt during dawn and dusk. They move between deep basins and shallow reefs in search of prey. Northern pike and lake trout also remain hunters throughout winter.
Bass, by contrast, retreat to deeper water where temperatures stabilize around 4°C. Their metabolism slows dramatically, allowing them to survive months on minimal food while waiting for warmer water.
Our smallest winter warriors
Insects, despite their size, display some of winter’s most impressive adaptations. Monarch butterflies migrate thousands of kilometres to Mexico’s oyamel fir forests. Honey bees remain active, clustering tightly and vibrating wing muscles to generate warmth.
The woolly bear caterpillar is a master of freeze tolerance. Sheltered beneath leaf litter, it produces natural antifreezes like glycerol, allowing it to freeze solid into a “living ice cube.” It may freeze and thaw repeatedly over winter, resuming development in spring. A great number of other species, like the cecropia moth, enter a state of suspended animation within a protective cocoon or as eggs buried in soil.
Celestial light: Orion
As we lift our gaze from the enduring earth, the winter sky offers its own brilliance. Orion the Hunter dominates December nights, his three-star belt unmistakable across the globe. The three bright stars of his belt are a feature visible across the globe, and their alignment is sometimes mythologically associated with the Three Kings or Wise Men.
Orion anchors the famed Winter Hexagon of stars – a massive celestial ring dominating the winter sky. On a clear festive season night, you can trace the hexagon by finding these six key stars: Start at the bottom with Sirius (Canis Major), the sky’s brightest star, then move clockwise to Procyon (Canis Minor). Continue upward to Pollux (Gemini), then to golden Capella (Auriga) at the apex. Descend through the red eye of the bull, Aldebaran (Taurus), and complete the circuit at Orion’s foot with the blue supergiant Rigel.
This Christmas, take a moment to consider how the natural world endures winter. Every frozen frog, every sleeping mammal, every evergreen needle is a quiet testament to the resilience of life.
Orion and the Winter Hexagon (Jean Paul Efford illustration)
