As we head into the colder months (at least for those of us in temperate climates!), I’ve been thinking a lot about how my naturalist activities change with the seasons. During the spring and summer, it’s so easy to head out with my camera and record new observations, but when the weather cools down or it gets rainy, I find myself spending much more time indoors.
I’d love to hear from others: How do you stay motivated to explore nature year-round? Do you have favourite seasonal activities or specific habitats you focus on when it’s harder to get outdoors? Any tips for keeping the excitement going during the off-season?
I’m mostly into herping and I live in a temperate climate zone (with snowy winters). A widespread belief is that in such climate conditions reptiles become inactive for at least 2-3 months a year - but I decided to challenge this misconception ;) I bought a simple infrared remote thermometer to measure the temperature of substrates and lizards’ body temperature and the results have been very interesting! Just a few days ago I saw a lizard basking on a stone (with surface temperature of +27 °C /+80 °F), while the air temperature was -1 °C / +30 °F. There was snow all around and yet the little guy takes each opportunity to catch some sun as soon as “his” stone gets warm enough! You can make some really interesting and unexpected observations in the winter, especially considering the impact of climate change.
I’ve had a hard time staying motivated to get outside so far this winter. There’s rarely any insects out and the beach is often freezing this time of year.
Mostly, photographing birds is the main thing that motivates me during the winter.
I live in a tropical climate (but we do have a rainy season).
That said, I have at times struggled with health concerns that have precluded my being able to physically go outdoors myself. I could feel my spirit shrivel, because for me nature acts almost medicinally.
During those times, one thing I found I enjoyed immensely was going to “The People of iNaturalist” (on website: top navigation bar → Community → People), which shows who has recently been active and clicking on anyone’s name, which would take me to that person’s Profile, then clicking on their Observations. In this way you can travel the world a bit.
Like right now, doing this and clicking on just those who have made Observations, I can see Australia, I can see Scotland, and I can see the UK.
I find myself exploring places and species I would otherwise likely not encounter, and this feeds me a bit, but then I am a girl who used to read encyclopedias and whose favorite thing at the library was the card catalogue.
Fortunately I’m close to one of the Great Lakes where we get large numbers of ducks in the winter, so while the woods are quiet it’s always still worth getting out to the water.
Winter is a great opportunity to get observations of under-observed taxa - I’ve spent many hours waiting at bus stops in the winter, scavenging the bark of nearby trees for lichens and the ground for mosses and weeds. During warm spells invertebrates will still come up; if the temperature is above 0C and the ground starts to thaw then you can find millipedes and springtails etc. in leaf litter and under logs.
For us, we spend considerably less time outdoors in the winter. We used to do some hiking and the sole motivation was seeing a particular bird, often Screech Owls but once it was a rare Mountain Bluebird way east of where it should be.
But on that Bluebird hike, I fell on slippery packed snow and seriously wrenched my leg. Since then I have fallen a few more times (not on snow/ice) and, at my age, I can’t afford to fall. So winter hiking is limited to paths that are paved and plowed (which a few nature areas around me have).
What we mostly do is visit areas we can drive around, some that cover quite a lot of territory. We don’t see tons of birds but we have winter birds that are fun to catch: Snowy Owls, Northern Shrikes, Snow Buntings, Rough-legged Hawks, Redpolls, etc.
We make a day of it and enjoy the winter landscape.
I use to dread the winter season for much the same reasons too. Then I just decided to ‘make the best of it’ and started looking for stuff a little more… harder.
It paid off. I even got dozens of lifers (nearly all insects/spiders). From Nov 1/2023 to Feb 29/2024, I observed:
75 insect species
12 fungi species
7 birds
5 plants species
3 mollusc species
2 amphibians species
1 reptile
1 fish
and a few odds and ends
I really think it helped hone my observation skills. You just get more focused. It paid off very well when the bulk of things started to return in the spring.
I was out this morning (southern Ontario, Canada) for the first time since we had snow on the ground. This one landed on the trail in front of me.
I love the cold and enjoy being outside in it, but my enjoyment of nature in the winter is usually more along the lines of standing in the woods watching the snow fall, rather than making observations.
At this very moment in Vermont it is snowing gently, and I am curled up in a window-seat, watching it drift down, while listening to quiet holiday music and doing IDing on iNat (I just took a quick break to check the forum).
I only recently discovered that a very good way to stay engaged with nature in the winter is by IDing. It not only helps iNat, but has the added benefit of helping me retain what I know about plants, so that hopefully when spring rolls around again, I don’t have to re-learn everything!
I live in temperate climate (warm temperate bordering on mediterranean belt of Europe; we still get long and sometimes snowy winters although they are not very cold).
I am primarily a botanist, and just switch from flowering plants to mosses in the winter :)
And odd bits and pieces I see of other things, but these are generally unplanned anyway any time of year (I was trying to get into birds, but my phone camera is not good enough for that, and into butterflies, which have tested my patience with photography, so I do not know if I will keep up - I am used to plants who very politely stay still for me to take the photo, and I am not good with moving things (yet?))
I live in a biodiversity hotspot in tropical Northern Australia. Everything is different and under-documented. We have a quarter of Australia’s birds in this area and it’s the quarter that tends not to be found commonly anywhere else. So an absolute twitcher paradise. Our winters are dry and sunny and our summers are wet and very humid. We are heading into our Wet Season now and I’m doing more stuff at home eg poking around at night for insects, dragons and frogs. Last night we saw a brand new cicada and a water python. We have a birdbath so on really hot sticky days we get quite the turnout of little birds.
You also don’t have to drive too far to get to areas with very different critters.
Failing that I get 8 weeks paid leave per year which allows for really decent vacations and my other half is also a wildlife nut.
This week, North Carolina has been in near-record cold snap (overnight lows of 21F, just two degrees shy of the record 19F for today’s date in 1984). I’m not going out iNatting in this cold. I stay motivated by knowing that temperatures this low never stay more than a few days at a time; the winter temperatures fluctuate a lot. I expect that several times this winter, it will get to at least 60F before the next wave of cold.
The irony is that when I lived in a colder climate, it was easier to get out during the cold snaps because I had warmer clothes.
