The temperature in my area is currently -17 degrees C, and feels like -27 degrees. (I don’t know what that is in Fahrenheit, but water freezes at 0 C, and my freezer is set at -19 C). So it’s cold - though I’m sure there are plenty of iNatters who live in much colder areas!
Last week it was warm enough to find a few mosses, fungi and birds, but even then taking my hands out of my mittens to take photos limited what I could iNat. I’ve been doing lots of IDing and annotating, and watching YouTube videos to learn about IDing fungi and mosses.
What do you do in winter when you can’t get your iNat fix?
Lichen, trees, animal tracks+feces combos, birds, squirrels, and what we call “Winter’s Standers” (transl. my own), that is, those dead taller plants that stick out through the snow, like Solidago virgaurea or Artemisia vulgaris, arthropods both dead and alive indoors… There’s a lot.
It’s -12°C here, and am about to get a snowstorm. But normally in Winter, I’ll photograph springtails! Luckily, they’re out basically year-round, although not as abundant in Summer (too much heat for them). But when it’s even too cold for them, I’ll either identify or try to get caught up on microscopy. :)
I just bundle up and take walks! There’s always plenty of lichens around, and I focus on them heavily when there’s not much else to see. I’ve observed most species of lichen on my property, so it’s sort of a personal challenge to find new ones. I try to do more identifying, too, during the winter.
I am still observing marmorated bugs indoors several weeks into winter. In a few nights, the temperature is forecast to be -12 °C, which will hopefully kill a lot of them outside (I guess they’re first-instar nymphs now). (Here in America, the marmorated bug is a major agricultural pest, so I kill them after observing them. The last-observed one is in the freezer.)
A few days ago I had two doctors’ appointments on the same day. After one, I heard a bird across the street, then saw another bird fly over the doctor’s office, resulting in camera sounds in the woodpecker observation. Then after the other, I saw a pair of doves nearby.
And I still spend about half an hour a day identifying. There’s a dearth of observations in the Carolinas at this time of year, but there are still enough to keep me busy.
Northeast Ohio is being hit with one of the biggest snowstorms we’ve had in a very long time. Temperatures are similar to yours, which makes going outside for a nature hike a bad idea.
Fortunately, I have a pretty old house and a basement, so I’ve found all sorts of dead bugs, as well as a few living spiders. It’s been very fun testing my new macro lens on them!
How much snow will you be getting?
Edit: it seems here in Dayton we’re getting a direct hit, well, I probably need to get caught up on microscopy anyways…
I’ve been having to get somewhat creative in terms of finding things to take photos of this winter, since I primarily focus on plants. Lichens are the same no matter what time of year it is, and you can find some fungi as well. Mosses, clubmosses, liverworts, and hornworts are evergreen, although their ID features are often very small or even microscopic. Slime molds are also still very much around in the winter (usually on fallen trees), I found a few today even though it was 5°F out - they’re often visually striking and just really neat organisms. Recently I’ve also had a lot of luck flipping over logs or stones and seeing what’s underneath - lots of centipedes, millipedes, isopods, beetles, moth larvae, slugs, spiders, harvestmen, springtails, sometimes bees or bristletails, and I even found a frog and a salamander overwintering.
You’re doing better than me at finding things in these temperatures! I decided to brave the cold and headed into the woods for a short walk. I found one bit of shelf fungus, but it was frozen and I had to break it from the tree with a penknife. I tried to dig though the snow to find some moss, but no luck. I even tried turning over some logs, but they were frozen to the ground. lol.
I didn’t even see a single human, dog, bird or squirrel. I guess everyone is staying indoors!
