LET'S GO SWIMMING  !

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Maril Swan’s editorial in last Wednesday’s The Tweed News was sombre reinforcement that our winters appear to be changing. It was on this date some 30 years ago when I inched my car onto the ice at Amherstview and drove the three kilometres across the ice to Amherst Island, near Kingston. It was 5:30 a.m., and the ferry wouldn’t be starting its daily runs for at least another hour. There was an unprecedented incursion of owls on the island and I was eager to see them. After all, the lights of delivery trucks and even a fuel truck were already casting an eery glow on the wind blown surface of the ice, the route they were taking marked with red cedars jammed into the ice. If it held a fuel truck, surely it would hold a 1974 four-cylinder Plymouth Cricket!

Today, as I write this, white caps are evident as the prevailing westerlies whip the open waters, sending an icy spume against the ferry taking commuters across to the mainland. There hasn’t been an ice road to Amherst Island in many years. Neither have motorists in recent years ventured onto the Bay of Quinte in the numbers they once did. And the memories of me as a boy of 13 hauling a heavy wagon load of firewood with a large Oliver tractor on this same bay for more than a kilometre, because it was shorter than by road, are just that - memories.

Winters are changing and we are seeing some strange things out there these days, especially this winter. It started in late November with lilacs blooming east of Belleville, and it has never stopped! On Boxing Day, one surprised visitor to Sandbanks Provincial Park watched as a young man, donned in his bathing suit, entered the January waters for a dip, likely spurred on for no other reason except to tell his kids one day that back when he was a lad, he went swimming at Sandbanks in January. Just last week, another fellow was seen windsurfing at Wellington.

We obviously are intelligent enough to make decisions as to whether or not to throw caution to the wind, and attempt these dare devil activities when the weather has gone awry. However, wildlife that has been programmed to hibernate, if only for a little while, become confused, and automatically respond to warmer temperatures, especially if it is as prolonged as we have experienced through December and into this month. Down here in the banana belt that we call Prince Edward County, sightings of the bizarre through last month became routine. One motorist travelling from the small village of Milford one rainy day actually had to dodge frogs that were hopping onto the pavement to absorb the stored heat in the road surface. During a Christmas Bird Count on December 17^th in the Brighton area, observers reported everything from active woolly bears, June bugs, leopard frogs, garter snakes, and one fellow out riding his lawn mower. We have had pansies in bloom and daffodils poking their heads optimistically through the soft earth, and dandelions in bloom. Beaver have been observed at work building dams, and I looked at a photograph just last week of two flying squirrels mating, on January 6^th! The egg of a mute swan was found at Sandbanks a few days ago, and chipmunks everywhere haven’t even considered hibernating yet. Normally, they would be deep under ground sound dead to the world, waking up only every 15 days or so to gorge on their caches of seeds, then going back to bed. This is no way to run a winter!

Does this peculiar weather have any lasting effects on wildlife? Probably not in the final analysis. Some, like the dead shrew we found last week while walking along a trail near Weller’s Bay after a sudden overnight freeze, accompanied by brisk west winds, likely was caught by surprise as it foraged around in warmer than normal temperatures. It was curled up in a tight ball as if it had tried to wait out this strange drop in temperature that had interrupted its feeding pattern.

Others, like wood frogs, are programmed to take life as it comes. Nature has provided this species that spends the winter buried under a light scattering of leaves, with the ability to freeze completely through. Lowering temperatures trigger a message to its liver to convert glycogen to sugary glucose. Slowly, this glucose penetrates vital cells, preventing them from drying out. During this period of suspended animation, up to 65 percent of the frog’s total body water is converted to ice. Muscle movements cease, everything becomes rock hard, and the heart stops beating. The frog appears as dead as the proverbial door nail. When the wood frog thaws, its heart starts beating again, and off he goes none the worse for the experience. We suppose it can do this repeatedly through the winter in response to winter thaws and returned freezes. Nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

We will have to wait and see if continuing warm winters results in any long term changes in the programmed instincts of how some wildlife species traditionally prepare for winter. While such extremes are bound to cause some mortality on a year to year basis, any permanent changes that take place will not occur in our lifetime. Evolved instinct that has taken thousands of years to perfect is a powerful thing.