(Extracted from the BBC Wildlife Magazine)

Spring is hopefully just around the corner and after one of the coldest winters in recent years it can’t come soon enough, especially for our wildlife. So what are the strategies that help our wildlife get though the winter season?

Animals have many ways of dealing with winter – short days and long nights, low temperatures and poor weather are all challenges that need to be overcome.

For animals that are active throughout this season then more food needs to be eaten just to maintain their body temperature – just at a time when food is scarcer! Maybe this is why birds in the tropics live far longer on average than their northern and southern counterparts.

Migration is a well known strategy to get away from the wintery blasts. Not all migrations are marathons like the swallows to southern Africa – short hop winter breaks to Spain or North Africa are common. Even a small movement can make a difference – birds that breed in the uplands such as golden plover and curlew move down to the coasts to group in large numbers where food is more available. Even fish moving from the shallows to the bottom of a river can help them survive the coldest periods.

If you can’t avoid winter altogether by migrating south to more equitable climes then it’s a good idea to be in as good a condition as you can before winter sets in – which means feeding well in the summer and autumn to lay down fat reserves. Some animals store food for use during the winter - Jays and squirrels hide nuts for retrieval during the worst of the weather.

Thicker fur or plumage also helps to provide some protection from the icy blasts so autumn is a time for moulting summer coats/plumage and developing an extra layer for winter.

Another obvious strategy is hibernation – sleeping until spring. In the UK only bats, dormice and hedgehogs truly hibernate, other small mammals such as mice and shrews can be active on even the coldest of days. For an animal like the hedgehog, its body temperature drops from 35 °C to that of its surroundings whilst its heart rate drops form 147 beats per minute to just 2-12 bpm! Evening hibernating animals though, can wake up if it gets warmer during the winter period.

Other animals enter a long period of torpor during the winter. Reptiles, amphibians (i.e. cold bloodied animals) and invertebrates such as some butterflies and snails and slugs just slow down when the temperature gets low into this torpid state but can be roused through periods of warmer weather.

Normally unsociable animals get together during the winter – birds such as wrens can gather together in great numbers to stay warm.

Finally whilst species such as badgers just seem to lay low and sleep as much as they can in a sort of ‘winter lethargy’ (a tactic adopted by some humans as well it sometimes seems!) others (such as mice and voles) bulk out their nests for extra insulation and just keep going, only entering torpor for a few days when things just get too bad.

So depending on your size, whether you are hot or cold bloodied, ability to leaves these shores or ability to settle down for a long sleep there seems to be many ways to cope with the cold, dark days of winter. One thing is for sure though – the onset of spring will stir everyone into life.