Rough winter for wildlife: How animals on Long Island have endured the cold and snow

Before this week, when Long Island nudged above freezing for several straight days, temperatures had lingered at or below 32 degrees for 16 of the previous 17 days.

Waterways froze. Spring’s budding was weeks away. Snow from a powerful January storm has covered the ground for weeks.

During this time, much of Long Island’s human population has retreated indoors. In New York City, at least 18 people who did not or could not do that died. How are the region’s plant and animal life faring?

At the population level, the answer is almost certainly fine, said experts in interviews this week. "Organisms faced with cold can do one of three things: migrate, hibernate or just tolerate it," said Stony Brook University biologist Resit Akçakaya. "Most species that don’t migrate or hibernate can tolerate these temperatures."

Physiological adaptations, such as a seal’s blubber, or behavioral ones, like changes to a deer’s foraging patterns, help them survive a prolonged freeze like the one we just experienced.

"These animals evolved over thousands of years" and are "well-adapted to this kind of weather," said Robert Marsh, a natural resource supervisor with the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation. "Even in the last 20, 30 years, we’ve had winters as cold or colder than this."

During winter in general and over these recent frigid weeks, Long Island was not just cold but calorie-sparse, a particular problem for warm-blooded mammals and birds that need to eat to maintain body temperature.

"For water fowl, this means lack of access to submerged aquatic vegetation or invertebrates," said Kelly Hamilton, a DEC wildlife biologist. "On land, there’s lack of access to plants, or for raptors, it could be harder to find prey to feed upon." Prey like chipmunks, voles and moles tunnel underground for warmth and spend little time on the snow crust, where color contrast makes them better targets.

"If extreme cold is combined with thick snow cover, finding food may become difficult," Akçakaya said. "Some individuals may starve as a result."

Storing fat for winter

White-tailed deer like those on Long Island have significantly expanded their range north into Canada in recent decades, so it’s unlikely they will be significantly affected by a cold snap like the one we just experienced, said Matt Ross, senior director of conservation for the National Deer Association.

Ross was sanguine, in part, because the snap occurred at a time of year when deer are still living off energy they stored as fat in the late summer and fall. During that time, deer feed voraciously on energy-rich foods like acorns and grains, increasing body weight by as much as 30%. That is generally sufficient to carry them through 90 days of winter. "With deep snow or conditions like we’re experiencing now, they’re sustaining themselves off that fat supply," though they are still likely feeding on minimally nutritious material like the tips of woody plants, bark and leaves, Ross said.

Some of those foods are still available despite the snow cover, and deer have a "phenomenal sense of smell" that allows them to detect a delicacy like an acorn even through a foot or two of snow, though accessing the food could be difficult if thaw-freeze cycles result in icing.

Several other adaptations help deer to survive in very cold weather. One is their thick brown winter coat, composed of a dense underlayer and long, hollow "guard hairs" on the outside that trap warmth and block water. Another is a circulatory system that distributes blood very sparingly to the hoof and lower leg.

Deer also practice "yarding," or congregating in sheltered areas, and greatly reduce their activity to conserve energy. During the rest of the year, a deer might range over a square mile or three square miles in the fall; during winter, their range is closer to 50-150 acres, Ross said.

Now the "clock is ticking" on the deer’s energy reserves, he said. A major storm in March would be far more problematic than the one that hit the region in late January.

More birds at feeders

"We’re seeing more birds at feeders, because the food supply is covered [with snow], when there is a food supply," said Joyann Cirigliano, senior coordinator of bird-friendly communities at Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary and Audubon Center in Oyster Bay.

Robins are now eating the berries off English ivy, an aggressively invasive species, rather than the more energy-rich berries from native plants, because they have few alternatives, Cirigliano said. She said she had less concern about blue jays, which cache seeds and nuts, and insect-eaters like titmice and woodpeckers, because "as long as we have trees where they can hunt under the bark for insects, it’s mostly the seedeaters we’re concerned about."

Cirigliano normally suggests that people grow native plants if they want to feed birds, but said that with this much snow, bird feed could be "beneficial."

Marsh, the DEC resource supervisor, said that "resident" Canada geese, whose forebears migrated to warmer climates but now live on Long Island full time, may have difficulty finding food. "I’ve noticed at some area golf courses, there are areas where the wind has exposed grass" where the geese gather. "They’re looking for concentrations of grass and other herbaceous stuff to forage."

Critical shelter for cats

Tens of thousands of "community" cats, a term that includes feral and stray animals, live on Long Island.

Elyise Hallenbeck, who heads the Bideawee Feral Cat Initiative, which works to spay and neuter community cats, said she was not aware of any cold related-deaths over the last two weeks but that "there is no centralized data on weather-related fatalities in the same way we do when it comes to human services."

If this population did emerge relatively unscathed, it may be because cats are "resourceful and are going to do whatever they can to get warm," crawling into basements and garages, Hallenbeck said.

The Feral Cat Initiative also promotes build-it-yourself winter shelters. "It’s a weatherproof, insulated box with home-grade insulation that’s filled with straw," Hallenbeck said. "The cats create heat that stays inside the shelter. That can mean the difference between life and death in these types of treacherous storms."

A migration south

"Most of the fish that would be affected by extreme cold have migrated south, so we really haven’t had a fish kill," said Robert Aaronson, who captains the OH Brother, a Montauk charterboat. "Striped bass, bluefish, they’re south, off the Carolinas. Fluke and sea bass and porgies moved south into the canyons" to find more amenable conditions, he said.

Sea turtles would be adversely affected by the freeze, but those that live in Long Island’s bays or in the Sound left in September or October for warmer territory, said Maxine Montello, executive director of New York Marine Rescue Center in Riverhead. Electronic trackers that center staff put on turtles show one in the Bahamas, she said. Others go to the Carolinas or into the relatively warm Gulf Stream.

Seals, by and large, are not adversely affected by the cold, Montello said. "They are designed for the cold weather, with nice blubber layers and fur coats to help them." Some species that migrate to Long Island waters in the winter, like harp and hooded seals, "actually thrive with colder climates and lots of snow," which they eat to hydrate, she said.

Moisture for the spring

Rebecca Slagle, sustainability coordinator for Planting Fields Foundation, which stewards 409 acres of forest and gardens at a former Gold Coast estate in Oyster Bay, said the storm appeared to have delayed budding for some plants, like witch hazels, and could mean that some of the less hardy camellias will not bloom this year.

But there may be benefits, she said. Because the region is in mild drought, "having all that snow on the ground is a huge plus — it’s keeping moisture on the ground that would have evaporated, and soil that might have blown away because of high winds is staying in place."

The seeds of some of Planting Fields’ plants, like milkweed and evergreens, need cold to germinate.

She was hopeful, too, that the cold could kill or slow the progression of pests like the southern pine beetle and hemlock woolly adelgid, and invasive plants like bittersweet vine and multiflora rose.

Fewer prints in the snow

"I was just out in the woods today, trudging through miles of knee-deep snow, and there were not as many prints," said Hofstra University biologist Lisa Filippi early this week. On this trek, near the home grounds of a coyote population she monitors in western Nassau County, she saw squirrels, birds, raccoons, rabbits and a coyote, only the third in six years that she’s been monitoring the population.

The coyote looked "well," Filippi said. "I saw track signs of a scuffle and I saw rabbit tracks. I think the coyote probably got a rabbit."

Filippi said the storm had impacted the natural world but would likely leave no lasting mark. "There will be some deaths," she said. "That’s all part of nature. Plenty of birds and mammals will stay alive, even if some do perish."