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It has been a winter of weather records and we still have a few months of the season to go. A far above normal snowfall and two months of constant -30 degree weather were interrupted very briefly by previously unheard of, January temperatures of as much as ten degrees above zero. When these phenomenal things happen, we tend to focus on our own problems of shoveling and plowing the white stuff and we forget about the hardships that these changes impose on some of smallest and yet meaningful creatures around us.

On only one occasion in early winter did I hear the familiar haunting who-ooo-ooo of the Great Grey Owl. This prominent member of the Strigiformes (owl family) normally hangs around our neighborhood in considerable numbers especially in the early fall and late winter months but since last October the bird has been strangely absent.

Almost 80% of the owl’s diet consists of small rodents such as the tiny vole or shrew, a food supply that it shares with the foxes, coyotes, weasels and wolves and of course our resident king of the northern scroungers, the raven.

This little creature takes its role in the food chain seriously and in a good year the female vole is the most prolific animal in the woods. Between May and August she produces a litter of five to six young every three weeks. In winter, voles live underneath the snow in a labyrinth of tunnels, only now and then coming up to check the weather and investigate a new food source. A great example of their winter tunneling skills around our house is the number of little burrows that unerringly end up in the hollow underneath our bird feeder; a terrific source of dropped sunflower seeds that are a veritable smorgasbord of nutrients for the little critters.

Last fall there was a marked absence of the little rodents. Possibly and likely it was the cold and wet spring and summer that was to blame for a higher than normal mortality rate amongst the youngsters. They come into the world hairless and weighing less than two grams.

To make matters worse for those that survived the cold summer, the layer of ice that formed underneath the snow during our five-day hiatus of abnormally warm weather has created a major tunneling problem and has covered large portions of their food supply with a coating of ice. This winter I have frequently uncovered their unused food caches that were placed in amongst the stacked firewood last fall, indicators that whoever it was that stashed the goods is no longer able or around to reap the benefit of their work. All is not well in the world of the vole.

The lack of this major food supply is probably why we haven’t heard the friendly who-ooo-ooo of the Great Grey Owl in the dusk of an evening. I do hope that they remember to return in spring.