Text:
Kristel VilbastePhotos:
Arne Ader
Translation:
Liis, from Forum 
Winter in the Otepää highlands: white snowfields, frosted woods ...
The thaw before New Year’s Eve covered the whole of Estonia with a sugarwhite icing, so slippery-smooth that neither furred nor feathered beings, or even people, manage to stay upright on it ...
The four weather signs of the week:
freezing partridge,
skidding deer
frosted birches,
and ice.
Many of our village people met on the ice of Peipsi on the first day of January; after all it is a special day when the lake ice at last can carry the weight of people. But this ice was so hard and smooth from the frost at the turn of the year, that Hugo Hummer, our neighbours’ dog, coming running towards us at great speed skidded several meters past Aotäht ... And it seems that the best transport means now are skates or a kick sledge. But this glassy-smooth ice is not only on the lake, all nature is iced. Particularly skate-rink-like are the flooded areas and ditch-sides. Environmentalist Enn Vilbaste is concerned about hoofed animals: ”When they jump across obstacles or ditches, even they may take a fall on the glassy ice, and bones can quite easily break. It is good of course that there seems to be enough to eat in the nearest surroundings. But dogs should certainly be kept on leash now!”
Roe deer.
Leave dogs at home
It is better to go alone in the forest, not the least because bear cubs are being born. ”Each year at this time we warn people. Some years orphaned bear cubs born at the end of December have been brought to the Nigula wild animal shelter”, the shelter hostess Kaja Kübar says, ”Anyway, we are prepared. At the moment we are busy with saving eagles brought here from the west coast, they have eaten poison or oily birds – they are clearly dehydrated.” The shelter has two major concerns – birds smeared by bilge-water oil, and overfed swans. Kaja Kübar asks us not to feed swans: ”In the whole of Estonia there isn’t a large enough shelter where the thousands of swans that are in danger of becoming ice-bound in Estonia could be brought. If they are not fed there is at least a small chance that they may fly away.“ As compensation the urbanised ducks who keep to areas where the water never freezes can be fed instead, but swans should be left to fly away.
Grey Partridge.
Spiders and lynxes all together
Some animals have not really taken in the arrival of the great cold yet. On the first of January, in the five degrees of cold, there on our snow sculpture of a rat on the lakeshore – a centrimeter-sized spider crept, very very slowly. In Pärnumaa the raccoon dogs are still out and awake, near Keila a hedgehog was seen in the new year. But all elks have been gone from our sight for the last months – it may be that there is a major error in the surveillance statistics, and that too many are shot, Enn Vilbaste says. The stoat is nicely white anyway, and there are surprisingly many lynxes around – unexplainably, because it should still be too early for the mating period.
Frost on birch tree.
Bird of the year is the tawny owl
Woodpeckers are the most active criers and fliers at the moment, they are everywhere. But birdwatchers also keep an eye on owls. For the ornithologists, the year of the tawny owl has started, even a homepage has been put up for the bird of the year:
www.eoy.ee/kodukakk. In our yard the liveliest actors are the crossbills, bullfinches and four partridges – the four left, out of this summer’s one and a half dozen, from the jaws of the foxes. But the fate of seabirds is worse – ornithologists do not see a long future for the population of longtailed ducks that spend their winters here. The problem of the oil-soiled sea will be brought home to government officials soon enough when foreign environmental protection people once again start pointing fingers at us because of the extremely rare Steller’s eiders: these beautiful birds too are – or were? – now swimming in the nafta soup.
Go fishing!
Mikk Sarv says that on Twelfth Night, or according to a more recent-time name, Christmas Tree Throwing Out Day, the burbots in the lake should start spawning. This is the day when all skimming ladles disappear from kitchens around the shores of Peipsi ... But Old Man Weather, Ilmataat, promises cold weather for some time to come – so it will pay off to get tackle for ice fishing. And to start with, you might like to go to the fishing competition „Uljaste Triibu 2009“ to learn about jig fishing.
Ice on lakes grew strong enough to hold a man.
FOR CHILDREN
Game: Merry-go-round or carousel
There is always enough to do on ice for children, and all children love merry-go-rounds. In the old days people made their winter merry-go-round like this: they chopped a hole in the ice, and pushed a wooden post, with an iron support, into it. When the ice had frozen again, a carriage wheel fitted with a long pole and a sledge fixed to that, was threaded on to the post. The sledge-riders got whirled around and competed for the fastest speed, or went just for fun. More than one pole with sledges can be fixed to the wheel, always opposite each other.
Quote:
The best means of transport at the moment seems to be skates or a kick-sledge.
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