How do the deer get on?
Photo: Arne Ader
Translation: Liis
Deers near Nigula Lake.
| Roe deer | Metskits |
The snow cover has been quite soft this winter up to now, and so the deer flocks still manage to dig through it down to food. It is laborious, and uses up much energy, so the weaker and younger are already in trouble. To rest and spend the night they also need dry and snow-free bedding, to avoid diseases caused by cold.
Hunters and nature friends have hurried to help the animals - all shown in the web cameras. Caterpillars are used to push away snow from feeding places, and to make tracks for running in the forest. Of course the behaviour and movements of predators – wolves, lynxes and foxes – have to observed, also that dogs don’t run around on their own
In the forest the deer still feed from shoots and twigs in the shrub layer – bilberry, cowberry, heather. But this becomes more difficult day by day, and there is more interest in the food mangers, and the hay and broadleaf whisks brought to the forest. The menu is finished off with shoots from deciduous trees. Conifer twigs are, according to the experts, eaten when water is scarce since the needles contain more than half their weight of water.
A thaw that would cause a crust to form on the snow, and make the snow coarse and cutting, would make it very difficult for all forest creatures to cope with their daily life.
Hunters and nature friends have hurried to help the animals - all shown in the web cameras. Caterpillars are used to push away snow from feeding places, and to make tracks for running in the forest. Of course the behaviour and movements of predators – wolves, lynxes and foxes – have to observed, also that dogs don’t run around on their own
In the forest the deer still feed from shoots and twigs in the shrub layer – bilberry, cowberry, heather. But this becomes more difficult day by day, and there is more interest in the food mangers, and the hay and broadleaf whisks brought to the forest. The menu is finished off with shoots from deciduous trees. Conifer twigs are, according to the experts, eaten when water is scarce since the needles contain more than half their weight of water.
A thaw that would cause a crust to form on the snow, and make the snow coarse and cutting, would make it very difficult for all forest creatures to cope with their daily life.
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