The intense snowfall that arrived overnight cast a dramatic backdrop over the landscape: at least…
The intense snowfall that arrived overnight cast a dramatic backdrop over the landscape: the winter forest now rests beneath a blanket of at least twenty centimeters of virgin snow.
It’s a rare and striking sight, one that even we humans have only rarely experienced during the mild winters of recent years. But just imagine what the young inhabitants of the forest must be feeling!
The photo taken in the daylight dusk, around 4 p.m. (photo 1), clearly shows the contrast between the peaceful landscape and the struggle for survival. In the foreground, the profile of a young roe buck stands out; its coat blends into the cold air in dark gray, ears pricked, alert to every sound. Behind it, deeper in the frame, a spiker fallow buck digs through the snow with lowered head — he’s already figured out that treasure in the form of corn kernels lies hidden beneath the white shroud. For these animals, born last spring, this is their first true encounter with the "Great Winter". The soft yet obstructive snow, the cold of -5°C to -8°C that cuts to the bone — all of it is a new lesson in the school of life.
As night falls, the situation intensifies.
In the first nighttime trail-camera shot (photo 2), the snowfall is thick enough to cut with a knife. The falling flakes streak white lines through the darkness of the night, blurring the boundary between tree and bush. In this harsh weather, the wild boar show up not long after midnight.
Last year’s small, striped piglets have by now grown into strong yearlings. Wrapped in thick winter coats, frost and snow settle on their wiry bristles, but it doesn’t bother them in the least.
Bunched into a group, jostling one another, they storm the feeder.
The dynamics are visible in the photos: they plow up the ground with their snouts like so many little snowplows.
They already know the secret: the few square meters around the feeder, and the depths of the covered logs and the roller feeders, hide a generous supper — one that human care provides for them even in the harshest of times.
The snow is, at once, both enemy and friend.
An enemy, because every single kernel of corn, every mouthful, has to be fought for, and every step burns more energy.
But a friend too, because the crunchy snow surface gives away an approaching predator, hampers its movement as well, and against the white backdrop even the slightest motion is spotted sooner.
The lens of the ZEISS Secacam 7 trail camera records this frozen -6°C world with cool detachment, but behind the images the will to live keeps pulsing.
These few days, this snowy episode from early January, are a survival training course — and a coming-of-age exam — for the young, vigorous game of the forest.
