1. BEAR'S LAIR.

A bear in central Russia lays down in a den in the first half of November, approximately around November 8 (Dmitry of Thessalonica's day); before this time, he goes to bed very rarely and only on special occasions. As soon as the correctness of the conditions affecting the life of a bear is violated, so the period of lying is delayed.

Suppose that a bear, looking for a place to lay in the fall, accidentally stumbled upon carrion. Naturally, the beast will not leave the carcass until it eats it all, even if the time for preparing the lair and lying in it has already come. Snow has fallen, and the bear continues to visit the carrion and eats until only bones remain from it.

Other reasons delaying bear mating are: rowan and oat crops left unharvested in forest clearings.

Stacks of oats or sheaves left unharvested on the pallets due to a rainy autumn or for some other reason strongly attract the bear, so that, having been busy cleaning them, he postpones lying down for a while.

So, a bear in central Russia rarely goes to bed before the end of the first week of November.

But it happens that winter suddenly comes early. Then the bears, taken by surprise by the fallen snow, make tracks; footprints in the snow belong only to such bears whose lying down was delayed by something; and, it must be added, bears, in most cases, small, little experienced, since the bear is generally sensitive to the weather, especially seasoned: anticipating early winter, he always lies down before the snow, no matter how early winter comes.

When snow falls prematurely around mid-October, which then melts, the early-lying animal, after the snow melts, leaves the haul and again lies down, already along the black path, on the root.

In any case, even in the Arkhangelsk, Olonets and Vologda provinces, the bear does not lie down until mid-October.

“On hearing” is usually the bear that was detained by one of the above reasons, especially water. This is very understandable. The bear is known to prepare itself for lying down by emptying its stomach. Suppose that, having already prepared himself, he found a vada; eating it, he fills his stomach again, but he no longer has the opportunity to prepare himself for the second time, since the herbs and roots necessary for this process have already died out and lost their strength. Consequently, the bear, having eaten vada, lies on the bed without cleansing the stomach and therefore, as having violated his norm, lies badly, on the "hearing".

Such a bear most often becomes a "rod" (from the word "stagger"); he does not have one specific lair for the whole winter, but constantly wanders, frightened by the slightest rustle, with which he was probably frightened away from the lair, where he undoubtedly lay originally.

In any case, connecting rods are extremely rare, and if they are, then almost exclusively in areas where there are many salaries and where bears are much more sensitive and strict than those living in remote corners.

A bear chooses a lair in autumn, always depending on the coming winter. A damp, warm, rotten winter makes him choose a dry place for his lair, but, as always, near water: streams, swamps, rivers, lakes. A bear serves as a dry place in the forest: manes, islands among swamps, clear cuts, overgrown burnt areas, etc.

In addition to choosing a dry place for a lair, in anticipation of a rotten winter, the bear obviously takes care to put it in a relatively clean place - in a place that he never chooses in anticipation of a moderate or severe winter. The preference given to a “cleaner” place is probably due to the fear of a “drop”: a canopy of snow melts and water, dripping from a tree, disturbs the animal.

Anticipating a cold winter, the bear lies down in a wet swamp, choosing a larger hummock or a small island in the middle of the swamp, and certainly in a dense, dense place.

The nature of the second half of winter can be judged by the driving bears. If the bears raised and driven away, lying in dry and rare places, choose a second bed in a swamp and in a stronger place, then it should be expected that the second half of winter will be colder.

Generally speaking, a seasoned bear or a she-bear lies closer to housing, and medium and small bears rarely lie very close to the village.

The terrain surrounding the lair is very diverse depending on which bear chooses it for lying down - large or small, male or cub, etc. In general, we can say that the bear extremely rarely lies down in the forest, and prefers clearings in which the young shoots went; then he lies down more readily in a mixed forest than in a forest of the same type and age.

The most seasoned, large animal lies down in a place where it is least expected. He is not afraid to lie down near osekav (fences), which are very numerous in the Novgorod and Tver provinces.

A large bear will prefer to lie down even in a small aspen forest rather than in a pure forest, and if there is at least one pigtail, stump or Christmas tree in this little thing, then the bear should be looked for under them.

Similarly, the bear is very fond of lying down at the foot of a dry aspen, whose top is broken.

Like a prone, the bear loves any eversion, if it is raised so high from the ground that it gives the bear the opportunity to crawl under it. Sometimes a bear is content with 4 - 5 trees from 1 1/2 to 2 arshins high, growing more or less in a "circle". Having dragged tops and branches from young fir trees under him, he lies down on them, and bites the standing fir-trees around him so that the broken tops, like a hut or roof, cover him from above.

If the bear lies down along the tree, then he chooses one that would cover the den from the north or east side. In cold winters, when a bear lies down in a swamp abounding in warm springs, he chooses a high, vast hummock, in the middle of which he makes a slight round depression for himself, lines a bed and lies down on it.

Soaked in the den or frightened by anything from it, the bear will never lie down in the same place. Subsequent lairs he sometimes chooses for himself with much greater convenience, especially at the beginning of winter; but if it is close to spring (for 1 1/2 - 2 months), then the den is chosen by him somehow, and often under such a bear you can see just some 2 - 3 knots of the Christmas tree. If, however, a bear is chased and often frightened away, then all the lairs successively chosen by him are in the nature of haste, and the further, the more, because such an animal loses faith in the safety of its new lair and falls on "hearing"; and if he sometimes climbs deep into the well or windbreak, then his bed is still riding.

A small and medium bear, as well as a she-bear with small ones, likes to choose very dense thickets for lying down, especially in cold winters, when the animal foresees that he has nothing to fear from anxiety from a drop. Sometimes the thickets are so dense that it is absolutely impossible to penetrate them to the lair without a knife or an axe.

Bears arrange their dens sometimes in a very original way. So, for example, it would seem that it would be most suitable for a whelping she-bear to finish and decorate her lair, but in reality it happens that the she-bear's lair differs only in volume, but inside it is only a bedding, and creases of a Christmas tree on top; that's all And, on the contrary, I happened to see a bear's lair, amazing in luxury and beauty: the whole nest, surprisingly regular in shape, was laid out on a dry hillock and made of finely torn spruce bark mixed with a small number of branches; the bottom of the nest was covered with the same bark with the addition of moss. The bear lay curled up in a ball, with the edges of the nest rising IV2 - 2 arshins above its side. Another bear made a no less original lair, small, original in that it was in a haystack left in a forest clearing on In this case, it is most likely to assume that the bear did not have time or was unable to make a lair for himself and lay down anywhere.

Speaking about the arrangement of a bear in a den, one cannot fail to mention the “zaeds” that he sometimes makes on trees.

The fact is that the bear sometimes likes to make his lair more comfortable. In these cases, he is extremely patient and diligently begins to tear the spruce bark with his teeth and claws, which, when worn out, gives a soft and plump litter. The bark of a young Christmas tree goes mainly to this shred, most often from the south side, where the bark is thinner and more fibrous. If there are burrows on the tree, but there are no dens nearby, this means that the bark on the tree seemed unusable to the bear for some reason.

A whelping bear will never take either a lonchak or a breeder into her lair. (With an adult bear, neither a whelping nor a dry one will ever lie down). She lies down alone, and if she has a pestun with her, then he lies down at a distance from her, but not close. If there are lonchaks and a pestun, or only lonchaks, with the she-bear, then this serves as irrefutable proof that the she-bear is barren.

The names - lonchak and pestun are understood differently by hunters. It is correct to call bear cubs aged approximately (from mid-August) from seven months to two years old as lonchaks. After two years on the third lonchak begins to be called a pestun, provided that he is with a cub.

In addition, the pest is always a male, but not a female.

An approximate definition of lonchak and pestun can be made by weight. The weight of a launcher varies from 1 pood to 10 pounds. up to 2 pounds 30 pounds; pestun weighs from 2 pounds 30 pounds. up to 5 pounds. But this definition must be treated with caution. With artificial rearing, in captivity, the weight is different.

If a bear lies down as a family, then each member of the family does not always lie on his own special bed, except when the lair is very extensive, for example, somewhere under a fire in a forest littered with a storm or with a large eversion. When choosing a lair upstairs, the she-bear will certainly arrange it so that the family lies "breastly".

The placement of family members in a covered or earthen den is different. More often the she-bear lies closer to the exit, sometimes, on the contrary, she hides in the farthest corner.

A female bear never takes anyone into her den and always calves alone. If in the spring she appears with a pet, this does not mean that he was lying with her in a den, which means that he was lying somewhere not far from his mother, on a special bed and in an independent den, but in no case together .

If the cubs do not disappear and survive until autumn, then this winter the she-bear remains barren and lays down in the den with lonchaks. In general, it can be affirmatively stated that if the cubs remain intact by autumn, then the she-bear always goes through a dry year and, as a result, chases only after a year; if the cubs are killed, caught or disappeared altogether, then the she-bear walks again.

Having settled down one way or another in the den, every bear does not immediately fall asleep. At first, he sleeps more at night and at noon, but he is awake in the morning and evening. The longer the bear lies, the earlier severe frosts come, the more soundly he sleeps. During a thaw or generally slight frosts, it is difficult to approach a bear without frightening it; on the contrary, in severe frosts you can come close to him and still have to wake him up, even if even his lair was arranged all upstairs and in plain sight.

But although in the thaw the bear sleeps even weaker, i.e. more sensitive to rustling, but the thaw itself, especially with a thick canopy of snow in the forest, greatly contributes to drowning out any sound, which is why, for a round-up plant, for example, a canopy is invaluable, especially where the round-up is poorly disciplined; for shooting, the canopy is unpleasant.

You should not rush to hunt for a bear that has not been lying for a long time, which, as they say, has not had time to “coop around”, and you need to let the beast lie down for at least a week or two. Under conditions that do not give the opportunity to wait and postpone the hunt, you should at least start it in the afternoon, when the bear sleeps more soundly than in the morning. Before 9 o'clock in the morning in the first half of winter, hunting should not be started at all, since in dense thickets and scrap only by this time is it possible to see well, and, consequently, to shoot.

A whelping, but not whelping, bear sleeps lightly before giving birth and it is not difficult to drive her away, but it is also easy to correct a mistake, because a pregnant woman is not able to go far; sometimes such a bear will cover only one verst, more often three, four, but not more than five (as an exception, I know a case when such a bear traveled 25 versts).

Regarding the question of whether a bear sucks its paw in a den, I can say the following: captive cubs generally willingly suck their paws, but the older the bears get, the less often you can see them doing this. In the wild, in a den, an adult bear never sucks its paws.

By the way, it will be said about the position that the bear takes when lying in the den. It can be quite varied, but most often the bear lies in the den on the right or on the left side, less often on the stomach, and never lies on its back.

It is not uncommon to see a bear sitting in a den; such a situation is not normal; if the bear sat in the den, it means that he is disturbed by something; such a bear will certainly move off the bed.

In conclusion, it remains only to say that the bear in the den in most cases lies with its head to the south, less often to the west or east, and it has never happened to me to see the position of the bear's head to the north. Thus, the bear, as it were, looks at its heel. At the end of the heel, if the lair is made of earth (ground) or in scrap, its forehead is also located, and the forehead always looks at a relatively clean place compared to other sides of the lair.

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FOREST GAZETTE No. 11
MONTH OF SERIOUS HUNGER (SECOND MONTH OF WINTER)

JANUARY, say the people, turn towards spring; the beginning of the year, the middle of winter; sun for summer, winter for frost. On New Year's Day, the day was added to the hare lope.

Earth, water and forest - everything is covered with snow, everything around is immersed in an unawakening and, it seems, a dead dream.

In difficult times, life is very good at pretending to be dead. Grasses, bushes and trees froze. Frozen, but not dead.

Under a dead cover of snow, they conceal the mighty power of life, the power to grow and bloom. Pines and spruces keep their seeds safe, holding them tightly in their cone fists.

Animals with cold blood, hiding, froze. But they didn’t die either, even as tender as moths, they hid in different shelters.

Birds are especially hot-blooded and never hibernate. Many animals, even tiny mice, run all winter. And is it not surprising that a bear sleeping in a den under deep snow in January frosts gives birth to tiny blind cubs and, although she herself does not eat anything all winter, feeds them with her milk until spring!

COLD IN THE FOREST, COLD!

An icy wind walks in an open field, rushes through the forest between bare birches and aspens. He climbs under a tight feather, penetrates thick wool, cools the blood.

You can’t sit on the ground or on a branch: everything is covered with snow, your paws get cold. You have to run, jump, fly to keep warm somehow.

Good for someone who has a warm, cozy den, mink, nest; who has a pantry full of supplies. Eaten more tightly, curled up - sleep tight.

WHO IS FAT, THE COLD IS NOT TERRIBLE

For animals and birds, it's all about satiety. A good dinner warms from the inside, the blood is hot, warmth spreads through all the veins. Fat under the skin is the best lining for a warm woolen or downy coat. It will pass through the wool, it will pass through the feather, and no frost will break through the fat under the skin.

If there was plenty of food, winter would not be terrible. And where to get it - food in winter?

A wolf roams, a fox roams through the forest - it is empty in the forest, all the animals and birds hid, flew away. Crows fly during the day, an owl flies at night, they look out for prey - there is no prey.

Hungry in the forest, hungry!

ZINZIVER IN Izba

In the Month of Severe Famine, every forest animal, every bird clings to human habitation. Here it is easier to provide food for oneself, to profit from garbage.

Hunger kills fear. Cautious forest dwellers are no longer afraid of people.

Black grouse and partridge climb onto the threshing floor, into barns with grain. Rusaks come to gardens, weasels and weasels hunt mice and rats in cellars. White people come to the village to pluck hay from haystacks. A zinziver, a grasshopper tit, yellow, with white cheeks and a black stripe on its chest, boldly flew into the forest hut of our correspondents through an open door. Ignoring the people, he deftly began to peck at the crumbs on the dining table.

The owners closed the door - and the zinziver found himself in captivity.

For a whole week he lived in a hut. They didn’t touch him, but they didn’t feed him either. However, every day he noticeably got fatter and fatter. He hunted all day long all over the hut. He looked for crickets sleeping in the cracks of flies, picked up crumbs, and at night he huddled up to sleep in a crack behind the Russian stove.

A few days later, he caught all the flies and cockroaches and began to peck bread, spoil books, boxes, corks with his beak - everything that came across his eyes.

Then the owners opened the door and drove the uninvited little guest out of the hut.

TO WHOM THE LAWS ARE NOT WRITTEN

Now all the forest dwellers are moaning from the cruel winter. Forest law says: in winter, escape from the cold and hunger as best you can, but forget about the chicks. Take out the chicks in the summer, when it is warm and there is plenty of food.

Well, and to whom the forest is full of food even in winter, this law is not written for him.

Our correspondents found a nest of a small bird on a high Christmas tree. The branch on which the nest is placed is completely covered with snow, and the testicles lie in the nest.

Our correspondents came the next day, it was just a bitter cold, everyone's noses are red, they look, and the chicks have already hatched in the nest, naked lie in the snow, still blind.

What a miracle

And there is no miracle. This couple of spruce crossbills built a nest and brought out chicks.

Such a crossbill bird that it is not afraid of cold or hunger of winter.

All year round you can see flocks of these birds in the forest. Calling merrily, they fly from tree to tree, from forest to forest. All year round they lead a nomadic life: today here, tomorrow there.

In the spring, all songbirds break into pairs, choose a site for themselves and live on it until they hatch their chicks.

And the crossbills even at this time fly in flocks through all the forests, not stopping anywhere for a long time.

In their noisy flying flocks all year round you can see together with old and young birds. As if their chicks will be born in the air, on the fly.

In Leningrad, crossbills are also called parrots. This name was given to them for their motley and bright outfit, like a parrot, and for the fact that they climb and spin on perches, too, like parrots.

Feathers of male crossbills are orange in different shades; in females and young - green and yellow.

The paws of crossbills are tenacious, the beak is grasping. Crossbills like to hang upside down, holding on to the upper branch with their paws, and grabbing the lower one with their beak.

It seems quite a miracle that the body of the crossbill does not rot for a very long time after death. The corpse of an old crossbilly can lie for twenty years - and not a single feather will fall from it, and there will be no smell. Like a mummy.

But the crossbill has a nose that is most interesting. No other bird has such a nose.

The nose at the crossbill is crossed: the upper half is bent down, the lower half is up.

In the crossbill's nose is all the power and the solution to all miracles.

Crossbills will be born with straight noses, like all birds. But as soon as the chick grows up, he begins to get seeds from spruce and pine cones with his nose. At the same time, his still tender nose is bent crosswise, and it remains so for life. This is good for Klest: with a cross nose it is much more convenient to peel the seeds from the cones.

This is where everything becomes clear.

Why crossbills roam the forests all their lives?

Yes, because they are looking for where the best crop of cones is. This year we have bumps in the Leningrad region. We have crosses. Next year, somewhere in the north, a cone harvest - crossbills there.

Why do crossbills sing songs in winter and take chicks out among the snow?

But why shouldn't they sing and raise chicks, since there is plenty of food around?

The nest is warm - there is down, and a feather, and soft fur, and the female, as soon as she lays her first testicle, does not leave the nest. The male brings food to her.

The female sits, warms the eggs, and the chicks hatch - she feeds them with spruce and pine seeds softened in the goiter. There are cones on the trees all year round.

A couple will come together, want to live in their own house, take out small children, - they will fly away from the flock, it doesn’t matter whether it is in winter, in spring, or in autumn (in every month nests of crossbills were found). Build a nest - live. The chicks will grow up - the whole family will again stick to the flock.

Why do crossbills turn into mummies after death?

And all because they eat cones. There is a lot of resin in spruce and pine seeds. Some old crossbill for a long life will be saturated with this resin, like a greased boot with tar. Resin and does not allow his body to rot after death.

The Egyptians, after all, also rubbed their dead with resin and made mummies.

ADAPTED

In late autumn, the bear chose a place for his den on a hillside overgrown with a frequent spruce forest. He tore narrow strips of spruce bark with his claws, demolished them into a hole on a hill, and threw soft moss on top. He gnawed the Christmas trees around the pit so that they covered it with a hut, climbed under them and fell asleep peacefully.

But less than a month later, the huskies found his lair, and he barely managed to escape from the hunter. I had to lie down right on the snow - by ear. But even here the hunters found him, and again he escaped a little.

And so he hid for the third time. So much so that it never occurred to anyone where to look for it.

It was only in the spring that he discovered that he had had a good night's sleep high up in the tree. The upper branches of this tree, once broken by a storm, grew into the sky, forming, as it were, a hole. In summer, the eagle dragged brushwood and soft bedding here, brought out chicks here and flew away. And in winter, a bear, disturbed in its lair, guessed to climb into this air "pit".

MICE MOVED OUT OF THE FOREST

Many wood mice now no longer have enough stocks in pantries. Many fled their burrows to escape stoats, weasels, ferrets and other predators.

And the ground and the forest are covered with snow. There is nothing to chew on. A whole army of hungry mice moved out of the forest. Grain barns are in serious danger. You have to be alert.

Weasels follow the mice. But there are too few of them to catch and destroy all the mice.

Protect grain from rodents!

TIR

RUN ANSWER DIRECTLY ON THE GOAL! COMPETITION ELEVENTH

1. Does a bear lie down in a den skinny or fat?

1. What does it mean - "feet feed the wolf"?

2. What is more terrible for birds - the cold or the hunger of winter?

3. Why is firewood harvested in winter more valuable than firewood harvested in summer?

4. How can you find out how old this tree was from the stump of a felled tree?

5. Why do many animals and birds leave the forest in winter and cling to human habitation?

6. Do all rooks fly away from us for the winter?

7. What does a toad eat in winter?

8. What animals are called connecting rods?

9. Where do bats go for the winter?

10. Are all hares white in winter?

11. Why does the carcass of a dead crossbilly not decompose for a long time even when warm?

12. What bird breeds chicks at any time of the year, even in the snow?

13. I am small as a grain of sand, but I cover the earth.

14. Walks in summer, rests in winter.

15. A red-haired girl sat in a dark dungeon - a scythe on the street.

16. A grandmother was sitting on the beds - all in patches.

17. Not sewn, not cut, all in scars; without counting clothes and all without fasteners.

18. Round, but not the moon; green, but not oak forest; with a tail, but not a mouse.

FOREST NEWSPAPER No. 12
MONTH OF ENDURANCE UNTIL SPRING (THIRD MONTH OF WINTER)

Sun enters Pisces

YEAR - SOLAR POEM IN 12 MONTHS

FEBRUARY - winter. Blizzards and blizzards flew in February; running through the snow, but there is no trace.

The last, most terrible month of winter. A month of severe hunger, wolf weddings, wolf raids on villages and small towns - dogs, goats are dragged out of hunger, climb into sheepfolds at night. All the animals are skinny. The fat that has been worked up since autumn no longer warms, does not nourish them.

The stocks of animals and in burrows, in underground storerooms, are running out.

Snow, from a warm friend, is increasingly turning into a mortal enemy for many. Tree branches break under its unbearable weight. Wild chickens - partridges, hazel grouse, black grouse - rejoice in deep snow: it is good for them to spend the night, burrowing into it with their heads.

But the trouble is when, after a daytime thaw, frost hits at night and covers the snow with an ice crust - infusion. Then beat your head against the ice roof until the sun dissolves the crust!

And a snowstorm sweeps, sweeps, February-high-roader falls asleep sleigh paths-roads ...

DO YOU SUFFER?

The last month of the forest year has come, the most difficult month - the Month of Patience until Spring.

All the inhabitants of the forest came to an end stocks in pantries. All animals and birds have emaciated - there is no longer warm fat under the skin. From a long life from hand to mouth, strength has diminished a lot.

And then, as luck would have it, blizzards and blizzards flew through the forest, the frosts that further, then stronger. The last month of winter to walk, she struck with a fierce cold. Hold on now, every beast and bird, gather your last strength - endure until spring.

Our leskors went around the whole forest. They were very worried about the question: will the animals and birds endure until the heat?

They had to see a lot of sad things in the forest. Other inhabitants of the forest could not stand the hunger and cold - they died. Will the rest manage to creak for another month? True, there are also those for whom there is nothing to worry about: they will not be lost.

ICE

The worst thing, perhaps, is when, after a thaw, a sharp cold suddenly strikes at once, the snow immediately freezes from above. Such an ice crust on the snow - strong, hard, slippery - you can’t break it with either weak paws or a beak. The hoof of a roe deer will pierce it, but the sharp edges of the broken crust of ice cut the wool, skin and meat of the legs like a knife.

How can birds get grass from under the ice, grains - food?

Whoever does not have the strength to break through the glass of the ice crust is starving.

And it happens like that.

Thaw. The snow on the ground became damp and loose. In the evening, gray field partridges fell into it, quite easily made minks for themselves in it, and fell asleep in the steamy warmth.

And the night was frosty.

The partridges slept in their warm underground burrows, did not wake up, did not feel the cold.

Woke up in the morning. Warmth under the snow. It's just hard to breathe.

You need to go outside: breathe, stretch your wings, look for food.

They wanted to take off - overhead, strong as glass, ice.

Ice. There is nothing on top of it, under it the snow is soft.

Gray partridges smash their heads on the ice into blood - just to escape from under the ice cap.

And happy, albeit on an empty stomach, are those who still managed to escape from mortal captivity.

SASONI

There is a large cave on the banks of the Tosna River, not far from the Sablino station of the Oktyabrskaya railway. They used to take sand there, but now no one has been going there for many years.

Our leskors visited this cave and found many bats-earflaps and leathers on its ceiling. For five months now, they have been sleeping here head down, clutching the rough sandy vault with their paws. Ushans hid their huge ears under their folded wings, wrapped their wings like in a blanket, hanging - sleeping.

Alarmed by such a long sleep of earflaps and kozhanov, our correspondents counted their pulse and put a thermometer.

In summer, bats have the same temperature as ours, about + 37 °, and the pulse is 200 beats per minute.

Now the pulse was only 50 beats per minute, and the temperature was only + 5 °.

Despite this, the health of small sleepers is recognized as not causing any concern.

They can still freely sleep for a month, even two, and wake up quite healthy when the warm nights come.

NEVTERPEZH

As soon as a little bit of frost is released and a thaw sets in, all impatient riffraff crawls out from under the snow in the forest: earthworms, wood lice, spiders, ladybugs, sawfly beetle larvae.

Wherever there is a corner of the land free from snow, blizzards often sweep all the snow from under the snags - here they arrange a festivities.

Insects knead their stiff legs, spiders hunt. Wingless snow mosquitoes run, jump barefoot right on the snow. Long-legged winged pusher mosquitoes curl in the air.

As soon as the frost hits, the walk ends, and the whole company again hides under the leaves, in the moss, in the grass, in the ground.

THROW THE WEAPON

Forest heroes-horned and male roe deer threw off their horns.

The Elklings themselves dropped their heavy weapons from their heads: they rubbed their horns against the tree trunks in the thicket.

Noticing one of the unarmed heroes, two wolves decided to attack him. Victory seemed easy to them.

One wolf attacked the elk from the front, the other from behind.

The fight ended unexpectedly soon. With strong front hooves, the elk cracked open the skull of one wolf, turned around in an instant and knocked over another in the snow. All wounded, the wolf barely managed to slip away from the enemy.

Old elk and roe deer have already shown new antlers in recent days. These are not yet hardened tubercles, covered with skin and fluffy hair.

COLD BATH LOVER

At a hole in the ice of a river near the Gatchina station of the Baltic Railway, one of our foresters noticed a small black-bellied bird.

It was bitterly cold, and although the sun shone in the sky, our leskor had to rub his whitened nose with snow more than once that morning.

Therefore, he was very surprised to hear how cheerfully the black-bellied bird sang on the ice.

He stepped closer. Then the bird jumped up and in a big way - bang into the hole!

"Drowned!" thought the lescor and briskly ran up to the hole in order to pull out the crazy bird.

The bird rowed underwater with its wings, like a swimmer with his arms.

Her dark back shone in the clear water like a silver fish.

The bird dived to the very bottom and ran along it, clinging to the sand with sharp claws. In one place she lingered a little. She turned a pebble over with her beak and pulled out a black water beetle from under it.

A minute later, she jumped out onto the ice through another hole, shook herself and, as if nothing had happened, burst into a cheerful song.

Our leskor stuck his hand into the hole. “Maybe there are hot springs and the water in the river is warm?” he thought.

But he immediately pulled his hand out of the hole: the icy water burned him.

Only then did he realize that in front of him was a water sparrow - a dipper.

This is also one of the birds for which laws are not written, as for the crossbill.

Her feathers are covered with a thin layer of fat. When the water sparrow dives, the air bubbles on its fat feathers and shines with silver. The bird is exactly in clothes made of thin air, and it is not cold even in ice-cold water.

We have a water sparrow in the Leningrad region - a rare guest and only happens in winter.

LIFE UNDER THE SNOW

All through the long winter you look, look at the ground covered with snow, and involuntarily think: what is there under it, under this cold dry sea of ​​snow? Was there, at the bottom of it, at least something alive?

Our correspondents dug in the forest, in the glades and in the field deep - to the very ground - wells in the snow.

What we saw there exceeded all our expectations. Green rosettes of some leaves appeared there, and young, sharp sprouts making their way out of dry sods, and green stalks of various herbs, pressed down to the frozen ground by heavy snow, but alive. Just think - alive!

It turns out that they live at the bottom of a dead snowy sea, and strawberries, and dandelions, and porridge, and cat's paws, and askolka, and dubrovka, and sorrel, and many more different plants turn green for themselves! And on the tender, juicy greenery of woodlice grass, even tiny buds.

Round holes were found in the walls of the snow wells of our foresters. These are the passages cut by shovels of small animals, perfectly able to get their own food in the snowy sea. Mice and voles gnaw on tasty and nutritious roots under the snow, and predatory shrews, weasels, and ermines hunt here in winter for these rodents, and even for birds that spend the night in the snow.

Previously, it was thought that only bears would have cubs in the middle of winter. Happy guys, they say, will be born "in a shirt." Bear cubs are born very small, like rats, and not only in a shirt - right in fur coats.

Now scientists have found out that some mice and voles seem to go to the dacha in winter: they move from their summer underground burrows upstairs - “to light air” - and build their nests under the snow on the roots and lower branches of bushes. And here are the miracles: in winter they also have cubs! Tiny mouse babies will be born completely naked, but the nest is warm, and little mothers feed them with their milk.

SPRING SIGNS

Although the frosts are still strong this month, but not the ones that were in the middle of winter. Although the snow is deep, it’s not the same as it was - brilliant and white. Dimmed, turned gray, became nostril. And icicles grow from the roofs, and drops from icicles. You look - and the puddles.

The sun is peeking out more often, the sun is already starting to warm. And the sky is no longer frozen, white-blue winter color. The sky is turning blue day by day. And the clouds on it are not grayish, winter: they are already exfoliating and, just looking, they will float in strong, knocked down heaps.

A little sun - a cheerful tit is already calling under the window:

- Throw off the coat, throw off the coat, throw off the coat!

At night, there are cat concerts and fights on the roofs.

In the forest, no, no, yes, the joyful drumming of the spotted woodpecker will roll. Though the nose on the bitch, but everything is considered a song!

And in the very wilderness, under the firs and pines, on the snow, someone draws mysterious signs, incomprehensible drawings. And at the sight of them, he will suddenly freeze, then the hunting heart will beat strongly: after all, this is a swindler - a bearded forest cockerel, a capercaillie has furrowed a strong spring crust with steep feathers of mighty wings. It means… it means that capercaillie current, mysterious forest music is about to begin.

FIRST SONG

On a frosty but sunny day, the first spring song sounded in the city gardens.

The zinziver, the grasshopper tit, sang. The song is easy:

“Zin-zi-ver! Zin-zi-ver!”

Only and everything. But this song rings so merrily, like a brisk golden-breasted bird wants to say in its bird language:

- Take off your coat! Take off your coat! Spring!

TIR

RUN ANSWER DIRECTLY ON THE GOAL! COMPETITION TWELVE

1. What animal sleeps upside down all winter?

2. What does a hedgehog do in winter?

1. Which songbird gets its food by diving into the water under the ice?

2. Where does the snow start to melt earlier - in the forest or in the city? And why?

3. From the arrival of which birds do we consider the beginning of spring?

4. In a new wall in a round window, glass was broken during the day, inserted during the night.

5. They freeze in the hut, not on the street.

6. What is higher than the forest, what is more beautiful than the light?

7. There is no mind, but more cunning than the beast.

8. In the spring it amuses, in the summer it cools, in the autumn it nourishes, in the winter it warms.

A bear in central Russia lays down in a den in the first half of November, approximately around November 8 (Dmitry of Thessalonica's day); before this time, he goes to bed very rarely and only on special occasions. As soon as the correctness of the conditions affecting the life of a bear is violated, so the period of lying is delayed.

Suppose that a bear, looking for a place to lay in the fall, accidentally stumbled upon carrion. Naturally, the beast will not leave the carcass until it eats it all, even if the time for preparing the lair and lying in it has already come. Snow has fallen, and the bear continues to visit the carrion and eats until only bones remain from it.

Other reasons delaying bear mating are: rowan and oat crops left unharvested in forest clearings.

Stacks of oats or sheaves left unharvested on the pallets due to rainy autumn or for some other reason strongly attract the bear, so that, having started cleaning them, he puts off lying down for a while.

So, a bear in central Russia rarely goes to bed before the end of the first week of November.

But it happens that winter suddenly comes early. Then the bears, taken by surprise by the fallen snow, make tracks; footprints in the snow belong only to such bears whose lying down was delayed by something; and, it must be added, bears, in most cases, small, little experienced, since the bear is generally sensitive to the weather, especially seasoned: anticipating early winter, he always lies down before the snow, no matter how early winter comes.

When snow falls prematurely around mid-October, which then melts, the early-lying animal leaves the hay after a flock of snow and again lies down, already along the black path, on the root.

In any case, even in the Arkhangelsk, Olonets and Vologda provinces, the bear does not lie down until mid-October.

"On hearing" is usually that bear, which ardor is detained by one of the above reasons, especially water. This is very understandable. The bear is known to prepare itself for lying down by emptying its stomach. Suppose that, having already prepared himself, he found a vada; eating it, he fills his stomach again, but he no longer has the opportunity to prepare himself for the second time, since the herbs and roots necessary for this process have already died out and lost their strength. Consequently, the bear, having eaten vada, lies on the bed without cleansing the stomach, and therefore, as having violated his norm, lies badly, on the "hearing". Such a bear most often becomes a "rod" (from the word "stagger"); he does not have one definite den for the whole winter, roams, frightened by the slightest rustle, which probably frightened him out of the lair, where he undoubtedly lay originally.

In any case, connecting rods are extremely rare, and if they are, then almost exclusively in areas where there are many salaries and where bears are much more sensitive and strict than those living in remote corners.

A bear chooses a lair in autumn, always depending on the coming winter. A damp, warm, rotten winter makes him choose a dry place for his lair, but, as always, near water: streams, swamps, rivers, lakes. A bear serves as a dry place in the forest: manes, islands among swamps, clear cuts, overgrown burnt areas, etc.

In addition to choosing a dry place for a lair, in anticipation of a rotten winter, the bear obviously takes care to put it in a relatively clean place - in a place that he never chooses in anticipation of a moderate or severe winter. The preference given to a “cleaner” place is probably due to the fear of a “drop”: a canopy of snow melts and water, dripping from a tree, disturbs the animal.

Anticipating a cold winter, the bear lies down in a wet swamp, choosing a larger hummock or a small island in the middle of the swamp, and certainly in a dense, dense place.

The nature of the second half of winter can be judged by the driving bears. If the bears raised and driven away, lying in dry and rare places, choose a second bed in a swamp and in a stronger place, then it should be expected that the second half of winter will be colder.

Generally speaking, a seasoned bear or a she-bear lies closer to housing, and medium and small bears rarely lie very close to the village.

The area surrounding the lair is very diverse depending on which bear chooses it for lying down - large or small, male or cub, etc. In general, we can say that the bear extremely rarely lies down in the forest, and prefers clearings in which the young shoots went; then he lies down more readily in a mixed forest than in a forest of the same type and age.

The most seasoned, large animal lies down in a place where it is least expected. He is not afraid to lie down near oseks (fences), which are very numerous in the Novgorod and Tver provinces.

A large bear will prefer to lie down even in a small aspen forest rather than in a pure forest, and if there is at least one pigtail, stump or Christmas tree in this little thing, then the bear should be looked for under them.

Similarly, the bear is very fond of lying down at the foot of a dry aspen, whose top is broken.

Like a prone, the bear loves any eversion, if it is raised so high from the ground that it gives the bear the opportunity to crawl under it. Sometimes a bear is content with 4-5 fir trees from 1.5 to 2 arshins high, growing more or less in a “circle”. Having dragged tops and branches from young fir trees under him, he lies down on them, and bites the standing fir-trees around him so that the broken tops, like a hut or roof, cover him from above.

If the bear lies down along the tree, then he chooses one that would cover the den from the north or east side. In cold winters, when a bear lies down in a swamp abounding in warm springs, he chooses a high, vast hummock, in the middle of which he makes a slight round depression for himself, lines a bed and lies down on it.

Soaked in the den or frightened by anything from it, the bear will never lie down in the same place. Subsequent lairs he sometimes chooses for himself with much greater convenience, especially at the beginning of winter; but if it is close to spring (for 11/2-2 months), then the lair is chosen by him somehow, and often under such a bear you can see only some 2-3 knots of a Christmas tree. If, however, a bear is chased and often frightened away, then all the lairs successively chosen by him are in the nature of haste, and the further, the more, because such an animal loses faith in the safety of its new lair and falls on "hearing"; and if he sometimes climbs deep into the well or windbreak, then his bed is still riding.

A small and medium bear, as well as a she-bear with small ones, likes to choose very dense thickets for lying down, especially in cold winters, when the animal foresees that he has nothing to fear from anxiety from a drop. Sometimes the thickets are so dense that it is absolutely impossible to penetrate them to the lair without a knife or an axe.

Bears arrange their dens sometimes in a very original way. So, for example, it would seem that it would be most suitable for a whelping she-bear to finish and decorate her den, but in reality it happens that the she-bear's lair differs only in volume, but inside it is only a bedding, and creases of a Christmas tree on top; that's all And, on the contrary, I happened to see a bear's lair, amazing in luxury and beauty: the whole nest, surprisingly regular in shape, was laid out on a dry hillock and made of finely torn spruce bark mixed with a small number of branches; the bottom of the nest was covered with the same bark with the addition of moss. The bear lay curled up in a ball, with the edges of the nest rising 1.5-2 arshins above its side. No less original den was arranged by another bear, small, original in that it was in a haystack left on a forest clearing for the winter.In this case, it is most likely to assume that the bear did not have time or was unable to make a lair for himself and lay down anywhere.

Speaking about the arrangement of a bear in a den, one cannot fail to mention the “zaeds” that he sometimes makes on trees.

The fact is that the bear sometimes likes to make his lair more comfortable. In these cases, he is extremely patient and diligently begins to tear the spruce bark with his teeth and claws, which, when worn out, gives a soft and plump litter. Mostly the bark of a young Christmas tree goes to this shred, most often from the south side, where the bark is thinner and more fibrous. If there are burrows on the tree, but there are no dens nearby, this means that the bark on the tree seemed unusable to the bear for some reason.

A whelping bear will never take either a lonchak or a breeder into her lair. (With an adult bear, neither a whelping nor a dry one will ever lie down). She lies down alone, and if she has a pestun with her, then he lies down at a distance from her, but not close. If the she-bear is accompanied by lonchaks and pestun, or only lonchaks, then this serves as irrefutable proof that the she-bear is barren.

The names Lonchak and Pestun are understood differently by hunters. It is correct to call bear cubs aged approximately (from mid-August) from seven months to two years old as lonchaks. After two years on the third lonchak begins to be called a pestun, provided that he is with a cub.

In addition, the pest is always a male, but not a female.

An approximate definition of lonchak and pestun can be made by weight. The weight of a launcher varies from 1 pood to 10 pounds. up to 2 pounds 30 pounds; pestun weighs from 2 pounds 30 pounds. up to 5 pounds. But this definition must be treated with caution. With artificial rearing, in captivity, the weight is different.

If a bear lies down as a family, then each member of the family does not always lie on his own special bed, except when the lair is very extensive, for example, somewhere under a fire in a forest littered with a storm or with a large eversion. When choosing a lair upstairs, the she-bear will certainly arrange it so that the family lies "breastly".

The placement of family members in a covered or earthen den is different. More often the she-bear lies closer to the exit, sometimes, on the contrary, she hides in the farthest corner.

A female bear never takes anyone into her den and always calves alone. If in the spring she appears with a pet, this does not mean that he was lying with her in a den, which means that he was lying somewhere not far from his mother, on a special bed and in an independent den, but in no case together .

If the cubs do not disappear and survive until autumn, then this winter the she-bear remains barren and lays down in the den with lonchaks. In general, it can be affirmatively stated that if the cubs remain intact by autumn, then the she-bear always goes through a dry year and, as a result, chases only after a year; if the cubs are killed, caught or disappeared altogether, then the she-bear walks again.

Having settled down one way or another in the den, every bear does not immediately fall asleep. At first, he sleeps more at night and at noon, but he is awake in the morning and evening. The longer the bear lies, the earlier severe frosts come, the more soundly he sleeps. During a thaw or generally slight frosts, it is difficult to approach a bear without frightening it; on the contrary, in severe frosts you can come close to him and still have to wake him up, even if even his lair was arranged all upstairs and in plain sight.

But although in the thaw the bear sleeps even weaker, i.e. more sensitive to rustling, but the thaw itself, especially with a thick canopy of snow in the forest, greatly contributes to drowning out any sound, which is why, for a round-up plant, for example, a canopy is invaluable, especially where the round-up is poorly disciplined; for shooting, the canopy is unpleasant.

You should not rush to hunt for a bear that has not been lying for a long time, which, as they say, has not had time to “coop around”, and you need to let the beast lie down for at least a week or two. Under conditions that do not make it possible to wait and postpone the hunt, you should at least start it at noon, when the bear sleeps more soundly than in the morning. Before 9 o'clock in the morning in the first half of winter, hunting should not be started at all, since in dense thickets and scrap only by this time is it possible to see well, and, consequently, to shoot.

A whelping, but not whelping, bear sleeps lightly before giving birth and it is not difficult to drive her away, but it is also easy to correct a mistake, because a pregnant woman is not able to go far; sometimes such a bear will cover only one verst, more often three, four, but not more than five (as an exception, I know a case when such a bear traveled 25 versts).

Regarding the question of whether a bear sucks its paw in a den, I can say the following: captive cubs generally willingly suck their paws, but the older the bears get, the less often you can see them doing this. In the wild, in a den, an adult bear never sucks its paws.

By the way, it will be said about the position that the bear takes when lying in the den. It can be quite varied, but most often the bear lies in the den on the right or on the left side, less often on the stomach, and never lies on its back.

It is not uncommon to see a bear sitting in a den; such a situation is not normal; if the bear sat in the den, it means that he is disturbed by something; such a Bear will certainly move off the bed.

In conclusion, it remains only to say that the bear in the den in most cases lies with its head to the south, less often to the west or east, and it has never happened to me to see the position of the bear's head to the north. Thus, the bear, as it were, looks at its heel. At the end of the heel, if the lair is made of earth (ground) or in scrap, its forehead is also located, and the forehead always looks at a relatively clean place compared to other sides of the lair.