BANGOR DAILY NEWS • February 4, 2023
Frozen trees creak and snap. Icy branches clack together. These are the sounds that can be heard while snowshoeing in the Maine woods. They’re small sounds — snow hitting the ground with a muffled thump, the trill of a chickadee. They’re the type of sounds that point out the silence of a snowy world. What happened to the chatter and chirps that filled the same woods during the summer? How do the animals weather snowstorms and subzero nights? “If you look, you’ll find all kinds of signs of animals,” said John DePue, wildlife biologist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.