How to Birds Survive the Winter?

11 February 2025

On cold winter days, small songbirds like this boreal chickadee will puff up their feathers to help keep themselves warm. BOB BOWHAY

By Nick Carter

"How do birds survive the winter?"

While most of Alberta’s birds migrate south, plenty of them stick around all winter, and they make it through the cold months of the year in lots of different ways. First of all, birds are warm-blooded, meaning they make their own heat, just like we do. It’s important not to lose that heat to the outside cold, and while we use warm coats, hats, and mittens for that, birds use feathers! The fluffy feathers that birds are covered in are great at keeping them warm. Some, like owls and grouse, even have feathers on their feet and toes! To keep making that heat, birds need to eat a lot. Small birds that eat a lot of insects in the summer, like chickadees, focus on seeds in the winter. Others, like woodpeckers, look for insects hibernating in tree bark. Before going to sleep, birds find shelter in the branches and cavities of trees, and on really cold nights they go into a kind of short-term hibernation called torpor until the morning sun wakes them up again.