NARRATOR: The climate of Atlantic Canada
is unforgiving.
Whether you're big or small,
cunning or clumsy,
Surviving this wilderness year 'round,
means facing the seasons head on.
On the jagged coast
of Canada's Eastern shore.
A delicate and diverse ecosystem
thrives on the fringes of the continent.
Welcome
to the Wild Wild East.
NARRATOR: In nature, all life follows
the cycle of the seasons.
The passing of time brings changes to the environment
requiring new strategies for survival.
The climate of the Wild Wild East
is wrought from the harsh Atlantic that surrounds it.
Between Nor'easters in the winter
and hurricanes in the summer,
there are more storms here
than anywhere else in Canada.
But local wildlife is built to endure
the calendar of the natural world.
During the long winter months,
the land freezes,
and everything slows.
But the warm air of spring brings new life,
and new arrivals.
It's springtime in the forests of Nova Scotia,
and a prickly resident descends from its treetop home.
A North American porcupine.
The third largest rodent in the world,
behind beavers and capybara.
The grass, leaves and shoots
offer a much-needed fresh source of food
after a winter spent feeding
on nothing but tree bark.
The porcupine's most iconic feature
is his coat of 30,000 needle-sharp quills
that cover nearly its entire body.
Hence its Latin name, porcus spina,
which means: thorny pig.
Each quill is covered with several hundred barbs
making them almost impossible to remove.
Porcupines also deter enemies
by using their quills as "scent-antennas"
to broadcast a foul odor.
With this expert defense
porcupines are the second longest living rodent,
next to the naked mole rat,
surviving well into their 20's.
The effects of the changing seasons
can be felt beyond the forest.
The warming sun beating down on this nearby field,
brings another harbinger of spring:
black bean aphids.
One of the 4000 different species
of sap-sucking insects.
Also known as "plant lice"
aphids are among the most destructive insect pests
on cultivated plants.
Aphid's have sucking mouthparts called stylets.
They use them to suck sap from vegetation,
stunting the plant growth and distorting its stem.
After feeding, aphids secrete
a sticky, sugar-rich fluid
from their gastrointestinal tract,
known as honeydew.
It's an important food source for ants.
Aphids and ants are an example of the natural world's
incredible symbiotic relationships.
Ants feed off honeydew
and will even "milk" aphid's abdomen
to encourage secretion,
sharing the juice amongst the colony.
In return, the ants ward off aphid predators,
like ladybugs.
It's a win-win situation
and a remarkable evolutionary adaptation.
Some species of ants will even shelter aphid eggs
over the winter months,
bringing them into their nests
and then returning them to the host plants
each spring to hatch.
To survive the seasons here,
it helps to have an ally.
Prince Edward Island
lies nestled off the north coast
of Canada's other Maritime provinces,
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
And along the coast,
great blue herons have arrived for the season.
Estuaries like this one, swimming with fish,
surround the Island.
Stately and stealthy,
the great blue heron is the largest wading bird
in North America.
Of all the great blue herons in the Maritime provinces,
one third breeds here on Prince Edward Island.
In the spring breeding season,
herons eat four times as much fish as usual.
Heron's feed nestlings through regurgitation,
so they need to eat enough to satisfy themselves,
and the appetites of their recently hatched chicks.
The heron's powerful vision, capable of seeing at night,
penetrates the water.
It spears fish with a razor sharp bill.
A special series of vertebrae
allow its neck to contract,
and then spring forward like an arrow.
Regurgitated flounder
will soon be served to the nestlings.
During the spring, new life
is at its most vulnerable.
But as the summer months creep in,
food becomes more plentiful,
weather more stable
and the chances for survival rise dramatically.
This time of year,
waterfowl flock to the wetlands of Nova Scotia,
and dive head first into the spoils of the summer.
Males ducks are the more colorful sex,
often with dramatic color patterns.
Scientists call this sexual dichromatism.
For drakes, like this hooded merganser,
bright colors attract the drab female's attention.
Yet the conservative plumage of the females
offers its own benefits,
camouflaging them during the long hours
they spend incubating eggs.
Each spring, mergansers leave their winter home
in the southern United States to come here and breed.
Other waterfowl, like Canada Geese,
travel even further north, to a place
few others would associate with a lover's getaway.
The Ungava region on the northeast tip of Quebec
is brutal in winter.
But when the warm sun tames
the normally harsh climate of Canada's Arctic
200 species of birds come here to breed.
The warmer weather is the primal catalyst
for all creatures to begin mating.
And the muskoxen are no exception.
Weighing 900 pounds,
with a barrel-shaped body and hooked horns,
the muskox appears to belong in the bovine family.
But it's actually a species of goat.
Originally found in the temperate areas of Asia,
muskoxen crossed the Bering Strait land bridge
during the last Ice Age, over 100,000 years ago.
They're usually found further north,
but these ones are descended from 14
brought to establish a wool farm
just outside the Inuit village of Kuujjuaq
during the 1960s.
The muskoxen adjusted well to their new home,
but their owners went broke,
and released the herd into the wild.
Forty years later, and the population has exploded,
from 14 to 1400.
Today, they roam across northern Quebec,
and are now seen as far northeast as Labrador.
They spend summer grazing through sub-arctic meadows
for grasses, shrubs and moss.
Their long fur covers everything but a small sliver of skin
between the mouth and nostril.
To stay cool in the summer,
they shed their thick wool undercoat, called a qiviut.
Muskoxen are social animals
and live in herds made up of about two dozen individuals.
The most vulnerable members are calves,
and the herd protects them at all costs.
When predators, like arctic wolves, are near,
muskoxen form a defensive ring around the youth.
But as the calves get older,
they grow their own defenses.
From birth both males and females
begin developing thick, round horns.
The horns connect across the forehead
and form a band called a boss.
It's like a helmet, and protects their skull
as males rush at each other
in head-to-head combat to establish dominance.
These battles increase as the summer wears on
and females enter estrus.
During the rut, the goal of every bull is simple:
mate with as many cows as possible.
The most dominant males mate with
all the receptive cows within one herd,
and then move on to the next.
This bull is younger,
and takes a different approach to the opposite sex.
His time and energy is spent herding, protecting
and trying to mate with a small harem of females.
But it's the females who choose their partners.
The clumsy bulls have only one move,
so if a cow isn't interested, she just moves on.
But energy and persistence can be very persuasive.
He'll spend the rest of the summer
impressing the cows
by warding off the advances of other bulls.
During that time he may just win over the harem.
As summer begins to fade,
red, yellow and orange dominate the tree tops
of the Wild Wild East.
The days of plenty have passed.
For animals, fall is spent preparing
for the onslaught of another winter.
Up in the branches, the porcupine feasts
while the leaves still remain.
To make it through the winter
he must store as much energy as possible,
increasing his body fat by 60%.
Most rodents would be preparing for hibernation
with that kind of weight gain.
But porcupines are active all winter long,
surviving off nothing but his essential fat reserves
and tree-bark.
Life in the trees offers an extra protection,
but sometimes the greatest threat to a porcupine,
is itself.
During these tumbles, clumsy porcupines
can be impaled by their own quills.
Fortunately, their skin contains
an antibiotic-type substance
that prevents infection from these wounds.
Porcupines aren't the only things
falling out of trees this time of year.
Accident turns into an opportunity,
as a prickle of porcupines
look to kick-start this winter's weight gain
with a buffet under the apple tree.
The coming cold begins to cast its shadow
across Canada's east coast.
Located in Newfoundland,
Gros Morne National Park
is the second largest park in Canada.
These spectacular mountains,
created by a collision of continental plates
that occurred over a billion years ago,
shelter one of Canada's
most important endangered species,
the woodland caribou.
Caribou's historic range
covered half of present day Canada,
and reached as far south as Idaho.
Nowadays, because of overhunting and habitat loss,
only 34,000 remain.
A relative of white-tailed deer and moose,
these icons of the Canadian north
are also known as reindeer.
With thick fur and broad feet,
these mammals are well-equipped
for the approaching winter.
To prevent heat loss through their extremities
the arteries and veins in caribou's legs are intertwined,
so hot blood leaving the heart
warms the cold blood traveling toward it.
The all-white winter wilderness
can cause snow blindness in most mammals,
but caribou can see through ultraviolet wavelengths
to find food in the snow.
Unlike other deer, both male and female caribou
can grow antlers,
but that doesn't mean they always do.
Females use antlers to search for lichen
underneath the snow.
Lichen, a symbiotic growth of fungus and algae,
is the caribou's main food source in winter.
In the Arctic, females grow antlers
as large as males to compete for food.
In Gros Morne, food is easier to come by
during the winter,
so if cows have antlers at all they're just stubs.
Antlers exhaust huge amounts of energy to grow
so only the alpha females have them.
For males, a full rack advertises virility.
At 4 years old,
these bulls are just entering their prime.
They still need to prove themselves
in head-to-head combat.
Antlers, an extension of the skull,
make formidable weapons of aggression and deterrence.
Posturing like this won't go unnoticed by the cows.
Like muskoxen, during the rut,
male caribou try to separate groups of females from the herd
luring them into their harem.
They all have the same intention,
and with surging levels of testosterone
it isn't long before the bulls break out into a brawl.
As the winter approaches, the rut winds down.
It's perfectly timed so that the young will be born
with the coming of spring.
The end of the rut signals the beginning of winter.
When the resilience of animal life
squares off against the harsh elements.
Back south on Prince Edward Island,
the greens and fairways of this golf course
slowly transform into white plains.
The club is aptly named Fox Meadow,
and with the golfing season over,
animal life roams across all 18 holes.
No, these aren't divots.
This is the winter burrow
of one of the Island's most notorious residents.
The red fox.
They're everywhere on Prince Edward Island.
These crafty canines have been snatching food
from under the eyes of humans all summer long.
Now without campsites and cook-outs,
the pickings aren't as easy.
Fortunately, foxes are expert hunters.
Perfectly still, she listens.
There's a scurry beneath the snow.
This pounce is known as mousing.
According to a new study,
it takes more than just sharp ears
to hone-in on meadow voles.
One theory suggests that foxes use
the earth's magnetic field
to pin-point their prey's location,
like a blip on the radar.
As a fox listens for prey under the snow,
it somehow compares the angle of the sound
to the slope of the planet's magnetic field
and "calculates" the exact distance to pounce.
When exactly aligned along the magnetic field,
it's success rate is amazingly
4 times greater than if not.
If scientists are correct,
the red fox is the first animal
known to use a magnetic sense to hunt.
The fox's foraging also helps another animal
make it through the winter.
The crow.
Crow's are kleptoparasites,
scavengers that stalk other predators,
and feed on their leftovers.
As the winter wears on,
the toll on wildlife grows.
Back in Nova Scotia,
small numbers of mallard ducks
remain to brave the cold.
Thick feathers and fat reserves keep them warm,
but as food becomes increasingly scarce,
the chances for survival dwindle.
Perhaps it will be a short winter.
That's what these humans are hoping for.
It's halfway between the winter solstice and spring equinox,
a date known as Groundhog Day.
Our endless quest to understand and control nature
has led to some peculiar superstitions
over the years.
TOWN CRIER: Ooooh-yay!
NARRATOR: This crowd gathers around to see
if a furry marmot named Shubenacadie Sam
will see his shadow.
According to local myth, a sun-induced shadow
will mean six more weeks of winter.
On this day, there's no shadow
to scare Sam back inside his burrow,
so according to human superstition
spring will come six weeks early this year.
Sam has been hibernating,
two heartbeats and only five breaths per minute
for the last 3 months.
For Sam, this break in his winter nap
is motivated by a search for female groundhogs.
He's hoping to make his introductions
prior to the spring mating season.
The pattern of the seasons shapes life
for all the animals of the Wild Wild East.
From new life in the spring,
to survival in the winter,
the only constant is change.
Ancient instincts and adaptive behaviors
help foxes find food,
keep caribou warm,
and guide all animal species
through the harshest of the seasons.
But for every hard winter,
there's bound to be a spring,
in the Wild Wild East.
♪ THEME MUSIC ♪