As the heavy snow and high winds of “Snowmageddon” engulfed us this week, we were safely tucked into a warm house with a well-stocked refrigerator and cookies baking in the oven. Outside we could see (when the white-outs didn’t impair visibility) a scramble of birds at our feeders, eating as quickly as possible in between wind gusts.

In an earlier column, we talked about some strategies birds use to stay warm — using air as an insulator, for example.

But storms like the one that recently dumped several feet of snow in blizzard conditions are tough on birds. Many fall victim to severe storms that bring a combination of cold temperatures, high winds, and heavy snow that goes on for extended periods. That’s because birds have high body temperatures and typically have limited fat reserves so that survival requires a constant intake of food.

Small birds like black-capped chickadees, with higher surface area to volume ratio, lose heat more quickly than large birds like herring gulls, and must eat almost continuously through the day when temperatures are very cold. Back in the days when this kind of research was more common, scientists found that house sparrows that had not eaten could survive about 14.5 hours at a temperature of about 0 F, but only about four hours at about -7 F.

Knowing this fact, it is perhaps not surprising that in mid-winter we see birds at our feeders in the still-dark mornings and lingering well into the increasingly dark late afternoon. One winter we were startled to find a common redpoll quietly cracking seeds at our feeder in the middle of the night!

Redpolls are also among species that have another interesting characteristic for survival: They have a specialized pouch in the esophagus where they can store unhulled seeds so that they can find a protected, warmer area to regurgitate them and eat them.

Bird-feeding enthusiasts have noticed for years that the day before a big storm, backyard feeders can seem deluged with more bird activity than normal. We noticed this at our own feeders before this big storm. It has been theorized that birds may detect a drop in atmospheric pressure that precedes a big storm.

A recent scientific paper reported an amazing discovery that suggested that birds may be able to detect impending storms because they can hear the ultra-low frequency sounds that are generated by storms even at great distances.

Finding ways to stay warm overnight is another strategy that birds use to survive in harsh conditions. Birds like ruffed grouse, snow buntings, and common redpolls are among species that are known to sometimes bury themselves into a fluffy snow burrow where the temperature will be amazingly warmer, allowing the bird to burn up fewer calories to stay warm. Black-capped chickadees and woodpeckers will spend the night in a tree cavity or nest box.

European starlings will sometimes roost communally in a cavity to conserve body heat. And we’ve all seen groups of gulls roosting in the open where they will huddle behind each other to get out of the wind. Gulls will often lower themselves with the feet covered and head down, facing into the wind — all strategies to decrease heat loss and allow them to survive longer between feeding bouts.

We humans get a just a slight sense of it when we finally get up the courage to “huddle” into our snow gear to shovel ourselves out. It makes you really appreciate what our feathered friends face during storms like these.

Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists. His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the book, “Maine’s Favorite Birds.”