Woodland carnivores, such as foxes, weasels, stoats and, in America and Eurasia, wolves and lynx, hunt and eat other animals. Reptiles, such as the adder, also live in some temperate woodlands. Adders hibernate through the winter and come out in spring to bask in the sunshine. There are hundreds of animal species that live in the trees including insects, red and grey squirrels, dormice, and birds such as woodpeckers, wood warblers, nuthatches and tits in Britain and chickadees in the United States of America. Many of the mammal species live all year round in the woods, some of them hibernating in the winter months, while a number of bird species migrate to warmer parts of the world, returning in the spring.
Some animals have a special way of surviving winter called 'hibernation'.
In autumn, these animals eat a great deal to put on weight and then go into a kind of long, deep sleep over winter. They then emerge from hibernation in spring. In Europe, squirrels, dormice, woodmice, hedgehogs and queen bumblebees hibernate. Temperate woodlands are one of the most fertile habitats on earth. For thousands of years deforestation by people has caused the disappearance of temperate woodlands.