Wild furbearers are breeding.

Love is in the air at “Valentine’s Day” when wild furbearers begin breeding. Their timing is designed so young are born in late spring, a time of plentiful prey and emerging plants to feed growing families.

You can literally smell the love when striped skunks seek mates. Skunks typically den for the winter in communal groups of females often with a single male who tolerates no rival males in his harem.

Solitary bachelors and females wake from winter torpor and leave dens in search of food and mates. When wandering skunks encounter rivals or domestic dogs, squabbles ensue. Unreceptive females reject amorous potential suitors with the same result.

In the woods, cranky red squirrels and famously ferocious fishers are generally considered solitary. Described as “antisocial,” both fishers and red squirrels pair without preliminary courtship during breeding seasons. Immediately after mating, they resume what textbooks describe as a “mutually-antagonistic existence.”

Wild canines’ breeding begins in February and lone red fox tracks in the snow pair-up. The frequent territorial scent markings of the male fox may be accompanied by blood spotting as a female “vixen” enters estrus. Their kits are born in early May.

Coyote packs are matriarchal societies. Males and juveniles hunt winter-weakened deer to support feeding newborn pups born in April. Dens are dominated by females, including sibling sisters from previous years.

The birth of millions of mice, voles, squirrels and rabbits along with the arrival of birds and eggs later in spring will feed furbearer families now being conceived in our snowy forests.