A Northwoods Almanac for March 30 – April
12, 2012
First-of-the-Year
Birds
With
this unprecedented, record-setting warm spring, many birds and flowers have
appeared much earlier than normal. Here’s what we, and others, have been seeing:
3/9: Dean Hall photographed a pair of hooded mergansers on the Bear River
across from the Bear River pow-wow grounds.
3/12: Zach Wilson reported seeing snow buntings along the road near
Manitowish Waters.
3/13: Grackles returned to our feeders in Manitowish, and we saw our
first chipmunk.
3/14: Carl Ashe in Lac du Flambeau reported
seeing grackles and redwing blackbirds. In Manitowish, a flock of dark-eyed
juncos appeared at our feeders.
3/14: Linda Johnson in Minocqua was walking her dog
in the moonlight before 6 a.m. and heard the unmistakable "peent" and
wing twittering of woodcocks.
3/14: Pat Schwai heard two
sandhill cranes.
3/14: Zach Wilson also heard woodcocks that evening and the song of
a saw-whet owl.
3/15: Ron Winter in Boulder Junction reported
seeing a silver-spotted skipper, an extraordinarily early date for this species.
3/15: Linda Johnson Minocqua watched a northern
harrier hunting over the Tomahawk River.
3/15: Fox sparrows stopped off in Manitowish, and we continue to
have 6 or more scratching up seeds under our feeders as of 3/25. I also got my
first wood tick of the year, but no mosquitoes yet!
3/16: Tom Erdman in Oconto reported tundra swans passing over the
bay of Green Bay in flocks of over 500. The next day, 3/17, Ann Eshelman in
McNaughton reported seeing four flocks of tundra swans flying over the
Muninghoff Marsh.
3/16: Pat Schwai had five pine siskins show up at her feeders after
none had been around all winter.
3/16: Sherry Tischendorf in Harshaw reported seeing
a killdeer, the first one of the year that I am aware of in our area.
3/16: Ron Winter in Boulder Junction sent me a great photo of a
roughed grouse drumming that afternoon.
3/16: Audrae Kulas photographed a Compton tortoiseshell
butterfly as did Patricia Mabie in Boulder Junction. Laurie
Timm on Witches Lake saw a mourning cloak butterfly.
3/16: On Powell Marsh, we saw our first sandhill cranes, a northern
harrier, and several rough-legged hawks. We also saw our first common
mergansers on the Manitowish River.
3/17: Gary Ruesch reported seeing about 100 tundra swans on the
Rainbow Flowage.
3/17: At our home in Manitowish, a great horned owl was dueting with
another bird at 2 a.m. We saw our first northern shrike of the year closely
watching our bird feeders. And out on Powell Marsh, we saw our first hooded
mergansers, green-winged teal, and goldeneyes.
3/18: Wil Conway wrote lamenting “too much open-water, too warm, too
early – has many of my usual haunts full of fishermen and void of birds. I've
lost the confinement factor the ice-pockets use to give me.” Nevertheless, he
got some fine pictures of a flock of common mergansers.
3/18: We heard our first spring peepers and wood frogs of the year –
we usually hear them first around 4/20. Aspens, hazelnuts, alders, and
sugar/red/silver maples are all in flower. We saw our first buffleheads of the
year on the Manitowish River.
3/19: Ron Winter in
Boulder Junction reported seeing a few bats around his yard, and asked whether
bats hibernate or migrate, noting that “either way, they could be in trouble if
we get some cold weather in the next few weeks (very likely).” My
knowledge of bats is superficial, but what I understand is that four species of
bats live in the Northwoods, while the state supports 7 species. Big brown bats
overwinter in walls and attics - the only Wisconsin bat to do so - so it’s a
reasonable bet that the bats Ron was seeing were this species.
3/19: Phil and Nancy Williams on North Turtle Lake photographed
36 swans (likely tundra swans) on the partly opened lake.
3/20: Over 50 bohemian waxwings with about 20 cedar waxwings fed in
the crabapple trees at the entrance to Nicolet College in Rhinelander.
3/21 John Randolph heard an Eastern
Phoebe singing its slightly raspy "fee-bee", while simultaneously
hearing the sweeter “fee-bee" of the chickadees. Don and Greta Janssen saw their first fox
sparrows of the year in Woodruff, “about a month earlier than last year.” They
also had tree sparrows and many juncos along with pine siskins and a few red
polls. Plus, cardinals were at their feeders all winter!
3/21 – Ruby-throated hummingbirds were seen in
Madison! The state's record early arrival date for ruby-throated hummingbird
is April 12, and most years' arrival dates are after April 20. We usually see
our first hummers around Mother’s Day in May. So, how soon will the first ones
arrive up here? They’re certainly poised to come. See either of the following websites
for maps of where they are
now:
www.learner.org/jnorth/maps/humm_ruby_spring2012.html
3/21: We saw our first northern flicker of the year in Manitowish.
3/22: Woodcocks were “peenting” on either side of our house. It’s
the time of the year to go out just before dark to watch and listen for the sky
dance of the woodcock.
3/23: Pete Dring near Land O’Lakes
reported seeing a golden-crowned kinglet, and noted that alders were already
past bloom, and Milbert’s Tortoise Shell butterflies were out.
3/24: I paddled for the first time this
year, meandering out on the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage with good friends Bob Kovar
and Chips Paulson. Leopard frogs were singing constantly, an amazingly early
date for them to be mating. Ordinarily, we don’t hear them until at least the
first week of May. We saw many flocks of waterfowl, including our first
ring-necked ducks of the year, numerous trumpeter swans, and a flock of tundra
swans migrating high overhead.
If you are curious to see the records of early arrival dates for
migrating birds in Wisconsin, visit: http://wsobirds.org/?page_id=1587#mawr
Ice-Out: Loons Behind the Curve
Ice-out
occurred on most of our lakes on either 3/19 or 3/20, nearly a month ahead of
the 4/16 average date that Woody Hagge has logged for Foster Lake in Hazelhurst
over the last 39 years. Typically loons appear first in our area on the Wisconsin
River for a week or so prior to ice out, and daily scout their nesting lakes to
see if the ice is off. They then appear on our
lakes almost always within 24 hours of ice-out.
But not this
year. In fact, as of this writing on 3/25, the nesting loons from our area that
had satellite transmitters surgically placed within them by the USGS/DNR were still enjoying the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The loons are
way behind the phenology (see http://www.umesc.usgs.gov/terrestrial/migratory_birds/loons/migrations.html)! It’s
not surprising, given that there’s no long-term advantage to get up here this
early to find normally frozen lakes, especially when there are relatively few
lakes for stopping off and resting between the Upper Midwest and the Gulf.
Thus, loons rely on the photoperiod, or the
length of daylight, to trigger their migration north. Their “switch” won’t go
off for a while yet, so it will be fascinating to see when they finally show up
in force.
Interestingly,
on 3/20, Beth Huizenga e-mailed with the sighting of
several loons on Pewaukee Lake in southeastern Wisconsin (Pewaukee Lake had the
ice go out on 3/17). Then on 3/21, a birder reported seeing at least
five loons on Lake Monona in Madison. And on 3/21, the first loons of the year
were seen and heard as they departed Green Bay just before sunrise.
How to
explain those few that are already here? There’s always a spectrum of the
earliest to the latest, and these few are clearly in that earliest vanguard. My
speculation is that they may never have made it all the way down to the Gulf
for some reason, instead wintering on lakes somewhere in between.
U.S. Plant
Hardiness Zone Map Officially Changed
On Jan. 25,
2012 the U.S. Department of Agriculture released the new version of its
Plant Hardiness Zone Map, updating it for the first time since 1990. The
new map is available online at www.planthardiness.ars.usda.gov. Long-awaited changes in the climate zone guide show northward
warming trends, while also targeting a few colder areas in the mountains. For
those of us here in the Lakeland area, we are no longer in Zone 3, but now in
Zone 4.
Hardiness
zones are based on the average annual extreme minimum temperature during a 30-year
period in the past. It is not based on the lowest temperature that has ever
occurred in the past or might occur in the future. Each zone is based on 10
degrees Fahrenheit. Two new zones were added in hotter climates this year for a
total of 13 zones.
The USDA web
site is now also interactive. Just put in your zip code and you can see
where your garden is zoned.
Celestial Events
For
planet viewing in April after dusk, look for Venus and Jupiter in the west,
Mars high in the south, and Saturn rising in the east.
On
April 1, Woody Hagge’s average ice depth on Foster Lake over the last 39 years
has been 11.2 inches. I guess it’s an April Fool’s joke this year.
On
4/4, we reach 13 hours of daylight. The moon is full on 4/6. Called “the Maple
Sugar” moon or “Grass Appearing” moon by native tribes, this is certainly one spring
where maple sugaring barely occurred at all.
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