Sunday, May 20, 2012

NWA 3/30 - 4/12/2012


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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