Friday, August 3, 2012

NWA 8/3/12


A Northwoods Almanac for August 3 – 16, 2012 by John Bates

Conservation is Patriotic and Has Bipartisan Support
In the highly partisan atmosphere of a presidential election year, The Nature Conservancy recently released a bipartisan national poll showing that at least one issue is widely supported by Americans across the political spectrum: the conservation of our nation’s land and water. Conducted by the bipartisan research team of Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates (D) and Public Opinion Strategies (R) from June 16-19, the pollsters noted, from “Tea Party Republicans to liberal Democrats, more than four-in-five American voters say that conserving our country's natural resources - our land, air and water - is patriotic.”
In addition, three-quarters of the American electorate said that “one of the things our government does best” is protecting its “history and natural beauty through national parks, forests and other public lands.”  Not surprisingly, then, three-fourths of voters say they would prefer to go on vacation this summer in a national park or other public lands.
Voters also voiced overwhelming support for a number of specific federal policies to support conservation. Three-quarters (74 percent) of American voters say that even with federal budget problems, funding for conservation should not be cut. Many voters are even willing to reach into their own pockets to fund conservation, with 83 percent overall willing to pay more in taxes to fund protection of land, water and wildlife habitat in their area. This includes 72 percent of Tea Party Republicans, 73 percent of self-described conservatives, 88 percent of moderates, and 94 percent of self-described liberals. 
In fact, the overwhelming majority of American voters reject the notion that protecting our environment is at odds with a strong economy even when they believe the state of the economy is an extremely serious problem. More than three-quarters of voters (79 percent) said they believe we can protect land and water and have a strong economy at the same time. In fact, voters were twice as likely to say that protections for land, air, water and wildlife have a positive impact on jobs (41 percent), than a negative impact (17 percent), or little impact one way or the other (33 percent).
This poll confirms what I personally have experienced for many years: that conservation is an issue which more often unites than divides. Clearly there’s far more in common among Americans’ views on conservation than we’re often led to believe, and the false dichotomy that we have to choose between jobs and the environment doesn’t play with most Americans.
As a sidenote, I’m often skeptical of polls, and of a host of other “facts,” particularly if I don’t know their source. One non-partisan insight into sources of information is SourceWatch at www.sourcewatch.org.  To try to get objective reviews of various other rumors dressed up as facts, try www.snopes.com or www.urbanmyths.com.

Sightings – Trains of Merganser Chicks and Northern Lights
Carol Pfister recently watched a female common merganser lead a train of 21 offspring behind her on Big Crooked Lake. She opined that the female was a likely recipient of egg dumping, a phenomenon where females lay eggs in other individual’s nests. The fancy term for this is “intraspecific brood parasitism” and is common among ducks. However, it may also be that this particular female adopted another female’s brood when she died or abandoned her chicks, a not uncommon occurrence, and a process with another fancy name – “post-hatch brood amalgamation.”
On July 14, the northern lights were dancing a bit, and Dave Eitel on Fence Lake wrote this very nice piece: “2:30 a.m. A waning orange crescent rises above the eastern horizon and glimmers on the glassy black surface of the lake. Jupiter, centered perfectly on the moon's concavity, rises with it. After a few minutes Venus silently edges above the horizon directly beneath the crescent.
“Four loons converse hauntingly across the water as bullfrogs gossip on the shore.
“Pale green light arcs across the northern sky. Heavenly spears of it thrust upward, slowly transform into cascading sheets, then become a playful Wurlitzer-like display of waves moving rapidly upward and fading into the Milky Way.”

Sphinx Moths
Barb and Barry Whenal in Lake Tomahawk sent me this note and an accompanying picture on 7/16: “We were taking a walk with our friends, John and Sandy Anspach, on the Nicolet Forest trail beside Shelp Lake in Forest County . . . Sandy noticed what she thought was  “a pretty flower” on one of the branches beside the boardwalk.  I said “that’s not normal for this plant.”  So we took a closer look only to find it wasn’t a flower after all but a large caterpillar with a host of what looks like eggs on its back . . . We are wondering what kind of moth or butterfly could this be and what is on its back?”
I’m no expert on caterpillars, so I sent the photo to the “Butterflies and Moths of North America” database, and they identified it as Sphinx luscitiosa, or Canadian sphinx moth. You can see pictures of the adults and caterpillar stages at www.silkmoths.bizland.com/slusciti.htm.
Some of the largest moths in the world belong to the sphinx moth family (also known as hawk moths or hummingbird moths) within the order Lepidoptera, the animal order that includes butterflies and moths. With long narrow wings and thick bodies, they are fast, acrobatic flyers that can hover in place, briefly fly backwards or dart away. Hawk moths are experts at finding sweet-smelling flowers after dark. They unfurl their exceptionally long tongues like party favors to explore flowers with long floral tubes that conceal pools of nectar.

Orb Weavers
Cindy Schreuder in Presque Isle sent me a photo of an orb weaver spider that was on her dock. Orb weavers make the circular webs that one commonly sees shimmering with dew in the early morning. Some 200 species are found in North America, and many have an impressively large, rounded abdomen with spots or lines, along with eight small eyes in two rows.
Nearly blind even with all those eyes, the orb weavers must sit in or near their web in order to feel the vibration of their captives as they struggle to escape. Threads called spokes, or radii, lead from the outside edge to the center. The non-sticky spokes allow the orb weaver to travel along the web to reach its prey – all the circular threads leading to the center of the web are sticky.
These webs can be 20 to 30 inches in diameter with15 to 35 radii, and typically a new web is spun every evening – quite a nightly architectural accomplishment when you think about it!
Identifying orb weavers within the Araneus genus, the most common orb weavers, is quite complex given their dramatically varying colorations and patterns. Check http://bugguide.net/node/view/11644 for great photos of all the variations of just one common orb weaver, the shamrock spider.

Mayhem in the Marsh
Mary, Callie, and I regularly walk in Powell Marsh, and this year we’ve been hearing the songs of a colony of marsh wrens on one of the pools. These tiny wrens are hard to see, but they make up for their lack of size with a pugnaciousness pretty much unequaled in other bird species. Marsh wrens, whatever the gender or age, peck at and destroy eggs and young nestlings of their own species as well as those of other species. They’ve been documented destroying least bittern eggs and destroying and partly drinking the contents of red-winged blackbird eggs. In one study, 14 of 51 blackbird nests showed evidence of wren destruction. Another study concluded that wrens destroyed up to 52% of red-winged blackbird nests in a British Columbia marsh. The male wrens also destroy both eggs and young nestlings of yellow-headed blackbirds.
Wrens also destroy the eggs and nestlings of other wrens. One observer reported watching a banded female repeatedly flying long distances outside her territory to find food for her nestlings. After several such trips, she flew directly to the opening of a neighbor’s nest and, in rapid succession, pecked each nestling in the head until it was dead, and then dropped it to marsh floor beneath nest.
In fairness, the wrens are also commonly attacked. Yellow-headed blackbirds are aggressive toward marsh wrens and appear to limit their nesting area. They are known to perch on or in front of wren brood nests, thus blocking the female’s return to incubate. They have also been observed chasing marsh wren males and hopping up and down on their nests, compressing them. Both male and female red-winged blackbirds also often attack singing marsh wrens, forcing them to escape by dropping into dense vegetation. Song sparrows and swamp sparrows on occasion also attack marsh wrens.
Like the proverbial playground clash, the question is: Who started it? Researchers lay the blame at the wren’s feet, saying these aggressive interactions are probably a consequence of the nest-destroying habits of the wrens.

Mammatus Clouds
            On 7/29, a thunderstorm was brewing over Manitowish, and as the clouds blew in, they formed a series of rounded, pouch-shaped forms that hung downward from the middle cloud layer (see photo). These very odd clouds often indicate severe weather, but on this early evening, they simply drifted by with some rumbling thunder as background percussion.

Old Columns
            I’ve written this column now for 22 years (since 1990), and I’m often asked where one can read my old columns. I wrote two books in 1997 – A Northwoods Companion Spring and Summer, and A Northwoods Companion Fall and Winter – that drew heavily from those early columns. A decade later in 2006 and 2008, I wrote another two books – Graced by the Seasons Spring and Summer, and Graced by the Seasons Fall and Winter – that utilized the new columns I wrote between 1997 and 2008, and which are completely different from the Companion books. It’s unlikely that I’ll do another set of books from my columns from 2008 onward, so most of those columns can be found on my blog at www.manitowishriver.blogspot.com. 

Please share your outdoor sightings and thoughts: call me at 715-476-2828, drop me an e-mail at manitowish@centurytel.net, or snail-mail me at 4245N Hwy. 47, Mercer, WI 54547.

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