Monday, June 3, 2013

NWA 5/17/13


A Northwoods Almanac for May 17 – 30, 2013 

Lots of Sightings! Summer Tanagers, Loons, Hummers . . .  
Late April: For the two weeks prior to the ice finally going out on our area lakes, Scott and Kathy Reinhard had a group of nine loons staging in front of their home on the Flambeau River near Park Falls.
4/29: Dan Carney in Hazelhurst had first-of-year (FOY) pine warblers and hermit thrushes, and he got to watch two otters mate in Bearskin Creek.
4/30: Mary Nell Currie was walking on the Bearskin Trail and saw six loons in the water and three flying overhead at the Kawaga Trestle area on Minocqua Lake. 
4/30: Mary, Callie, and I spotted a flock of Bonaparte’s gulls on Powell Marsh along with numerous horned grebes.
5/1: Pat Schmidt on Silver Lake in Hazelhurst reported two loons had landed on her lake despite the fact the lake was still over half ice-covered.
5/2: Jill Wilm sent me several exceptional photographs of a yellow-bellied sapsucker along Van Vliet Lake near Preque Isle.
5/2: Dan Carney reported FOY rose-breasted grosbeaks at his feeders in Hazelhurst.
5/4: Barbara Just in Boulder Junction had a juvenile male summer tanager visit her feeders along with an adult male summer tanager. The juvenile males exhibit a rainbow of colors, and look like they belong in a tropical forest in Central America, not northern Wisconsin. And in fact, summer tanagers don’t belong here, but they do nest infrequently now in southern Wisconsin, so we’ll be seeing more and more of them as our climate warms.
5/5: Joan on Clear Lake in Manitowish Waters reported a FOY Baltimore oriole, eastern towhee, and brown thrasher. John Worth in Manitowish Waters also reported seeing a brown thrasher.
5/5: Dan Carney in Hazelhurst had FOY American redstarts, palm warblers, and veeries.
5/5: Jack Stellpflug forwarded photos and a short video he took of two merlins mating on a tree branch near the north shore of Elsie Lake in Lac du Flambeau. Jack explained how he was so exceptionally fortunate to capture the very quick mating of the merlins: “I heard an unfamiliar call between a pair of these birds two days before, but couldn't get a good view of them until today. The call sounded close to that of kingfishers, but the birds perched high and away from the water. Today, when I finally got a good look, this female was eating a mouse . . . Less than a minute before I started to record, a bald eagle flew overhead and through the frame close enough to hear the wind through its wings. I took this video with the intent of capturing the call between these birds. I got more than I bargained for! Sometimes you get lucky!!”
5/5: Mark Pflieger in Harshaw reported seeing his first rose-breasted grosbeak. We saw our first one in Manitowish the next day.
5/6: Kent Dahlgren sent me a photo of a pair of swans near his home in Presque Isle and noted, “Due to the lack of open water, there were a lot of species sharing the same areas.”
5/6: Jan Miller in Lac du Flambeau reported the first hummingbird of the year in our area. She noted, “I had been debating earlier if I should put out the feeder, and it buzzed my front window. I guess it is time!”
5/6: Gary Ruesch, a long-time bird watcher on the Rainbow Flowage, reported his first ever red-necked grebes and white-fronted geese.
5/7: Kathleen Kinney in Woodruff reported her first eastern towhee. Mary saw one perched on our shed roof in Manitowish this day as well.
5/7: Cynthia and Jim Krakowski on Squaw Creek in northeastern Price County reported five white pelicans drifting along on the creek. They also saw three moose the night before on Hwy. 47 not that far from our house in Manitowish. Mary and I have been on the lookout ever since, but the moose are not cooperating!
5/7: Here’s a non-wildlife sighting of great interest. Bill McCutchin was fishing off his pier on the Trout River on an otherwise warm and windless afternoon when he noticed water getting sucked up into the air in a funnel about six feet in a diameter and 10 feet high. The waterspout moved out onto the river and into some cattails, ripping them up and sending them up into the air, all the while making a great deal of noise. The spout then went down the river right past his house (he had retreated up into the house!), leaving the river full of debris as it passed. Bill had never seen anything remotely like this before, and neither have I, but I have heard of anomalous waterspout events, and this had to be one of them. Fair-weather waterspouts are associated with developing storm systems, but not storms themselves, and require high levels of humidity and a relatively warm water temperature compared to the overlying air. Apparently the conditions were just right in that one spot on the Trout River.
5/8: Cherie Smith in Lake Tomahawk sent me a photo of a pine warbler eating suet at her feeder, as well as a photo of a fisher that comes to her corn feeders nearly every evening. 
5/8: White-crowned sparrows finally appeared at our feeders in Manitowish.
5/10: Our first Baltimore oriole arrived at our feeders.
5/11: It was a very cold day with lots of snow squalls later in the afternoon. We were surprised to have two yellow-rumped warblers working over our suet feeder, the first time we have ever had a warbler on our suet. The insect hatch has been minimal at best so far this spring, so the warblers have had to find food where they can.
5/11: Bob Kovar on Wild Rice Lake in Manitowish Waters walked outside in the early evening while it was snowing like crazy and said the spring peepers were in full chorus, a rather remarkable juxtaposition. The male peepers apparently just can’t wait any longer to mate. Come what may, they are going to sing!
5/12: Jerry and Jan Crabtree have been watching a pair of red-necked grebes on their lake
south of Hazelhurst for over a week. Jerry noted, “First time in 30 years [that we’ve seen one] - I'm sure they are just passing through, but truly a unique sighting for us.” 
5/12: Chuck Templin on Papoose Lake sent a photo of a red-bellied woodpecker eating at his suet feeder, after the snow of Saturday night, May 11th.

Whitefish Point Bird Observatory Trip
Mary and I led a group of intrepid birders to the Whitefish Point Bird Observatory near Paradise, MI, at the far southeastern end of Lake Superior. We drove the nearly 300 miles there because Whitefish Point is the most important spot for documenting and monitoring waterbird movements in the upper Great Lakes. It’s also one of the most important spring flight corridors for raptors in North America. And Whitefish Point is a phenomenal concentration spot for migrating owls during both spring and fall.
We left in a sleet/ice storm on Friday morning, May 3, and drove into 55-degree weather at WPBO. Though the wind was out of the north, the birds didn’t seem to mind the headwind, and were migrating in good numbers throughout the weekend.
On Friday night, we stopped by the owl-banding shack to see what they were catching. On their first run they netted two saw-whet owls, one boreal owl, and one long-eared owl. We got face-to-face looks at all of the owls, which was quite a gift! The nets are operated every night (weather permitting) until dawn, and on their second run, the banders brought back 15 owls, 14 of which were saw-whets. Two participants in our group had stayed behind for the second run, and they reported that the banders hadn’t anticipated catching that many, so their jacket pockets were stuffed with owls! By the end of the night, they had banded 77 owls, and the following night, they banded 51 more, resulting in the banding of 105 northern saw-whets, 17 boreals, five long-eareds and one barred. They also caught three previously banded Saw-whets, including one of the juveniles they banded in 2010.
The next morning, the hawks were flying early, particularly sharp-shinned hawks which seemed to be constantly in the sky. All raptor observations are made from a platform on the “Hawk Dune” about 200 meters west of the Whitefish Lighthouse and about 20 meters above Lake Superior. The count for the day totaled 719, of which 468 were sharp-shinned hawks. Fourteen species of raptors were included in the count, all of which we got to see including bald and golden eagles, osprey, turkey vultures, kestrels, peregrine falcon, merlins, northern harriers, Cooper’s hawks, red-shouldered hawks, broad-winged hawks, rough-legged hawks, and red-tailed hawks. The WPBO hawk count has been actively gathering migration data for over 20 years and is partnered with the Hawk Migration Association of America website (www.hawkcount.org) where you can view the numbers of hawks seen each day during migration.
We also checked out the waterfowl count and walked the shoreline looking for shorebirds. Loons were the order of the day, and on Saturday, they counted 747 common loons flying past or over the Point, along with 43 red-throated loons. The following Tuesday, 5/7, a record 478 red-throated loons were counted!
We were also treated to exceptional views of numerous horned grebes, and at least five piping plovers, several from within 15 feet! Piping plovers are a federally endangered species, and these were the first Mary and I had ever seen. Fewer than 3,000 breeding pairs of piping plovers were detected in the U.S. and Canada in the last major census undertaken in 2001.
So, to see them so close, and so frequently, was really quite remarkable.

Wildflowers? Still On Their Way
            Mary and I led a trip on Sunday, May 12, looking for wildflowers in an area a little southwest of Minocqua. Ordinarily by mid-May, this site would have been an absolute riot of flowers, but given this very delayed spring, we found only a couple individuals of a few species in flower. Most species had their leaves up, and some were budded, but they’ve wisely waited for the warm weather that was forecast for this week. I suspect if we returned to the site tomorrow, the flowers would be everywhere! Get out and enjoy them while you can – they’re called ephemerals for a reason.

Celestial Events
            From 5/24 through 5/29, the year’s best gathering of planets occurs when Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury all fit within a 5° circle. That means that you can view all three at the same time with most hand-held binoculars. The grouping is tightest on May 26th, when all three planets fit in a 2½° circle. Jupiter appears right next to Venus on the 27th, and after that it slowly pulls down and right of Venus, disappearing from view in early June. This is the tightest three-planet grouping that will be visible without binoculars until 2026. 

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