NWA 2/6/15

A Northwoods Almanac for Feb. 6 - 19, 2015  

Great Backyard Bird Count

The 18th annual Great Backyard Bird Count, a joint project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society with partner Bird Studies Canada, takes place February 13 through 16. The information gathered by tens of thousands of volunteers helps track changes in bird populations on a massive scale and creates a real-time snapshot of where the birds are.             

An estimated 142,051 bird watchers from 135 countries participated in the 2014 count, documenting nearly 4,300 species on more than 144,000 bird checklists – that’s about 43% of all the bird species in the world!

Everyone is needed and welcome, from beginning bird watchers to experts. Participants count birds for at least 15 minutes on one or more days of the GBBC. You can count for longer than that if you wish and in as many places (not just your backyard) and on as many days as you like. Enter your results on the GBBC website at www.BirdCount.org by clicking “Submit Observations” on the home page.

The top 5 species that appeared on the most checklists in 2014 were:

Northern cardinal

Dark-eyed junco

Mourning dove

Blue jay

Downy woodpecker

The top 5 most numerous birds reported were:

Red-winged blackbird

Snow goose

Canada goose

European starling

Mallard

Worldwide, India reported the highest number of GBBC species at 819, although only 3,358 checklists were submitted there in comparison to the 124,310 checklists from the U.S. I was unaware that India was such a hotspot for birds!

Empathy for Squirrels?

Most folks who feed birds get riled up, perhaps even a bit crazy, about squirrels stealing food from their feeders, and many have rigged up ingenious methods to thwart them, some of which even work for a while! Mary and I gave up a long time ago trying to foil the acrobatic genius of squirrels, and now just consider them part of the family of wildlife at our feeders (well . . . let’s just say we aspire to this state of enlightenment).

One of the reasons we look more kindly upon them is because years ago we learned about a phenomenon called the “Lower Critical Temperature” (LCT) for animals in winter. An animal’s LCT is the point at which its metabolic rate must be increased in order to offset the amount of heat being lost. Said another way, it’s the lowest temperature at which an animal can rest comfortably, below which it will need additional energy to stay warm.

The LCT varies from species to species, and from season to season. Porcupines have an LCT in summer of 45°F, but their LCT is reduced to 10°F during the winter. Red fox LCTs are nearly identical to those for porcupines: 47°F in summer and 8°F in winter. Both accomplish their winter acclimation primarily by increasing the thickness of their fur, but also by increasing fat deposits. Arctic fox and moose are the supreme examples of such an adaptation, dropping their LCT to -40°F in winter. Both can rest comfortably at this brutal temperature (assuming no wind), without changing their behavior or physiology.

Squirrels have no such luck. Their fur is too short to make a difference, and they don’t put on significant fat deposits, so their LCT remains at 68°F in both summer and winter, very much like we humans. In order to stay warm, they thoroughly insulate their nests, and they must eat a great deal in order to keep their internal furnaces stoked. This utter lack of cold hardiness is evidenced by their abundant midden piles of conifer cones and their persistent refueling at our bird feeders.

So, next time you’re shaking your fist at the squirrels raiding your feeders and plotting extreme measures to foil them, imagine living in their shoes. Perhaps then you might be more willing to help them through a long winter, too.

Bohemian Waxwings

All winter, we’ve had inconsistent arrivals of bohemian waxwings feeding on our crabapples. They’re here a few days, then gone, then back again the next week – where are they going and why? I surely don’t know, but they’re named bohemians for a reason – they’re nomadic vagabonds known for their irregular winter wanderings.

What I find most interesting about them is that they are monogamous and non-territorial, apparently because the fruits that are most desirous to them are too ephemeral to be defensible. As a consequence of not defending nesting or feeding territories, waxwings do not have true songs – there’s no need. They’re highly gregarious, cooperating rather than competing for scattered, abundant fruit crops. Their large migratory and winter flocks associate closely, with little antagonism.

Their breeding sites vary from year to year, with pairs nesting and feeding close together, too. In the wild, they’re docile, perching calmly close to one another. And though they lack true songs, bohemians have a diversity of call types used in different social contexts that appear to have subtle meanings.

It’s difficult to anticipate when we may see them in Wisconsin because there’s no regular periodicity to their invasion years. For instance, beginning in 1879, major irruption years occurred in Wisconsin at intervals of 4, 14, 10, 13, 10, 11, 5, 11, 3, 5, 6, 8, 3, 3, and 1 year, though they have been seen at a higher frequency since 1960.

We always get excited and try to thoroughly enjoy them when they suddenly arrive, because we know they’ll be on their way before we know it. If you have crabapple trees or highbush cranberries, keep an eye peeled for them. They’re like spring wildflowers – here one moment, gone the next.

Van Vliet Hemlocks Snowshoeing

            Callie and I snowshoed in the Van Vliet Hemlocks State Natural Area last week, and as always, absolutely loved our time wandering around in the stands of old hemlock, sugar maple, yellow birch, and basswood. The Van Vliet Hemlocks were only recently designated as a State Natural Area in 2013, and as described on the State Natural Area website, the site “protects an ecologically significant stretch of undeveloped lake frontage and harbors one of the largest, old-growth hemlock-hardwood forests in this region - now very rare in Wisconsin.” Mary and I are leading a snowshoe hike there on Valentine’s Day, Saturday, Feb. 14 at 10 a.m. If you’d like to know more about this site, bring your sweetie (or not) and join us by registering with Nicolet College at 715-356-6753. Registration closes Monday, 2/9.

Climate Change Stats

Both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA calculated that in 2014 the world had its hottest year in 135 years of record keeping. Earlier, the Japanese weather agency and an independent group out of University of California Berkeley also measured 2014 as the hottest on record.

NOAA said 2014 averaged 58.24 degrees Fahrenheit, 1.24 degrees above the 20th-century average. NASA, which calculates temperatures slightly differently, put 2014's average temperature slightly higher at 58.42 degrees Fahrenheit.

Earth broke NOAA records set in 2010 and 2005. The last time the Earth set an annual NOAA record for cold was in 1911.

NOAA also said last December was the hottest December on record. Six months in 2014 set marks for heat. The last time Earth set a monthly cold record was in December 1916.

Celestial Events

            Our days are growing longer now by three minutes every day. Look before dawn on 2/12 and 2/13 for Saturn hovering near the waning crescent moon. You’ll need a small telescope or spotting scope to see Saturn’s rings, which are inclined now at about 25° from edge, exhibiting their northern face. Saturn rises in the southeast about two and one-half hours after midnight in early February and roughly one-half hour after midnight by the month’s end.

             

Winter Ebbing?

I’ve no idea if the groundhog saw his shadow on 2/2, but I think we can expect at least six more weeks of winter whether he did or not. Still . . . “We think of January as a slow and trudging journey through the valley of winter, but in reality it is a long and steady climb up the cold slope toward spring . . . January is cold, and February is traditionally full of snow; what warmth remains in the rocks will ooze away and the ice fangs will bite deep, even as the daylight lengthens. But the slope is upward now. The ice will melt, in due time, and the rivers will flow and brooks will leap again. Buds, already patterned on the twig, will open. Birds will sing. These things we know, for they are as inevitable as the lengthening daylight. The long, cold slope still lies ahead, but we have already begun the long slow climb toward spring and April.”  Hal Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year