A Northwoods Almanac
for 9/4 – 17, 2015
Fragrance Mystery
Solved!
Throughout most of this summer, Mary
and I have been perplexed by a sweet smell that has permeated a number of
wooded areas where we have been hiking. The fragrance reminds us of spreading
dogbane, basswood, or a milder version of common milkweed. The problem has been
that the perfume has been pervasive, in areas that dogbane and milkweed weren’t
flowering, and the smell has lasted over several months, basically eliminating
all woodland flowers, since woodland flowers rarely last that long.
Well, last
Sunday we were participating in a mushroom hike with the Friends of Van Vliet
Lake when numerous people noticed the sweet smell, and we began talking our way
through what the cause could be. Eventually we began wondering if the fragrance
came from “honeydew,” the sticky glistening that has been coating so many
leaves (plus cars and decks and everything else) this summer. Mary grabbed some
leaves, gave them a sniff, I followed suit, and bingo, there was the answer. We
were standing under maple trees at the time, so basically the leaves were
swathed in maple sap from the droppings of aphids and/or other scale insects. I
wrote about honeydew in my last column, so I’ll spare you any repetition. But
the bottom line is that this smell appears to be emanating from tree sap via
the aphids that has misted onto leaves and is slowly evaporating and
concentrating. Think of it as walking in a rain of maple syrup. Bring out the
waffles!
Well, maybe
not.
But the
real question now is why is this happening? What conditions converged to make
this a perfect storm for these insects? I wish I knew, but perhaps that mystery
will be resolved in due time as well.
Sightings: Sandhill
cranes, bald eagle, northern water snake, mud puppy
Bonnie Dana in Arbor Vitae sent me
a picture of a juvenile eagle screaming for food while sitting on the head of a
carved eagle on her pier. She noted in her email, “There is another picture of
him sitting on my bench overlooking the lake. This morning he was trashing my
flower garden below my deck. He is loud and energetic.”
Bonnie also watched an adult loon dive under water
after seeing an eagle circling over its head. She wondered if an eagle would
attack an adult loon. The answer is yes. In fact, loons have a specific
three-note wail call they use only when eagles fly overhead, clear evidence
that loons take the potential attack of eagles very seriously.
Bonnie also saw an eagle fly over her pier toting
somebody's cat. Since eagles are opportunistic feeders, Bonnie encouraged me to
encourage you to keep your cats indoors if you don't want your felines to be
someone's supper.
Jim Swartout sent a photo of a northern water snake
eating a large mudpuppy (a mudpuppy is a type of aquatic salamander that never
metamorphoses out of the typical larval form). He commented, “On a recent sunny
day I was on the lakefront at my property and encountered a large common water
snake with a large mud puppy (8”) in its grasp. Over the course of about an
hour, it proceeded to swallow its prey almost entirely before swimming off with
the victim’s tail still protruding from its mouth.” Northern water snakes swallow their prey alive and are known to eat a number of
fish species such as brook trout, sunfish, smallmouth bass, minnows, bullhead
catfish, and others, as well as leeches, crayfish, toads, leopard frogs,
tadpoles of bullfrogs, and spring peepers – in other words, pretty much
anything they can swallow, including mudpuppies. They have recently
developed a taste for round gobies, an invasive species, which, when present,
now comprise up to 90% of their diet.
Sandhill cranes are starting to congregate prior to
their fall migration. Locally, Sandi Hodek in Arbor Vitae has been observing a
family of sandhill cranes, two adults and two juveniles, in the Airport Rd/Old
Hwy 51 area of Arbor Vitae, while Wil Conway sent a photo of a “herd” of
sandhills feeding in a field on private property.
Nighthawk Migration
Nigthhawks
have been moving through our area over the last two weeks. Hawk Ridge counters
in Duluth saw 13,725 nighthawks dart over the ridge on 8/29 (along with 6,025
cedar waxwings!). It’s a short window of migration, and soon to end. Remember,
too, that a nighthawk is a songbird, not a hawk, and belongs to the nightjar
family just like a whip-poor-will.
Hawk Migration
The raptor count at Hawk Ridge in Duluth, MN, began
on 8/15, and good numbers of sharp-shinned hawks are coming through now.
Broad-winged hawks are soon to arrive in large numbers, with exceptional counts
typically occurring in mid-September. Hawk Ridge weekend takes place on 9/18 to
9/20, and I’d encourage anyone who hasn’t witnessed a hawk migration to attend.
Hawk Ridge is considered one of the top three sites in the United States for
viewing the autumn raptor migration, and if the conditions are right, you’ll
have a neck ache from watching so many raptors going by.
Mushroom Mania
Mary and I took two hikes last
week with Cora Mollen and her daughter Anne Small, both true experts on
mushrooms in the Northwoods. Cora’s book, Fascinating
Fungi of the Northwoods, should be on everyone’s bookshelf.
We’re still rank amateurs compared to Cora and Anne,
but we’re delighting in learning every new thing we can about fungi. One
mushroom we’re seeing in most of our woodlands now is the lobster mushroom (Hypomyces lactifluorum). Its brilliant
orange-red color, contorted shape, and significant size make it pretty much
impossible to miss. What’s remarkable about it is that it’s actually a white
mushroom (usually a “milky” or a “russula”) that is transformed by a parasitic
orange fungus that alters the cap, gills, and stem of the original mushroom,
changing the entire body of the host. Oddly, the transformation transforms the
otherwise inedible host mushroom into a desirable edible – go figure.
Old Loons
Loon researcher Walter Piper, in
his 8/20/15 blog (loonproject.org/walter-piper), noted that long-term banding
records provide clear data on how old common loons can become. Walter discussed
a male, evicted in 2007 from Little Bearskin Lake and now living the bachelor
life on Bearskin Lake, which produced 14 fledglings during his breeding career,
7 of which later bred and produced chicks in Walter’s study area. That
level of chick production places him among an elite few in Walter’s study
population. But so does his age. Walter writes, “He is at least 28 years old,
because he was banded as an adult breeder, which means he was at least 4 in
1991. He may be in his 30s! But a number of other loons that we have marked
during the study approach this male in age – and three exceed him in
productivity. The female on Upper Kaubashine, for example, is 27 years old at a
minimum. (Females first breed at no younger than 5 years of age, so her
estimated minimum age is one year older than if she were a male.) She can
boast having bred with four different partners on four different
lakes, spanning two counties. The 25+ year-old Townline male is unrivaled in
terms of stick-to-itiveness, as he has held the Townline territory since at
least 1994 – and still owns it. He has reared 16 chicks to fledging
during his tenure, if we throw in the two from this year. Only two loons
have raised more young: the current Oneida-West female (19 fledglings and counting
on Oneida-East and Oneida-West) and the former Hancock male (17 fledglings from
1993 to 2009).”
Walter further noted that females
are the ones that generally live the longest, as “males seem doomed to die
young because of their participation in dangerous
battles, and perhaps also their unfortunate proclivity for
attacking fishing lures and baits.”
Shoreland Zoning
When I was a boy raised in Pennsylvania, my family
would vacation on a lake in northern Indiana. Those vacations were the
highlight of our year, and surely one of the sweetest memories of my youth. I’m
sure my recall of those experiences are similar in a myriad of ways to people
who have vacationed, or who now live, in northern Wisconsin. I met someone on a hike who knows
well the lake where we used to vacation, and she said it is now wall-to-wall
homes, with boat traffic in the summer so extreme that she sold her home there,
the lake now more of a race track than a place of natural beauty.
Well, with the recent change in shoreland zoning
rammed into Wisconsin’s budget, we’re now faced with the reduction of shoreline
frontage requirements to the state minimum of 100 feet, adversely affecting
many lakes currently with 150, 200, and greater frontage requirements. If
you’ve ever been on a lake that has house after house every 100 feet, all with
docks and shore stations lined up along the way, you know what this looks like
and what it means. Developers may clap their hands, but the rest of us will be
clapping our hands over our eyes, trying to remember what it once looked like
and why we loved it so much.
I bring this up because there is a movement to
overturn this budget directive with new legislation before owners sell out and developers
run wild. Once lake lots are sliced up into 100 feet parcels, they will be gone
forever. And when we finally wake up to how foolish this was and change it
back, they’ll be grandfathered in.
Immediate action on this issue is required. Contact
your lake association and your legislators to make your voice heard. This isn’t
a property rights issue – this is an ecological and social issue. The science
is clear on the effects of overdevelopment on fish and wildlife. But whether
you believe the science or not, believe your eyes. Go to those lakes in
southern Wisconsin that look like this, and ask yourself if this is what you want
to see everywhere in northern Wisconsin. Contact plumlakeshoreland@gmail.com for more information.
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