A Northwoods Almanac
for 9/29 – 10/12/2017 by John Bates
Hawk Ridge Migration Stats
On Sunday, 9/17, the winds changed. We’d had 10 days
straight of south-southwesterly winds and rain, and a cold front was coming
through. The winds moved to westerly, perfect for migrating hawks. We had to
work around the house that day, but I wondered what we might be missing at Hawk
Ridge in Duluth. Well, we missed 27,290 hawks! Broad-winged hawks ruled the
day, comprising 26,270 of the total count, but 615 sharp-shinned hawks also
came through, as did 107 American kestrels, and 169 bald eagles.
The counters also tallied 4,354 migrating non-raptors,
including 1,513 blue jays.
That wasn’t the best day for blue jays. On 9/12, they
counted 7,365!
Birds of all types – hummingbirds to eagles – are winging
south, and the woods are getting quieter and quieter.
Loon Migration
Starting
“Our” loons should be now starting to
stage prior to their migration. Social
flocking starts in late-summer, usually on large lakes or on lakes that contain
unsuccessful territorial pairs, but in fall, loons often gather in large groups
of hundreds or more on big lakes like Trout and Fence. Mille Lacs Lake, a huge
132,000-acre lake in Minnesota, is well-known for hosting as many as 700 loons
in October prior to their migration.
Adults loons
migrate independent of their chicks and of each other. Unsuccessful breeders
may leave their breeding areas as early as August and begin staging, well before
those with young do. Parents generally migrate first, while the young remain on
their natal or adjacent lakes often until near freeze-up.
Peak
migration in our area occurs in late October, and by late November, most
migrants have arrived in their wintering areas. Fall migration is usually a
protracted affair with the loon initiating their long-distance migratory
flights in the morning. When flying over land, loons may cruise at altitudes as
high as 9,000 feet, but when they’re over water, they often migrate within 10
to 300 feet above the surface.
Loons, of course, aren’t only migrating
from northern Wisconsin. In the continental U.S., Minnesota has the largest
population of common loons with more than 10,000 adults. Wisconsin has an
estimated 4,000 adults, while Maine has 4,100 adults, New York 800, and New
Hampshire about 500.
Canada puts the
States to shame with about 250,000 adult common loon pairs, roughly 95% of the
world’s population, plus all the juveniles and non-breeders.
Totaled
all together, an estimated 710,000 to 743,000 common loons will migrate this
fall of which 103,000 to 108,000 will likely be juveniles. The estimate of
migrating adults is based on breeding loon counts, and the number of juveniles
is based on a 25-year statewide dataset in New Hampshire that shows 17% of the
fall loon population is comprised of young-of-the year.
“Our” loons spend the winter season about 80 miles offshore along the Florida coast and Gulf of Mexico. The distance between breeding and wintering grounds of
loons in Minnesota and Wisconsin ranges from 1,170 to 1,570 miles. Some
individuals stage on lakes along the way and may even over-winter in larger
reservoirs in Tennessee and Alabama.
One- and
two-year olds remain throughout the year on their wintering sites and don’t
return until their third year.
Goldfinch Still Feeding Young
Watching our feeders on 9/15, I
noticed an adult American goldfinch feeding seeds to its chick, which seems
mighty late to still be raising young. But goldfinch are perhaps our latest
nesting birds, with nesting beginning late June or early July,
peaking in the second half of July and occasionally continuing into September. Like
most songbird chicks after fledging, the young remain dependent on their
parents for about three weeks.
In looking at their range map,
goldfinch that breed in Canada will migrate south, but “our” goldfinch may or
may not stay the winter. Age and gender strongly contribute to who goes where: Female goldfinch winter farther south
than adult males, while young males winter further north than adults.
Sightings: Gray Treefrog,
Moose, Solitary Sandpiper, Greedy – Turkey TailRobins
Lisa DeHorn sent
me a great photo of an Eastern gray treefrog. She wrote, “While preparing for a
walk at the Willow Flowage nature trail on 9/6, we encountered this beautiful
frog next to the parking area. I'm guessing it's a graytree frog, but I’m not
quite sure. It was very small – only an inch long and about 3/4" wide. It
had a thin black stripe horizontally across its eye, but that was the only
visible marking. It reminded me of a large key lime in color, texture of skin
and size.”
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| eastern gray tree frog photo by Lee Teuber |
Eastern gray
treefrogs are masters of changing color based on the temperature or the color
of their surroundings, and can range from gray to brown to green to mottled.
They should be going into hibernation soon, though with our warm weather
earlier this week, they may have thought it was still August.
Laurie Fuhrman Ellingsrud sent me this note: “While
paddling near the mouth of a small bay on Day Lake yesterday (912), I heard
some crashing in the woods, and paused to see what it might be. A young bull
moose! I watched it sniff the air and mosey along the shoreline for a bit, then
it got in the water and swam along the south shore.”
Sarah Krembs sent me a fine photo of a solitary
sandpiper she had seen for a number of days in our area. Solitary sandpipers breed
in the boreal forests of Canada and Alaska and winter in the tropics, from
northern Mexico south through much of South America. They are indeed a solitary
bird, the name referring to the species' solitary habits in migration, which
contrast with the flocking behavior of most other migrant sandpipers.
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| solitary sandpiper photo by Sarah Krembs |
And a flock of robins invaded
our yard last week and stripped off every one of the mountain ash berries on
our two trees. I told them repeatedly that those berries were to be saved for
winter food for other birds who would need them far more then, but they ignored
me.
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| robin eating mountain ash berries - photo by John Bates |
Celestial Events
Autumn equinox came and went on
9/22, and now we’re on the dark side of the year – night is now longer than day
for the next six months.
For planet watching in October, look
at dusk for Jupiter very low in the southwest and only for the first week of
October. Look also for Saturn, also very low in the southwest, but it will hang
around until late in the month.
Before dawn, look for Venus brilliant and very low in the
east, along with Mars. On 10/5, Venus and Mars will almost be on top of one
another. The full moon occurs on 10/5 as well.
October 4 marks the anniversary of
Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. Launched by the
Soviets in 1957 as a great scientific achievement, the
Goddard Space Flight Center now lists 2,271 satellites in orbit.
Look for the peak of the modest
Draconid meteor shower in the predawn on 10/8.
Mushroom for the Week – Turkey Tail
Turkey tail, Trametes versicolor, comes in an array of colors from beige, to
blue-green, to orange, to various shades of brown. All resemble the flared tail
of a turkey, thus the name. And all are saprophytic, living off the remains of
dead, decaying wood.
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| turkey tail mushroom photo by John Bates |
Birds in Art – Road Trip Time
Birds in Art opened on September 9
and runs through November 26. Since 1976, the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum
in Wausau has organized Birds in Art annually, presenting exceptional
contemporary artistic interpretations of birds in perhaps the finest art
exhibit on birds in the country. Approximately 100 works are selected every
year, and every year as part of the event, the artists are treated to a trip up
north to Hazelhurst for an afternoon on Lake Katherine hosted by descendants of
the Leigh Yawkey Woodson family.
The
exhibit is always exceptional, and I highly recommend a rainy (or sunny) day
trip to view it.
Thought for the Week
“We only value what we know and
love, and we no longer know or love the wild. So instead we accept substitutes,
imitations, semblances, and fakes – a diminished wild . . . To reverse this
situation we must become so intimate with wild animals, with plants and places,
that we answer to their destruction from the gut . . . If anything is
endangered in America it is our experience of wild nature.” - Jack Turner
