A Northwoods Almanac for March 30, 2018

A Northwoods Almanac for March 30 – April 12, 2018  by John Bates

Sightings – FOY (First-of-the Year)

3/9 Erika Lintereur captured a photo of a weasel dragging a rabbit back to its den on Hadley Dump Road in Mercer.  The weasel couldn't get the rabbit up part of the hill, so Erika stopped and moved the rabbit, and the weasel came right back to drag its prey into its den. 

photo by Erika Lintereur

 

3/12 – Rod Sharka sent me a photo of a young bobcat that has been roaming around the Land O’Lakes area. The photo was captured in his backyard. He noted, “It was obviously a young one with little experience in catching red squirrels.”

photo by Rod Sharka

3/18 - Linda Johnson reported her FOY red-winged blackbirds on the Tomahawk River.

3/21 – We returned home from a trip out west and saw an hour or two later our FOY robin in Manitowish.

3/21 – Loons are being reported on lakes in southern Wisconsin, so lakeshore owners in our area should soon start seeing loons flying scouting missions over their lakes.

3/22- Den Hill sent me a beautiful photograph he took in Florida of an osprey. Ospreys are not yet being seen in Wisconsin, but will be arriving as lake waters open. We typically see our FOY osprey around 4/15 on a nest along Hwy. 47 near McNaughton.

osprey photo by Den Hill

3/23 – We observed our FOY red-winged blackbird in Manitowish.

3/23 – Matt McMahon in Manitowish Waters reported his FOY American robin.

3/23 – Sarah Krembs in Manitowish Waters observed 12 trumpeter swans on the Manitowish River and captured a picture of what appeared to be a serious squabble between two of them. She also saw her FOY buffleheads and a common merganser.

photo by Sarah Krembs

3/23 – Ed Marshall in Lac du Flambeau photographed a small army of at least 60 common redpolls mobbing his feeders.

3/26 – Nancy Burns in Manitowish Waters reported hearing and observing a FOY sandhill crane flying over her home, which brings up the annual crane count. The annual survey of sandhill and whooping cranes now spans over 90 counties in six states of the upper Midwest (Wisconsin and portions of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Minnesota) and takes place on Saturday, April 14. If you’re interested in participating, go to https://www.savingcranes.org/education/annual-midwest-crane-count/ to find your local county coordinator.

            Data from this count has been collected for nearly all counties in Wisconsin since 1985, and today nearly 2500 volunteers participate. Mary and I have been involved in the count since the late 1980s and always have an interesting experience. I encourage you to participate!

March Crust Skiing, Mountain Biking, and Hiking

            March is a tough transitional month in the Northwoods, but there are ways to not only endure, but enjoy. We’ve gotten out our back-country skis and skate skis, and we’re skiing in the morning on lakes and wetland. And the skiing is remarkably good! We just park at a boat landing and ski along the shoreline, usually seeing no one and getting a view of the lakes from a totally different perspective.

            Or we mountain bike or hike the frozen snowmobile trails. Yeah, the trails are rough, often icy, sometimes muddy, but it’s another option. Most importantly, we’re outside in the real world, which is why we live here and not somewhere else.

             

Birds in Southern Arizona and Southern California

            Mary, Callie, and I recently spent three days with friends in far southern Arizona and another four days in San Diego, CA with our older daughter Eowyn, and we saw some fabulous birds! Particularly noteworthy in Arizona were the seven species of hummingbirds we observed – magnificent, rufous, broad-billed, violet-crowned, black-chinned, Anna’s, and Costa’s.

            In San Diego, the oddest sighting was of a greater flamingo in San Diego Bay, a bird that is said to have no accepted wild records in western North America. Flamingos spotted in the wild out west are considered possible escapees from aviaries or zoos. Zoos that keep flamingos usually clip their wings so they don't fly away, but because the Imperial Beach flamingo has been seen flying from one pond to another, rangers don't believe it came from a zoo.

The bird also has a leg band, which could've been given to it by a biologist researching wild birds. However, no one apparently has been able to read the tag, so the identity of the bird remains a mystery.

We were also treated to four species of terns (least, royal, elegant, and Caspian) and enormous numbers of waterfowl with the most numerous species being American wigeons, We had exceptional views directly down onto active nests of Brandt’s cormorants in La Jolla, and great views of little blue herons and both snowy and great egrets. We also had close-ups of cinnamon teals, and the usual challenges with sorting out and identifying shorebirds, though there was no misidentifying the many black-necked stilts and American avocets, as well as a few long-billed curlews. We also went a bit crazy trying to identify many species of gulls and sparrows, but there were so many other birds to observe that we simply focused on what we could figure out and didn’t spend time worrying about what we couldn’t.

Brand't cormorants photo by Callie Bates

Mary and I have organized spring (March) trips in the past to both southern Arizona and San Diego, and we’d love to do so again because the bird life is so exceptional. We hope to hook up with a sponsoring organization and offer one of the trips next spring.

Snowy Owl Migration

            A few weeks ago I received an email from an individual in southern Wisconsin wondering if snowy owls migrated in small groups. He had seen three flying relatively close together that morning.

            My initial reaction was to say absolutely not – I’d never heard of owls migrating in groups. But I waited to respond until I could do a little research, and lo and behold, snowies are known to fly in small groups, though quite uncommonly. Numerous snowies have been outfitted with satellite transmitters, and data from these owls have shown that individuals sometimes moved on similar dates and in the same directions, likely using similar routes during migration.

            But that doesn’t prove they fly in groups. This, from Cornell’s Birds of North America, does:

“There are numerous reports of Snowy Owls boarding ships at sea; e.g., during the irruption migration of winter 2013/2014 from the Great Lakes to the ne. U.S., at least nine Snowy Owls boarded a ship during a storm off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. Apparently the owls stayed on board until arriving off the coast of Spain, France and eventually the Netherlands.”

Also, “About a dozen Snowy Owls boarded an ice-breaker vessel approximately 100 km out to sea in the Mackenzie River Delta, Northwest Territories, Canada, on 29 Sep 2008. The owls appeared on the ship rather suddenly and stayed approximately 12 hours. Photographs suggested most of the birds were young of the year.”

The “wild” in wildlife means we should expect the unexpected. This revelation of snowy owls occasionally flying together adds to my ever-growing list of “never say never” sightings and stories.

State Award!

North Lakeland Discovery Center naturalist Licia Johnson has been selected to receive the Wisconsin Association of Environmental Education Non-Formal Educator of the Year Award. Great to see “one of our own” recognized for exemplary work! Congratulations Licia!

Old-Growth Book in Print!

            After 15 years of research and general meandering around, I’ve finally published my book on the old-growth forests of Wisconsin. It’s titled Our Living Ancestors: The History and Ecology of Old-Growth Forests in Wisconsin (and Where to Find Them). It’s available through our website at manitowishriverpress.com, but should also be found very soon in local bookstores, galleries, and gift shops.

Celestial Events

            The full, blue moon occurs officially tomorrow night, 3/31, but it’s 100% full tonight as well.

            On 4/2, look before sunrise in the southeast for Mars and Saturn to be just one degree apart. We receive over 13 hours of daylight as of 4/5. On 4/7, look for Saturn to be about two degrees below the waning gibbous moon with Mars just another degree below it.

Thought for the Week

            To the question of why many of us can’t talk about climate change in a more intelligent and open manner, Barbara Kingsolver replied, “The short answer is that we believe we collect evidence and then use it to make up our minds, but in fact we make up our minds and then collect evidence to support our beliefs. Almost all of us work that way . . . The normal human decision-making process is mostly subconscious. We take in information only from sources we trust, whether that’s Rush Limbaugh or NPR or a church pastor or a co-worker. We make these animal decisions about who’s on our team, and then we pretty much believe what they say.”

Please share your outdoor sightings and thoughts: call 715-476-2828, e-mail at manitowish@centurytel.net, snail-mail at 4245N State Highway 47, Mercer, WI, or see my blog at www.manitowishriver.blogspot.com.