Friday, September 27, 2019

A Northwoods Almanac for 9/2019

A Northwoods Almanac for 9/20 – 10/3/2019  

Sightings: Acorns, Reds, Trumpeters, Nighthawks, Flickers, Monarchs, Cooper’s Hawk, Dagger Moth
It appears to be a great acorn year. Wherever we’ve been walking or bike riding under northern red oaks, we’ve been squashing innumerable acorns. This, of course, is good news for all the species of wildlife that can eat and digest these tannin-rich morsels. Acorns grow oak trees, but they also grow deer, gray and red squirrels, chipmunks, wild turkeys, crows, flying squirrels, rabbits, blue jays, grouse, raccoons, wood ducks, and more than 100 U.S. vertebrate species
Northern flickers are now being seen commonly along roadsides, foraging for ants in the gravel. While other woodpeckers are up hammering trees to extract insects, flickers generally work the ground, searching for ants and beetle larvae, their main food, though they occasionally pound on trees to get their insect dinners. 
Flickers seek out ants and other insects by probing and hammering in soil with their powerful bills, then store them in a crop to carry food to hatchlings. They do, however, shift their diet to fruits in late fall and winter when insects are far harder to come by. 
Flickers migrate south and are typically last seen here in late September to early October. 
            Brilliant fall colors are appearing, particularly near wet areas where trees are stressed by too much water. Scarlet colors are being seen in abundance: five of my favorites include red maple, blackberry, sumac, woodbine, and poison ivy.
Bob Von Holdt sent me an update on a pair of trumpeter swans he’s been watching in the Presque Isle area. They hatched six cygnets in June and there are five left as of 9/11.



Ted Rulseh observed hundreds of nighthawks over Birch Lake on 9/6, and noted that “midges were hatching. It was quite a spectacle . . . They were everywhere, with all those wings beating and absolutely not a sound to be heard. They weren’t even making their calls.”
On 9/6, Judith Bloom sent photos of a monarch butterfly that had just emerged from its chrysalis. 


A Cooper’s hawk is eating songbirds around our feeders in Manitowish. We’ve had merlins and sharp-shinned hawks utilizing our feeder birds over the years, but this is the first time we’ve ever had a Cooper’s.
And finally, a “Fingered Dagger Moth” (Acronicta dactylina) crossed in front of us on one of the dikes in Powell Marsh. We’re still learning our caterpillar identification, so it’s always fun to figure one out, though I needed the assistance of Linda Williams, the DNR’s forest health specialist for northeastern Wisconsin, to finally ID this one.



Honey Mushrooms
            It’s possible that honey mushrooms (Armillaria mellea and Armillaria galica) are trying to take over the world, or at least a portion of the Northwoods. With all our rain, these mushrooms have proliferated in woodlands as well as on people’s lawns where there is buried decaying wood. We’ve had colonies of them sprout up through our grass, an emergence we’ve never seen in the 35 years we’ve lived here.

            Also called cinnamon tops or stumpies, these are gilled mushrooms typically found in clusters on stumps or trunks of living hardwoods like northern red oak, but also on birches, aspens, and maples. 
            They’re a sought-after edible, though there are some toxic look-alikes. So, remember, all mushrooms are edible once.
            We’ve also seen large numbers of late flowering Indian pipe (Monotropa uniflora) blooming in profusion, which in our experience is very late for this plant. But with all the rain and the high water levels we have, a lot of plants are behaving out of their “normal” zone. 
            The reason I bring up Indian pipe is because Indian pipes parasitize the honey mushrooms, which in turn are parasitizing hardwood trees, often causing a root rot that ultimately leads to an earlier mortality. 
            If you find Armillaria galica, you’ve found the species responsible for the “Humungous Fungus” that was discovered near Crystal Falls, MI, and which was found to be a single mushroom covering 30 acres of forest and estimated to be 1,500 years old. 

Powell Marsh Prairie
            A portion of Powell Marsh was planted with a variety of prairie seeds after a prescribed burn in May, 2015, and the result has been a truly lovely display of prairie wildflowers, including bee balm, yellow coneflower, and black-eyed Susan. The flowers have been absolutely loaded with pollinating bees whenever we’ve been there, so it’s been a very buzzy place. 
My hope is that after future prescribed burns on other areas of the marsh, the DNR will scatter prairie seeds again and alter the flora from an array of mostly non-native species to native grassland species. Kudos to the DNR for this practice.

Loon Population Declining 
This from Walter Piper, long-time loon researcher in Oneida County, posting on his blog on 9/11/19 (https://loonproject.org/2019/09/11/the-loon-population-is-declining-in-wisconsin/): “If you have been following the blog, you might recall that the number of chicks per pair has fallen sharply since I began studying loons in 1993. Although I had not reported it yet, loss of chicks after hatching has also increased significantly since I began my work. That is, many pairs hatch two young but lose one or both of them nowadays. Furthermore, even chicks that survive to five weeks of age are now in poorer condition (as measured by body mass) than in 1998 or 2006 or 2013. In short, breeding pairs in northern Wisconsin now raise fewer and less robust chicks than they did 25 years ago.                    
 “ . . . I followed a simple line of reasoning. If loon pairs are producing fewer and weaker chicks, then fewer chicks must be able to migrate to the wintering ground. And if fewer juveniles make it to Florida, then fewer should survive long enough to return to northern Wisconsin (which happens at 2 to 4 years of age) and look for a breeding territory of their own. So, declining chick production should result in a reduced population of nonbreeders (or floaters) in our study area, which are young adults looking to settle on their first territory with a mate. Since we mark chicks and obsessively re-observe them as young adults, we can test the idea that lower chick production has resulted in fewer floaters. The results are stark. After one adjusts for number of observer-hours spent looking for floaters each year, a dramatic pattern emerges. The population of floaters has plummeted . . . we have seen roughly 1/3 as many floaters from the 2015-year class (which are 4 years old now) as we saw from the 1998-year class. In terms of percentages, we re-observed about 45% of all chicks banded in 1998 and 1999 much later as adults; we see only about 14% of banded chicks as adults these days.”
Dr. Piper goes on to discuss the implications of this decline: “Without floaters, a breeding population cannot sustain itself, because, inevitably, breeders die and must be replaced.” 
 This is exceptionally important research for our area. Column size doesn’t permit me to do justice to all of his analysis - I highly recommend reading his entire blog to learn more.

Hawk Ridge Count Numbers To Date
Overall migrating hawk numbers at Hawk Ridge in Duluth remain low as of this writing (9/16/19), though on 9/15, 1,164 sharp-shinned hawks passed over the ridge, escalating the total number of sharpies counted this fall to 3,477. 
However, only 511 broad-winged hawks have been noted thus far, so the big push is yet to come. Typically, broad-wingeds migrate through our area during a short window of time in September, often being done by 9/25. So, if the winds are right, this weekend could be a big flight. The record seasonal high for broad-wingeds was in 2003 when 160,703 were counted.
I recommend visiting Hawk Ridge today or through the weekend for the Hawk Weekend Festival (9/20-22), which draws many hundreds of hawk watchers, as well as offering numerous guided hikes and programs for visitors. See their web page at www.hawkridge.org
 Though hawk numbers have been small so far, other species have been passing over the ridge in good numbers. A total of 7,211 nighthawks were counted, with the peak day occurring on Aug. 29 when 6,468 flew by, while 2,050 cliff swallows also zoomed over the ridge the same day. 

Ballooning
On 9/15, Mary, Callie, Katlyn Koester, and I walked one of the dikes on Powell Marsh, and fortunately for Mary and me, Callie and Katlyn were walking ahead of us. I say fortunately, because they were continually meeting, close-up and personal, spider threads strung across the dike. I say threads because these weren’t webs, but individual strands of silk just hanging in the air – not attached between two shrubs or trees. 
The only explanation is that spiderlings, tiny baby spiders, had been “ballooning” just before we got there. To balloon, a spiderling, or sometimes an adult, climbs up a branch or a tall herbaceous plant, and then releases silk from its spinnerets. As the silk thread gets longer and longer, the wind catches the silk and carries the little spider away, most of the time only a few feet, but sometimes for miles, much like a child being carried away by a kite. It’s how spiders disperse themselves to new territories. It’s ingenious, but certainly annoying when you walk into the threads.

Celestial Events
            Autumn equinox occurs on 9/23 at 1:50 a.m. Since the Earth is tilted on its axis by 23.5 degrees and doesn’t orbit perfectly upright, the Earth’s Northern and Southern Hemispheres trade places gradually throughout the year. We have equinoxes twice a year when our axis is inclined neither away from nor toward the sun. 
On this day, the sun rises due east and sets due west for all of us, making it a good day for finding due east and due west from your yard. Just go outside around sunset or sunrise and notice the location of the sun on the horizon with respect to familiar landmarks.
            The new moon occurs on 9/28. On 10/3, look after dusk for Jupiter about 2 degrees below the waxing crescent moon.

Thought for the Week
            Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things. – Thomas Merton



Sunday, September 15, 2019

A Northwoods Almanac for 9/6-19/19

A Northwoods Almanac for 9/6-19/19 

Spring-loaded
            I love my wife Mary for a host of reasons, but one of the best reasons is how she delights in tiny things that only a true lover of plants would enjoy. Last weekend, we were eating our lunch on our deck when she stepped over to some jewelweed flowers that had gone to seed and began popping the tiny pods, literally cackling with laughter as she went. Her “inner junior-high” was in full bloom as she sprung the seeds from pod after pod – it was great to watch. And, of course, I then had to go over and pop some pods, too, and then we had to photograph how the pods curled up like tiny springs after the seeds were sent flying.


            We often spend lunch this way, distracted by some small event or possibility or observation. A bird flitting in the shrubs, some new flower in the marsh, a mushroom we pour over books vainly trying to identify, a lichen we’d never noticed on a tree, and so on. It can make lunch a rather drawn out affair, but always an interesting one.
However, back to jewelweeds. Jewelweeds (Impatiens capensis) have earned their other common name, “touch-me-not,” for precisely this reason – if you touch them, they’ll literally “explode” in your hand. The Latin genus name Impatiensrefers to the impatience they display in dispersing their seeds. The orange or yellow flowers form thin, inch-long seedpods. Pinch the end of one of the ripe pods, and the pod springs instantly apart, unfurling to fling the seeds away. Henry David Thoreau noted this as well: “Touch-me-not seed vessels, as all know, go off like pistols at the slightest touch, and so suddenly and energetically that they always startle you, though you are expecting it.” 


Folk wisdom suggests that jewelweed sap will ease the rash of poison ivy, but at least two controlled clinical studies have shown that jewelweed is no more effective than a placebo.
We’ve had a jewelweed bonanza this year, with far more plants growing “free of charge” on our property than ever before. I credit the wet year we’ve had since this annual plant likes to grow in damp areas. The hummingbirds in our yard have been particularly pleased because the tubular, spurred and lipped flowers are one of their favorites for nectar. Ruby-throated hummingbirds are attracted to the orange-gold flowers of jewelweed, and a single bird can visit as many as 200 flowers in 15 minutes. And in the spirit of reciprocation, the hummers pick up grains of pollen at every flower and deposit them on the next flower they land on, a fair trade indeed. 
             
The Baby-Saver Plant
            Bee balm/wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) and Oswego tea (Monarda didyma) are just going-by now. The common names get mixed up on these two species – the flower of bee balm or wild bergamot is usually pale purple, while the flower of Oswego tea is a brilliant scarlet. Both species attract bees like crazy, and both are favorites of hummingbirds, but bee balm is native and prolific in our area while Oswego tea is considered a garden escapee. 
            Many Native American tribes utilized bee balm for digestive and respiratory ailments. The leaves smell both minty and citrusy, a fragrance some feel smeels similar to the cultivated Mediterranean fruit bergamot. Fistulosameans “made of tubes”, an apt description of the tubular flowers. 
bee balm amid yellow coneflower
In the book Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do is Ask, the author, Wendy Makoons Geniusz, an Ojibwe teacher and healer, describes bee balm as the “baby-saver plant” for its role in soothing colic in babies. Misty Cook (Davids), a member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, writes in her book Medicine Generations, that bee balm “is the most commonly used Medicine amongst our people still today.” She notes that it’s good for “any kind of cold, flu, aching bones, pneumonia, high fever and/or chills.”
            Oswego tea is common in Northeastern states and apparently was abundant in Oswego Indian territory in New York state. The story goes that in 1743, John Bartram, a botanist, traveled to New York state to help make a treaty with the native people. Here he came across the plant at Fort Oswego, and learned that the Indians used the plant to treat chills and fevers. Bartram then named the plant after the fort – the Indian name for the nearby river. 
While its historic use was medicinal, it was used most often simply for its good taste. 



Fruitful September
            Fruits now ripe, or still coming ripe, as well as a few gone-by in our yard include: elderberry, blueberry, high-bush cranberry, mountain ash, nannyberry, winterberry, pear, apple, plum, blackberry, downy arrow-wood, grape, cranberry, black cherry, currants, Juneberry, alternative-leaved dogwood, and Virginia creeper.
            One edible fruit now profusely available in the woodlands is the bunchberry. However, “edible” does not connote tasty. These berries contain a very large pit, the flesh is slimy, and they’re tasteless. Other than that, bon-appetit. 

Nighthawk, Raptor, and Songbird Migrations
             Tim Kroeff dropped me a note on 8/25 saying, “WOW, are there a lot of nighthawks passing through the area over here west of Minocqua. I assume other people are observing the same.”
A week later, Diane Steele emailed saying: “Just caught a nighthawk migration over the Manitowish Waters ballfield. At least 50. Flying low and feeding.” Many other folks around the state have reported seeing flocks of nighthawks heading south. You might still catch a few in the early September – watch after dawn and before dark.
Nighthawks migrate an exceptionally long distance, some traveling back and forth from Argentina to the far northern Canada each year. They feed almost exclusively on flying insects, so with frosts coming, their eating-on-the-fly means that they are one of the first birds to leave in the fall and one of the latest to return in the spring. They’re typically gone in another week.
In case you forgot, nighthawks are neither a hawk nor nocturnal. They’re more a cousin to whip-poor-wills, and feed most actively at dawn and dusk.
The raptor migration picks up now and peaks in mid-September due to the abundance of broad-winged hawks that come through during this period. As of 9/2 at Hawk Ridge in Duluth, their counters already have tallied 383 bald eagles and 268 sharp-shinned hawks, but the most abundant migrant so far is the nighthawk – so far, they’re observed 7,193 nighthawks flying over the ridge. 
The hawk weekend festival at Hawk Ridge in Duluth takes place on 9/20 to 9/22 and is absolutely worth the drive if you can find the time. Flights of over a thousand broad-wings are relatively common, with the record count of over 102,000 in one day.
Meanwhile, songbirds are flowing south to stay ahead of insect losses to frost. Ryan Brady, an expert birder in Washburn, tallied 163 warblers of 17 different species passing over his yard on 8/30. He also noted that he saw his “first good push of Swainson's Thrushes, a few Pine Siskins, and a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher among some Least Flycatchers and migrant Eastern Wood-Pewees. Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Baltimore Orioles, Indigo Buntings, Bobolinks, Cliff Swallows, and others are also on the move.”
It’s both an exciting and sad time of the year to see these birds migrating.

Celestial Events
Observable planets in September are limited to Jupiter and Saturn, both of which are visible respectively in the southwest and south after dusk.
We’re rocketing toward autumn equinox on 9/23. As of 9/7, we’re down to 13 hours of daylight.
On the nights of 9/7 and 9/8, look for Saturn just above the waxing gibbous moon.
The full moon occurs of 9/13. Variously called the Harvest Moon, the Leaves Changing Color Moon, and the Acorns Moon, this will be the most distant and thus smallest full moon of the year.

Thought for the Week
            “What I do here matters. Everybody lives downstream.” –  Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book Braiding Sweetgrass
                        
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