A Northwoods Almanac for July 19 - August 1, 2024

 A Northwoods Almanac for July 19 to August 1, 2024 

 

The Great Wisconsin Birdathon Counted 280 Bird Species!

            This year's Great Wisconsin Birdathon sponsored by the Natural Resource Foundation of Wisconsin involved 86 teams statewide, with 600+ dedicated birders participating across 37 Wisconsin counties. There were teams and individuals watching their backyard feeders, teams birding solely by boat, and teams even birding for a full 24 hours! Mary and I counted for “The River Raptor” team, which included 9 teams from around the state who only counted birds by canoe or kayak along a river (the teams racked up 157 species). We also counted for our 2^nd annual bird count in Iron County.

            Overall, a total of 280 bird species were counted, including 37 species considered special concern in Wisconsin, 12 species considered threatened, and 8 species considered endangered. 

            Importantly, the event raised more than $116,000 for critical bird conservation. Proceeds support high priority bird conservation projects through NRF's Bird Protection Fund including conservation of Wisconsin’s most threatened and endangered bird species; creation and protection of critical breeding, stopover, and overwintering habitat; research and monitoring; and education and outreach.

 

Lake Wabasso – An RNA and SNA

            Several weeks ago I paddled Wabasso Lake with 25 women from the “Lady Yakkers,” a women’s kayak group that paddles an area lake every week, and has a blast doing it. I choose Wabasso for the group because it is designated both as a State Natural Area (SNA) and is within a Federal Research Natural Area (RNA), which is relatively rare. 

            Relative to SNAs, the Wisconsin legislature established the State Board for the Preservation of Scientific Areas in 1951, the first such state-sponsored program in the United States. Its purpose was to highlight and protect the last remaining vestiges of Wisconsin’s native plant communities. With initial guidance from eminent scientists such as Aldo Leopold, Norman Fassett, and John Curtis, a council of 11 conservationists began a systematic review of landscapes throughout Wisconsin, looking for exceptional natural areas, all of which harbored features essentially unaltered by human-caused disturbances, or that had substantially recovered from past disturbance.

            As of 2017, 687 State Natural Areas (SNAs) have been designated, encompassing a total of nearly 400,000 acres. Each SNA protects one or more natural communities, geological formations, and/or archaeological sites as refuges for biodiversity and endangered or threatened species. They also serve as research sites for determining the baseline ecological functions of a particular natural community.

            RNAs, on the other hand, are relatively few. The Chequamegon/Nicolet National Forest contains around 1.5 million acres, and out of all of that, only 30 sites have been given the “Research Natural Area” status. 

            Like SNAs, federal Research Natural Areas (RNAs) are considered the “crown jewels” of national forests and other federal lands. They conserve a representative array of all significant natural ecosystems and the processes that maintain them, and are protected against human activities that might directly or indirectly alter or impair their ecological integrity.

            RNAs serve as controlled baselines or benchmarks that provide a way to track some of the effects of management practices. Managers can’t monitor their practices unless they can compare what they do to something that is unaltered. RNAs also offer outright protection for natural communities, special habitats, aquatic features, rare species populations, and as a reminder of what once was. “The more we do nothing, the more value these areas will have,” says Connie Millar, a research geneticist for the US Forest Service.

            So, what’s so special about Wabasso Lake? The 49-acre lake is located within the 779-acre Headwaters Lakes RNA, which features a variety of high quality plant and aquatic communities, as well as a complex of wild lakes including Wabasso Lake. The submerged aquatic plants are the principal features of interest in the lake, with several specialized sterile rosette species well represented including pipewort (Eriocaulon septangulare) and waterwort (Elatine minima). Rare plants and animals found here include Robbins’ spikerush (Eleocharis robbinsii) and wood turtle (Glyptemys insculpta).Uplands surrounding the lake contain patches of old-growth eastern hemlock with high quality stands of pine and northern white cedar.

            All of that adds up to the simple beauty of the place. We all need food and water, yes, but we also need beauty, and that’s what the Yakkers and I shared in spades that morning. 

 

Fall Migration Underway – Say It’s Not So!

            Hard to believe, but the initial wave of southbound shorebirds begins moving through our area in the last days of June or first week of July. These early birds are adults, which depart their far northern breeding grounds first and leave young of the year to figure it out on their own. 

            Mary and I were walking on a dike at Powell Marsh on July 9^th when we heard the distinctive “tu-tu” call of a lesser yellowlegs, and then had the bird fly right over our heads. We were delighted to see it, and then not so delighted when we considered what it meant – migration has already begun.

     

Monarch Population Extremely Low

            Several folks in our area have told me that they have no monarch butterflies feeding on their milkweed plants, while last summer the monarchs seemed to be everywhere. Mary and I have seen a few this summer, but I hadn’t realized that the Texas’ 2023 ice storm followed by the 2023 historic hot summer hit the monarch butterfly population hard. Eastern population monarchs migrate up and down the Interstate 35 corridor in Central Texas from Mexico to Canada, and this weather devastated them. The early 2023 migration from Mexico to Canada faced a devastating loss of milkweed, the host plant for monarch eggs, due to the ice storm in late January to early February. Later that year, a hot summer followed by a dry fall killed off sources of nectar needed as the butterflies made their way south, a time when they must fuel up for overwintering.

            The result? Reports from overwintering sites for the monarch’s eastern population in Mexico showed a 59 percent decrease — the second lowest count in history, while the California population dropped 30 percent.

             Orley “Chip” Taylor, founding director of Monarch Watch, wrote, “The depth of this decline is beyond our experience, and the implications for the future of the monarch migration are surely of concern. However, populations have been low in the past. This count does not signal the end of the eastern monarch migration.”

            According to the World Wildlife Fund, which counts monarch butterflies in Mexico each December, the 2023-24 population occupied only 2.2 acres of Mexican forest. The previous season it covered 5.46 acres. In 2022-23, that number was 13.59 acres. The lowest was during the 2013-14 overwintering season, when monarchs covered only 1.65 acres.

            

            The good news, or so we hope: “Catastrophic mortality due to extreme weather events is part of their history,” Taylor said. “The numbers have been low many times in the past and have recovered, and they will again. Monarchs are resilient.”

 

Baby Birds

            We have been watching numerous baby birds being fed at our feeders. Juvenile purple finches, red-winged blackbirds, and downy woodpeckers have all been begging any adults around them for regurgitated sunflower seeds – it doesn’t seem to matter who is the actual mother or father. 

            When songbird chicks fledge, they only fly a short distance from the nest, and then beg to be fed for another two weeks or more while they learn how to feed themselves. 

            Those songbirds that will be migrating south in August have a very short window to raise their young into the full strength of adulthood, and they’re all hard at it.

 

Orchids!

            Mary and I have come across three species of orchids in the first weeks of July: Rose pogonias and grass-pink orchids in bog mats around several lakes, and ragged fringed orchid in damp uplands on one of the dikes in Powell Marsh. 

            All three are uniquely beautiful. “Pogonia” derives from Greek pogon, meaning ‘beard,’ and describes the fringed, or bearded, purple and yellow surface of the lip. The lip is so distinctive that other common names include “snakemouth orchid” and “adders-mouth orchid.”

rose Pogonia, photo by John Bates

            The lip of the blazing pink to purple pale grass-pink orchid stands out because it sits above the rest of the flower – the lip of most orchids project from the lower part of the flower.

grass pink orchids, photo by John Bates

            And the lip of the ragged fringed orchid splits into three lobes, each one deeply fringed to the point of appearing torn.

ragged fringed orchid, photo by John Bates

            Nearly all orchids live in association with specific fungi that they require to germinate, sprout, grown and thrive. In fact, over 90% of land plants are thought to form mycorrhizal relationships with fungi, which is when fungal tissue and a plant's root tissue combine to help the plant grow.

            The complexity of these relationships boggles the imagination sometimes, and explains why one should never try to collect orchids – the fungal relationships just don’t exist wherever they are transplanted, and the orchids rarely live. “Collect” them with photos, and leave them to thrill the next person who stumbles upon them.

 

July Wildflowers

            July brings a plethora of wildflowers growing along roadways, in wetlands, and in open woodlands. The two most fragrant flowers I know, common milkweed and spreading dogbane, are now prolific, along with other commoners like our native yarrow and the non-native and invasive ox-eye daisy and bird’s-foot trefoil.

spreading dogbane, photo by John Bates

             In pine woods, round-leaf pyrola, partridgeberry, and pippsissewa have come into flower, all of which are natives. And in the wetlands, it’s a glory in particular of white water lilies, with an enormous array of other wetland flower species just now coming.

            Beauty now abounds, and we simply have to open our eyes and pay attention. 

            

Celestial Events

            Tomorrow, July 20, marks the 55^th anniversary of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon in 1969. I was 17 years old, and I remember it well.

            The full moon – the “half way through the summer” moon – occurs on 7/21, and our days are now growing shorter by two minutes every day.

            The peak Delta Aquarid Meteor Shower takes place in the predawn hours of 7/28.

 

Thought for the Week

            “I dream of a world guided by a lens of stories rooted in the revelations of science and framed with an Indigenous worldview – stories in which matter and spirit are both given voice.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer

 

Please share your outdoor sightings and thoughts: e-mail me at johnbates2828@gmail.com, call 715-476-2828, snail-mail at 4245N State Highway 47, Mercer, WI, or see my blog at www.manitowishriver.blogspot.com

 

 

A Northwoods Almanac for July 5 - 18 , 2024

 A Northwoods Almanac for July 5 - 18 , 2024  

 

Black-capped Chickadees Nesting in Bluebird Box

            Jennifer Heitz on Irving Lake sent me this email on 6/25: “We had chickadees build a nest in our bluebird house. We so enjoyed watching them go in and out and sing their happy song near their nest! The babies fledged at least a week ago, so we decided to peek inside the box. What a beautiful nest! One little egg was pushed into the back corner.”

photo by Jennifer Heitz

            Lots of folks are surprised to learn that black-capped chickadees are cavity-nesters. In studies on chickadees in Ontario, cavities were found most often in white birch (50%) and aspen (14%), while in interior British Columbia, most nest cavities were found in aspen. 

            Why aspens and white birches? They’re soft wood. Chickadees aren’t blessed with a chisel-like beak, so they’re only able to dig a hole in a dying or dead tree where the wood is rotting, like a broken-off snag of aspen or birch. If they do nest in other trees with harder wood, the nests are usually associated with knot-holes or have been previously excavated by another species. 

            Both sexes participate in excavating the hole, but the inside nest is built exclusively by the female, who typically uses a coarse material like moss and then lines it with finer material like rabbit fur and deer hair. Perhaps brushed-out dog hair would work, too. 

            Chickadees occasionally use nest boxes, particularly if no dead birch or aspen trees are nearby, but they actually prefer artificial nest snags to nest boxes. They like fixer-uppers! I’ve seen plans for building a nest snag out of PVC pipe, but using a hollowed out wooden tube seems far more natural. One way or another, the use of both types of artificial nests increases if the cavity is filled with wood shavings – chickadee females apparently enjoy removing the shavings and sculping the nest cavity to their specifications.

            The female does all the incubation – usually for 12 to 13 days – while the male brings back food when she’s on the eggs. 

a black-capped chickadee egg, photo by Jennifer Heitz

            The chicks hatch naked with their eyes closed, and weigh all of one gram. Fifteen days later, they will weigh 10 to 12 grams (recall that an ounce is equal to 28 grams). 

            The young typically leave the nest when they’re about 16 days old, but they stay with the adults for another 3 to 4 weeks. The parents provide all of the food for the chicks initially, but within a week, the young are finding their own food.

            The chicks waste no time dispersing once they’ve mastered feeding themselves. One day, the whole brood is with both parents; the next day, the young scatter and move some distance away. 

            It’s interesting to note that pair bonds between adults most often last for several years. Of 94 pairs studied over 10 years in Massachusetts, there were only 15 instances of divorce, while 79 pairs (84%) remained together. In another study in Ontario, of 49 pairs observed over 8 years, only 11 instances of divorce occurred, while 38 (78%) of the pairs remained intact. Compare that to our human divorce rates, and perhaps we could learn a lot about relationships from chickadees.  

 

Sightings – A Rain of Pine Pollen Cones, Blue-bead Lilies, and Garden Valerian

            *The male pine cones from our three native pines – jack, red, and white – were recently coming down like rain during some high winds. All of our pines produce separate male and female cones on the same tree, and are wind-pollinated, the yellow pollen often releasing on a windy day in great plumes and then covering our cars or floating on water until it eventually sinks into the sediments.

            Once pollinated, the female cones of the white pine and red pine mature and shed seeds in the autumn of the second year, while the female cones of the jack pine mature in the second year, but remain closed for several years, or for decades, until extreme heat from a fire or weather melts the resin that seals up the cones and the seeds can be released.

            *Mary and I hiked the Lost Creek Falls Trail in Bayfield County last week and were impressed by the many large clonal colonies of blue-bead lilies (Clintonia borealis). A creeping horizontal rhizome tends to produce dense colonies of blue-bead lilies, but the plants also produces a number of large, deep porcelain blue berries, thus the name “blue-bead lily.” If you’re tempted to eat the berries in August, don’t. They’re thought to be mildly poisonous to humans, though one gentleman has written to tell me that he successfully ate them, but they tasted very bitter. Other sources say the berries aren’t poisonous, but confirm their foul taste. The strikingly beautiful berries should be left to only our aesthetic tastes.

photo by John Bates

            *Later that day in Washburn, Mary and I hiked the lovely Washburn Lakefront Walking Trail, and here we were surprised by the proliferation of a very tall wildflower that we’d never seen before, but which was clearly invasive. It turned out to be garden valerian (Valeriana officinalis), a sweetly scented pink or white flowered plant that belongs in Europe and Asia, not here.

garden valerian

            The plant has been present in North America since at least 1890 and has likely benefited from repeated introductions because of its ancient use as an herbal medicine. Hippocrates prescribed it as a sleep aid, and the plant has since been used to treat ailments including insomnia, anxiety, depression, and headaches. During both World Wars, valerian was used in treating victims of what was then called shell shock, and is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder). Valerian remains a popular commodity today, with several million dollars generated each year in sales in the United States. 

            Nevertheless, it completely took over some open fields and trail edges in Washburn, and while beautiful, this appears to be a plant that we all need to kill on sight if it appears here.

 

Winter Severity Index – Last Winter Was the Lowest Recorded 

            Since the early 1970s, the WDNR has used a winter severity index (WSI) to indicate the intensity of each year’s winter. From December 1 through April 30, dozens of sites around the state record one point each day if the temperature is 0 degrees F or colder, and one point each day if the snow is 18 inches or deeper. At the end of the season, if the points total less than 50, it’s considered a mild winter; 50 to 79 is moderate; 80 to 99 is severe; and more than 100 is very severe. 

county by county WSI 2023-24

            The previous WSI low was 14 in the winter of 1986-87. But last winter, the WSI for northern Wisconsin averaged 10, the lowest on record in the 64-year data set. 

            For comparison, the winter of 2013-14 was the most severe on record with an average WSI of 143 at northern sites.

            You may remember that two winters ago we had tons of snow, but you may not remember that the temperatures were comparatively mild. Thus, the WSI for 2022-23 was a moderate 69 – not that hard a winter, at least according to this index which was designed to indicate the impact of winter on wildlife, and in particular, deer.

            I also find last winter’s WSI remarkable because the highest values in our northern counties was 12, while values in the southern counties were nearly identical – Richland and Vernon counties, for example, were 11. Thus, overall the entire state experienced a very similar non-winter.

            The question for those in the deer hunting community who think our deer numbers are too low is how well this low WSI has translated into higher deer survival and reproduction.           My take from a botanical perspective is that our overall deer population remains too high, so I’m concerned about diminished tree and wildflower seedling survival if there’s a population boom.

            We’ll see what shakes out as the summer progresses.

 

Cotton-grass Poisoning Lemmings

            I’ve observed over many decades the beauty of cotton-grasses (Eriophorum sp.) in boggy habitats around our area, but I never knew that they were a favorite food of lemmings in the Arctic, and that they can produce a poison that leads to the lemming’s legendary suicidal behavior. David Attenborough writes in The Private Life of Plants: A Natural History of Plant Behavior:

             “The ability [of cotton-grasses] to produce poison may be the cause of one of the most celebrated, almost mythic, events in natural history – the mass suicide of the Norway lemming. These little hamster-like rodents of the Arctic tundra increase in numbers year after year until there is a population explosion, and then hordes of them are said to deliberately drown themselves.

            “The cause of this extraordinary behavior may be the fact, recently discovered, that when lemmings start to feed on the cotton grass and sedges that are their main food, the plants begin to produce a poison which neutralizes the lemmings' digestive juices. If the grazing is light, the plants stop doing this after about 30 hours, but if it is intense, as it is when the lemming population reaches its climax, they do so continuously. The effect on the lemmings is not only that they cannot digest their meals. Because they cannot, their bodies produce more and more digestive fluids, draining their physical resources and bringing them even closer to starvation. As a consequence, the more they eat the hungrier they get, and when having stripped the surrounding tundra they reach the edge of the sea or a lake, they swim out into it, in a frenzied attempt to find some food somewhere that will sustain them.”

 

Celestial Events

            For planet-watching in July, look low in the west-northwest after dusk for brilliant Venus. Before dawn, look in the east for Mars, high in the southeast for Jupiter, and in the south for Saturn.

            Today, July 5, the Earth is the most distant from the sun that it will be at any time this year. It’s at “aphelion” at 94.5 million miles away. Back on January 2, the Earth was at perihelion, only 91.4 million miles away. 

            The new moon occurs tonight as well.

            Our average warmest days of the year occur from July 8 to July 28 with an average high of 78° and a low of 55°. If you’re a lover of heat, enjoy it while you can. 

 

Thought for the Week

            “I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else . . . The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves - we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other's destiny.” – Mary Oliver

 

Please share your outdoor sightings and thoughts: e-mail me at johnbates2828@gmail.com, call 715-476-2828, snail-mail at 4245N State Highway 47, Mercer, WI, or see my blog at www.manitowishriver.blogspot.com