A Northwoods Almanac for 8/30 – 9/12, 2024

 A Northwoods Almanac for 8/30 – 9/12, 2024  

 

Sightings – Bottle Gentians, Bryozoa Colonies, Trumpeter Swan Cygnets, Sandhill Cranes, Turtlehead

            Bottle Gentians: On August 12, I paddled Plunkett Lake with a large group from ICORE – Iron County Outdoor Recreation Enthusiasts. Besides just the pleasure of being with folks that love wild lakes, the botanical highlight of the trip was the sighting of bottled, or closed, gentians growing on moss-covered logs laying in the water. I rarely see bottle gentians, and I’ve never seen them growing of what I call “bog logs.” These are trees that fell into water decades ago, were slowly colonized by mosses, and then were eventually colonized by shoreland/water-edge plants.

            Closed gentian flowers require a physically strong pollination partner. Large native bumblebees are one of the few insects that can pull the petals apart to get down to the nectar, and they’re rewarded for their effort by discovering the high sugar content in the nectar – 40%! Almost equal to a Mountain Dew! One naturalist describes them as the “soft drink” of the native plant world. 

The flowers have blue tips until they’re pollinated, and then the tip turn white. The blue flower tips apparently signal to the bees that they’ve not been pollinated and there’s some very sweet nectar awaiting them. 

Thoreau wrote of their intense blue: “[It is] a transcendent blue . . . bluer than the bluest sky.”

And in 1917 Herbert W. Faulkener wrote this about the bumblebees that enter the flowers: “I have had the pleasure of seeing a bumblebee thus enter a closed gentian with an assurance that proved he was an old burglar, experienced in ‘breaking and taking.’”

bottled gentian, photo by John Bates

Bryozoans: Cathy Trochlell sent me an email with a photo of a bryozoa colony: “I found four of these really interesting jelly-like things in my lake. Three are the size of a child's head and the fourth is the size of a softball. Feels like hard rubber. Any idea what these are?” 

Every year someone asks me about these remarkably odd creatures. I assure them that they’re not alien brains, but rather tiny colonial animals that are fairly common in our lakes and streams. Some 20 different freshwater species occur in North America and form colonies that range from moss-like growths to basketball-size gelatinous masses. The large, hard gelatin-like masses are what we most commonly see, and are called Pectinatella magnifica. Each colony is made of many individual creatures called “zooids” that are microscopic animals with a mouth, digestive tract, muscles, and nerve centers. They feed by filtering tiny algae and protozoa through a crown of tentacles (lophophore), and most are found attached to plants, logs, rocks and other firm substrates. They’re harmless and indicate good water quality.

bryozoa, photo by Cathy Trochlell

Trumpeter swan cygnets: Bob Von Holdt in Preque Isle sent me a photo and a short note to tell me the six trumpeter swan cygnets that he’s been watching since May have survived. Mary and I have likewise been watching a family of three cygnets all summer on Powell Marsh, and they are getting quite large. Trumpeter swan cygnets typically fledge at around  100 days after numerous practice flights, so we should see them up in the air sometime in September. 

 Immature trumpeters usually overwinter with their parents and return with them to the general breeding area the next spring, but then have to make it on their own. 

trumpeter swans, photo by Bob Von Holdt

Sandhill cranes: Eric Benn sent a note with a photo of a pair of cranes meandering about the side of their home in Presque Isle. He wrote, “Mid-morning on Wed 17 July we glanced out the lake-facing windows of our home on the North end of Armour Lake in Presque Isle. Walking quite deliberately up the side of the rough grassy area beyond the garden retaining wall were a pair of Sandhill Cranes. They proceeded along the side of the house and briefly looked around the turn-around in front of the house and eyed the driveway . . . They crane-walked back along the side of the house and proceeded down the fairly steep incline through the ferns, shrubs & woods toward the lake.

“We enjoy hiking the trails/berms at Powell Marsh and enjoy sighting cranes (at a distance) there, and we periodically see them roadside or in fields away from the highways when we're south of Eagle River, Rhinelander, etc. But I was certainly not aware that they explore predominately wooded areas adjacent to our N Woods lakes.

“What a delight. I take this to be an encouraging sign that the crane population is robust enough that they are expanding or exploring areas where they aren't frequently observed.”

I responded: “Sandhills seem to be both more common and more tame these days. Folks have them in their back yards, we see them on the edge of busy roads, etc., and I don’t really have an explanation why. Cranes apparently are very quick to acclimate to human presence, because many don’t take off at first sight of us. I don’t know why they don’t spook, but we are grateful recipients!”                                 

Turtlehead: The beautiful and unusual flowers of turtlehead have come into flower, their presence always signaling the curtain soon to close on our summer. At first glance, they might appear to be a white closed gentian, but the flower petals are not fully closed like the gentians – the top lip arches over the lower lip giving the unique appearance of a turtle’s head.

Turtlehead’s scientific name Chelone glabra derives from Greek mythology and a nymph named Chelone who insulted the gods; in punishment, she was turned into a turtle. Other common names include codhead, fish mouth, shellflower, snakehead, and snake mouth. 

turtlehead, photo by John Bates

 

Hummers Departing

Our local hummers are typically long gone by September 10, unless the weather stays uncharacteristically warm. But please leave your hummingbird feeders up until the end of the month, just in case any migrating hummers are still coming through. The myth that hummers won’t leave if you don’t take down their feeders is just that – a myth. Hummingbirds haven’t survived for thousands of years in our area without knowing when it’s time to get out of town. Hummers can’t tolerate cold nights, and they know it. 

 

Nighthawks Coming Through

Nighthawks begin migrating in later August, but continue their migration into September. We have watched them an hour or so before dusk on many occasions. Their hawking of insects and darting flight easily give their identity away even at a long distance. 

Nighthawks are neither exclusively night creatures nor hawks, but they bear a strong resemblance to a falcon, and they’re most often seen in the early evening. They feed on the wind by simply opening their mouths wide and swallowing whatever flies in – think of them as a flying vacuum cleaner. They flit erratically like butterflies or bats, in quick, glancing angles, and exclusively hawk insects, particularly flying ants, beetles, and mosquitoes. You might have seen them at night around a streetlight, working over the flittering moths. 

Most are heading for mid-continental South America, wintering from southern Brazil to Argentina. 

 

Monarchs Also Soon on the Move

In September, the vast majority of eastern monarchs fly southwest, funneling through Texas and finally assembling by the tens of millions in the 9,800 to 11,000-foot-high mountains west of Mexico City. The monarchs’ bodies are nearly 50 percent fat by the time they arrive in Mexico, providing enough energy to tide them through the winter. This fat is also needed to fuel them on the first lap of their flight north in the spring. Considering the body weight of a butterfly, this amount of fuel seems impossibly inadequate, but it somehow provides the energy stores needed for survival. 

No monarch makes the round trip to Mexico and back to the Northwoods. The adults who left Mexico this spring began a migratory relay, stopping to lay eggs along the way and then dying. Their larvae hatched, pupated, and new adults emerged. The next generation then flew north and arrived in our fields and forests. Summer monarchs only live three to five weeks, compared to the eight or nine months of the overwintering monarchs, so two generations may be raised during the summer before the fall generation heads back to Mexico.

As a result, the adults heading south now have never seen Mexico. How they know the way is one of the many wonders of the natural world.

 

Hemlock Wooly Adelgid Coming Our Way

            The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development recently verified a new detection of invasive hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA) on trees on a private property in Leelanau County, which is in the northeastern corner of lower Michigan. With this new detection, Leelanau becomes the ninth county in the state with active hemlock woolly adelgid infestations, joining Allegan, Antrim, Benzie, Mason, Muskegon, Oceana, Ottawa and Washtenaw counties. At risk are the estimated 170 million hemlock trees growing in Michigan forests.

Eastern hemlocks grow from the southern Appalachian region into northern New England and as far west as northwestern Wisconsin. Hemlock wooly adelgids have wreaked havoc everywhere they’ve appeared, with most areas losing 80% to 90% of their hemlocks. 

Mild winters significantly contribute to the adelgid’s spread, yet another reason for doing everything we can to stop climate change.

 

Celestial Events

            It’s almost impossible to believe it’s nearly September, but here we are! For planet-watching in September, look after dusk extremely low in the west-northwest for brilliant Venus and for Saturn rising in the east-southeast. Prior to dawn, look for Mars high in the southeast and Jupiter high in the south.

            The new moon takes place on 9/2. Look after dusk on 9/5 for Venus about one degree above the waxing sliver moon. 

            We’re down to 13 hours of sunlight as of 9/7.

 

Thought for the Week

“Be so little distracted, your thoughts so little confused, your engagements so few, your attention so free, your existence so mundane, that in all places and in all hours you can hear the sound of crickets in those seasons when they are to be heard.” – Henry David Thoreau, 1851

 

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 8/2- 8/15/2024

 A Northwoods Almanac for 8/2- 8/15/2024  by John Bates 

World’s Most Productive Loon Breeds Again

            From the Seney National Wildlife Refuge: “Fe, the oldest documented Common Loon, hatched two chicks last week . . . the young were, at minimum, Fe’s 41st and 42nd offspring, extending her record for the species. Most of her prior chicks were begot with her long-term consort, ABJ, during their quarter-century partnership, but since their split in spring 2022, Fe has produced young in two of three breeding seasons. Prior to first coupling with ABJ in 1997, she hatched at least seven chicks with a color-marked male known as Dewlap. 

            “The qualifiers attending Fe’s age and lifetime productivity are necessitated by her initial banding in 1990 as a successful mother, when she was at least four years old, the threshold for Common Loon reproduction. As her earlier life history in the 1980s is a mystery, Fe could well be older than 38, and with more than 42 progeny to her credit.

            “One of Fe’s 2024 young perished, from an unknown cause, within days of hatching . . . of the roughly one in five [loon chicks] who do not live to fledge from Seney in the fall, most disappear early, when as downy buoyant corks they are most vulnerable to predators and other antagonists . . . Across 35 years of monitoring Fe has – assuming her second chick makes it to autumn – fledged 86% of her offspring.”

 

Stable Wolf Population in Michigan’s U.P. Over Last 14 Years

            The 2024 winter wolf population survey estimate from the Michigan DNR found a minimum of 762 wolves in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. “This year’s survey findings are statistically consistent with our wolf population surveys for the past 14 years,” said Brian Roell, the DNR’s large carnivore specialist. “When a wild population reaches this stable point, it is typical to see slight variations from year to year, indicating that gray wolves may have reached their biological carrying capacity in the Upper Peninsula.”

            In other words, Michigan’s U.P. wolf population has achieved an equilibrium between availability of habitat and the number of wolves that habitat can support over time.

 

Wild Roses, Boneset and Spotted Joe-Pye-Weed

            I paddled Upson Lake in northern Iron County on 7/20 and was impressed by the abundance of wild roses along much of the shoreline. Mid-to-late July offers three of the most beautiful wildflower fragrances in the Northwoods: Wild rose, common milkweed, and spreading dogbane. Walking by an abundance of any of these with a slight wind to dance the perfume your way and that’s about as close to heaven as one can get.

Wild rose, photo by John Bates

            I also spied an array of boneset along a beaver dam that was holding back about three feet of water on the lake, water that is on its way down a short unnamed creek into the Potato River. Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) has always intrigued me because of its name. Was it really somehow used in the treatment of broken bones? In Mary Siisip Geniusz’s remarkable book Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask, she states that “boneset’s chief virtue is that it is specific to the periosteum tissue around the outside of a bone. When a bone is broken, this tissue may be cut. For the bone to regrow properly, this tissue has to be mended, and this plant helps the body do that.” 

boneset, photo by John Bates

            John Eastman in his book Swamp and Bog writes, “It reportedly became one of the most effective relief medicines during nineteenth-and early twentieth-century flu epidemics.” And it was used a treatment for “breakbone” fever, now called dengue fever, which was characterized by severe pain in the joints.

            Boneset is also known as “shield and lance plant” because of the way the leaves appear to be pierced by the stalk, the stalk acting as a “lance” to pierce the leaf’s “shield.” See the photo. 

            Joe-Pye-weed (Eutrochium maculatum) got its name as the Anglicized version of an Algonquian medicine man named Zhopai who used a combination of Joe-Pye and boneset to cure typhoid fever (read the full story of Zhopai in Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask). Joe-Pye usually rises six or more feet tall on wetland edges and produces 9 to 22 tiny pink to purple flowers in a flat-topped cluster.

Joe-Pyne weed, photo by John Bates

            Eastman notes that numerous Native American tribes “regarded the flowers as good-luck charms, especially effective for winning at gambling.” So, next time you head off to the casino to lose your mortgage money, try taking a bouquet of Joe-Pye along and see if that helps. You never know!

 

The Invisible Present

            UW Limnologist John Magnuson coined the phrase “the invisible present” to describe how we’re often unable to make sense of the present if we don’t have accurate data from the past. He was referencing environmental changes that happen outside of speeds and timeframes that go unperceived: A glacier retreating, a river or lake slowly losing fish, effects of DDT on songbirds, forests changing, loons declining, and on and on.

            Because our time scale is so short – our lifetime – and our memories are so fallible, we are limited in our ability to notice changes, and even more limited in interpreting cause-and-effect relationships. The changes are hidden to us – they’re invisible.  

            Magnuson said in order to make the present visible, we need accurate historical memory via long-term research, and the longer, the better. The longest continuous environmental record in the world is of the flowering date of cherry trees in Kyoto, Japan. From 812 AD to the present, 1212 years of data, the cherry blossom time series shows the average peak bloom date was relatively stable for about 1,000 years, from about 812 to 1800. But then, the peak bloom dates slope abruptly downward, revealing a shift earlier and earlier in the spring. In 2023, the peak cherry blossom happened on 25 March — the earliest date since recording began.

            Here in the Northwoods, Magnuson, along with many other scientists, was trying to answer broad questions like what is normal for a lake? What are average water levels, dissolved oxygen, various nutrient concentrations, fish populations, etc.?

            All of us non-scientists ask the same sort of questions: Weren’t there more birds at my feeders last year?  It seems rainier this year – is it? Is it rainier than a decade ago? Boy, the mosquitoes are terrible – are they worse than ever? What about ticks – were they even here 20 years ago? Seems like there were more fish here a decade ago – is that true?

            The problem with most scientific research is that it’s on a 3-year grant cycle for someone’s PhD or on the length that meets the requirements of a grant funder. A short timeframe is only a snapshot, and incapable of answering long-term questions. For instance, water levels are still high on lots of lakes in our area – is that normal? Well, yes! UW Trout Lake Limnology Lab has long-term data on lake levels showing that on average we go through 13-year cycles of high and low water (see the graph). We had very low water levels beginning in the early 2000s through 2012, but then our precipitation increased and water levels quickly shot back up. The result has been a dieback of many shoreline shrubs and trees, and an alteration of emergent and submergent aquatic vegetation that isn’t adapted to such continuous high water.

           

 Bottom line: We can’t understand historical change nor predict future change without long-term research. Without it, it’s like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle without the reference picture. 

 

Swamp Candles, A Native Loosestrife

            Swamp candles or bog loosestrife (Lysimachia terrestris) has come abundantly into flower, lighting up many wetland edges. Unlike purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) which often completely takes over a wetland, swamp candles are native and have no aspirations to conquer their plant neighbors.

Swamp candles, photo by John Bates

 

            Herein is the problem with common names. The two species are unrelated. A rose may be a rose by any other name, but not so with loosestrifes.

            The name Lysimachia was given in honor of Lysimachus, a bodyguard to Alexander the Great. Legend has it the Lysimachus pacified a raging bull by waving a branch of loosestrife in front of it, the plant being known for its calming properties over 2,000 years ago.

            According to more recent folklore, swamp candles were still said to have soothing powers over animals, leading people to tie a branch of the plant to the yoke of oxen to make them easier to handle.

 

July 21 and 22 Were The Hottest Days Ever Recorded on Earth

            Global temperatures hit the highest levels in recorded history on Sunday, July 21, and then were bested on July 22. On those days, triple-digit temperatures in the western United States fueled out-of-control wildfires, while around much of Antarctica, temperatures were as much as 22 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. 

            The historic days come on the heels of 13 straight months of unprecedented temperatures and the hottest year scientists have ever seen. The average temperature for the year is almost certain to exceed 2.7 Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels – surpassing what scientists say is the threshold for tolerable warming.

 

Celestial Events

            For planet watching in August, look after dusk for Venus very low in the west-northwest and Saturn rising in the east-southeast. Look before dawn for Mars and Jupiter both high in the southeast.

            The new moon occurs on 8/4.

            The midway point between summer solstice and autumn equinox takes place on 8/6.

            The famous Perseid Meteor Shower averages 60 meteors per hours and occurs from 8/10 to 8/13 with the peak during the predawn on the 12^th. The meteors are colorful, frequently leave persistent trains, and tend to strengthen in number as late night deepens into the wee hours before dawn, so make a point of getting up early. The shower is often best just before dawn.

            On 8/14, look for Mars just north of Jupiter in the early morning hours.

 

Thought for the Week

            “Everything depends, of course, on whether you think landscape is dead matter or whether you think it is a living presence.” – John O’Donahue