A Northwoods Almanac for 12/20/24 – 1/2/25
Wisdom Returns
Wisdom, a female Laysan albatross and the world's oldest known, banded bird, returned to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge on 11/27/24 and was soon seen incubating an egg. When she was banded in 1956, she was conservatively estimated to be five years old – the earliest age that the Laysan albatross reach sexual maturity. This corresponds to a hatching date of 1950-51 at the very latest, so she is at least 74 years old and could be even older!
Of the more than 250,000 birds banded since biologist Chandler Robbins banded Wisdom in 1956, the next oldest bird known is a mere 52 years old, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The US Geological Survey has tracked Wisdom since she was first tagged and estimates that she has flown over 3,000,000 miles since 1956, or approximately 120 times the circumference of the Earth. Over this time, the USGS has replaced her tag six times.
 |
| Wisdom overlooking her egg, USFWS photo |
Snowy Owl Update – A Big Influx!
Nick Anich in Ashland posted the following on 12/8: “Super quick check of the lake [Lake Superior] netted 6 Snowy Owls – 2 on the ice shelf at Maslowski [Beach], 4 at Bayview Park . . . Most of these birds are far out [on the bay] during the day, but start to come inland, move around, and sit around the lakeshore around 4 PM.”
In my last column, the numbers reported then suggested an average year. But these new numbers in Ashland alone suggest a possible irruption year.
I’ll keep you posted as more are reported. In the meantime, a trip to Ashland to look for snowies might be in order!
Ice-Up
From Woody Hagge: “Foster Lake [in Hazelhurst] froze over entirely on Tuesday, December 3. Earlier than I imagined given the warm autumn.”
Woody began keeping records in 1976 for ice-up, and has now compiled 49 years of data on ice-up and ice-out dates for 38-acre Foster Lake. The average date for ice-up on Foster is now Nov. 27.
Meanwhile, the Manitowish River below our house finally froze completely on 12/12 after our first truly cold night when we hit -14°F.
A Short History of Evening Grosbeaks
Every species of plant or animal has a story, but the story of evening grosbeaks is particularly unusual because they are relatively recent arrivals in Wisconsin – they’re an immigrant, though a native one. Until the mid-1800s, they were a common western bird, but were very uncommon east of the Rockies and rare east of Mississippi River. They appeared in the Midwest and east of the Great Lakes in a notable winter irruption in 1854-55, followed by sporadic irruptions over many decades, until finally reaching Rhode Island in the winter of 1910–1911.
By the 1920s, they had been recorded in winter in all 48 contiguous states and were a regular winter visitor in New England. Their expansion was largely attributed to the widespread planting of the lowly box elder in prairie windbreaks and as an ornamental in northeastern cities. The seeds of box elder persist on the tree through winter, allowing winter flocks of evening grosbeaks from the west to now overwinter in the east. Combine the box elder seeds in winter with huge spruce budworm outbreaks in the summer, and evening grosbeaks became relatively common from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic.
In fact, they became abundant. In the East, from about 1965 to the mid-’90s, huge numbers were common every winter all the way down to the Carolinas and sometimes farther south. Literally everyone who fed birds during that timeframe remembers having such large flocks at their feeders that many wished they’d go away, because they ate enormous quantities of bird seed and were bullies at the feeders.
But beginning in 1995, winter numbers in the eastern United States crashed. A 2008 study by the avian conservation group Partners in Flight found that evening grosbeaks no longer appeared at half of their historical sites, and that flock sizes had shrunk by more than a quarter. And the numbers kept shrinking. According to a 2019 article in the journal Science, the species suffered a 92 percent population reduction.
The American Bird Conservancy currently says the evening grosbeak is experiencing the steepest decline of any land bird in the continental United States and Canada.
The question, of course, is why. Surprisingly, relatively little is known of the species' life history, because during the breeding season, it’s secretive. Its courtship occurs with little song or display, and its nest is placed high in a tree in mostly northern boreal forests, making it very difficult to study. As a result, the reasons for its decline have been hard to pinpoint.
One of the very likely factors, however, is the chemical spraying for spruce budworms, which reduces the abundance of the budworms and other nearby insect prey. In high budworm population years, the caterpillars offer a feast for evening grosbeaks and other boreal birds, and likely contribute to higher reproductive success. Whether government and private timberland owners who routinely spray budworm “hotspots” with pesticides and other biological agents will reduce their spraying is an open question.
Take heart – there is some good news. You may recall that during the winter of 2022–2023, many people, including Mary and me, reported good numbers of evening grosbeaks coming to their feeders. This was one of the biggest years since the decline started in the ’90s.
Did that year presage a significant recovery? Well, the jury is still out. Researchers say that evening grosbeak populations in southern Quebec and the Gaspé Peninsula appear to be growing, while populations south of that appear to be in decline.
Evening grosbeaks once nested, albeit uncommonly, in northern Wisconsin. Mary and I used to have a pair of evening grosbeaks nesting somewhere near our home in Manitowish because we’d see juvenile birds at our feeders in the summer. I don’t recall the year we stopped seeing them, but it was sometime in the 1990s. Whether they will ever nest again in our area is truly unknown. Right now, we’d be very happy to just have them visit in winter.
 |
| evening grosbeaks lined up at the feeder in Manitowish, 11/30/22 |
Wisconsin Frog and Toad Survey Results from 2023
The nine species of frogs and toads that breed in our area are all now in full hibernation – wood frogs, spring peepers, chorus frogs, and gray treefrogs are underground in small depressions in upland forests where they freeze nearly solid; green frogs, bullfrogs, mink frogs, and leopard frogs are on the bottom of lakes and rivers laying on the sediments or in the muck and leaf debris, and American toads are buried below the frost line in loose soil.
So, the question every year is did they have a successful breeding season? To answer this, the WDNR began an annual volunteer frog and toad survey in 1984 because of concerns about declines in some frog species. Plus, frogs are good indicator species for the quality of habitats where they are found, so their numbers offer a “canary in the coal mine” perspective on environmental changes that may be occurring.
Mary and I have run one of the survey routes in western Vilas County since 1988 – 36 years now. We are just one of around 150 routes throughout the state.
The results are tabulated and sent to us in the late fall of the following year. So, here are the general findings for 2023: Of the twelve frog species found in the entire state (again, only 9 of these breed in the Northwoods), eight showed an increase in percent occurrence in 2023 from 2022 levels. These were the American toad, Blanchard’s cricket frog, boreal chorus frog, Cope’s gray treefrog, gray treefrog, northern leopard frog, spring peeper, and wood frog. Four species were below the previous year’s occurrence levels: American bullfrog, green frog, mink frog and pickerel frog.
Since these numbers change from year to year based on weather conditions – a wet spring, for instance, obviously offers far more breeding opportunities for frogs than a really dry one – what does 2023 really tell us?
Very little really. The key, like in all wildlife surveys, is to look at long-term data for trends, rather than jump to conclusions based on just a year or two of observations.
With that in mind, I recommend the purchase of a mammoth book that came out in 2022 – Amphibians and Reptiles of Wisconsin, edited by Joshua Kapfer and Donald Brown, published by the University of Wisconsin Press. At 1,173 pages and weighing nine pounds, you won’t be carrying it in your back pocket as a field guide. But you will be referring to it incessantly for its comprehensive job of summarizing the known research on all of our Wisconsin amphibians and reptiles.
So, for instance, how are spring peepers doing in Wisconsin? In a nutshell, “Despite reports from Wisconsin in the 1980s and 1990s of a small but statistically significant decline, recent Wisconsin Frog and Toad Survey data suggest that populations are stable to slightly increasing.”
The book will set you back $75, but if you want to know the population status of any of these species, how they’re adapted to the winter, what their breeding habitat is, who are their predators and their prey – and on and on – this is the book to buy.
Poetry
I’ve recently published my second book of poetry, The Birds are Singing in the Snow. The 90 poems celebrate the extraordinary diversity of life in the Northwoods and explore how we’re to honor the gift we’ve been given of living here (see www.manitowishriverpress.com). I want to also recommend three books of poetry that are to my mind beautiful, profound, and well worth your time: Wendell Berry’s This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems; Mary Oliver’sDevotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver; and Joy Harjo’s When the Light of the Word was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, an edited anthology of Native Nations poetry.
Thought for the Week and for the Ending of 2024
“Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.” – Rachel Carson (from The Sense of Wonder)
