A Northwoods Almanac for April 25 – May 8, 2025 by John Bates
Home Grown National Parks
Planting time is on the horizon! If we want to attract wildlife to our properties, we all need to get on board with planting native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers. I’ve emphasized planting native species in the past (harped on it might be more accurate) for one simple reason – native plants co-evolved over millennia with our native insects, birds, and other animals, and non-native plants did not. The upshot of that? For instance, most of our native insect fauna cannot, or will not, use non-native plants for food. Thus, insect populations in areas with non-native plants will be smaller than in native plant areas, and a land without insects is a land without most forms of higher life.
Aren’t fewer insects a good thing? Nope. Insects are great at converting plant tissues to insect tissue, and a large percentage of the world’s fauna depends entirely on insects to access the energy stored in plants.
Birds are the best example – 96%, or nearly all of the terrestrial bird species in North America, rely on protein-rich insects to feed their young.
Entomologist Doug Tallamy has written and spoken on this topic for decades, and his work has helped spawn the movement for restoring the habitats where we live, work and play – our lawns, gardens, woods, shorelines, et al – by planting native species.
Tallamy calls this “reconciliation ecology.” He cites study after study that show the vital role of planting yards and gardens with native plants as the best means of saving wildlife.
Recently, he coined the name “Homegrown National Park” to describe making a difference in and around our homes.
He writes, “Our National Parks, no matter how grand in scale, are too small and separated from one another to preserve (native) species to the levels needed. Thus, the concept for Homegrown National Park, a bottom-up call-to-action to restore habitat where we live and work, and to a lesser extent where we farm and graze, extending national parks to our yards and communities.”
On his website (see homegrownnationalpark.org), Tallamy lists those native plants that are regional “keystone species” (the most productive) for wildlife, All you need to do is type in your zip code, and a list comes up of the most important species you can plant in your area.
Although Tallamy has written extensively about the large array of species that are of benefit to specific wildlife, I was surprised that the list on the website is constrained to a relatively small number. There’s a lot more species that we all can consider planting.
And remember it’s not just about food that plants provide. Wildlife species utilize plants for cover, too – for safety, for raising young, for protection from the weather, for breeding, and so on.
Here are the species of highest wildlife value I suggest you consider for planting on your property. For fruiting or masting trees, I recommend planting red oak, white birch, black cherry, pin cherry, crabapple, juneberry, and mountain ash, along with conifers like white pines, white cedar, and white spruce for cover and seed cones.
For shrubs, consider planting elderberry, nannyberry, winterberry, maple-leaved viburnum, highbush cranberry, dogwoods (red-osier, pagoda, gray), wild rose, blueberry, grapes, woodbine, and sumac, and sweet gale along shorelines.
For groundlayer herbaceous plants, consider trying columbine, swamp milkweed, butterfly weed, common milkweed, jewelweed, sunflowers, coneflowers, bee balm/wild bergamot, asters, and black-eyed Susans.
And again, make sure you plant native varieties specific to our area and not cultivars or exotics.
Sandhill Crane Count
As we have done for over three decades, Mary and I paddled a section of the Manitowish River on 4/12 to count sandhill cranes as part of the Midwest Sandhill Crane Count. We were on the river shortly after 6 a.m. with the temperature at 28°, but the wind was light, which made all the difference in our handling the cold. The river level was quite low for this time of year, but not unexpected given how little snow we had this winter.
The highlight was the number of trumpeter swans we encountered – 14! The cranes were far more circumspect, with “only” six being heard in the distance – three pairs duet calling from different areas along the river.
Numerous song sparrows sang along the way despite the cold. And as always, being on the river so early in the morning and so early in the spring was absolutely beautiful.
Sightings – FOYs (First-of-Year)
4/12: Joan Galloway reported seeing the FOY eastern phoebe in her yard.
Later that same day on Powell Marsh, we saw our FOY ring-necked ducks, great blue herons, and rough-legged hawks.
4/12: Again on Powell, we saw our FOY Wilson’s snipe, American widgeon, and a lifer for us – a Ross’s goose.
4/13: On Powell, we were fortunate to see our FOYs northern flickers, northern pintails, green-winged teals, hooded mergansers, northern shovelers, and a fabulous view of a peregrine falcon sitting on the marsh grass in perfect view of our scope. And we heard our FOY spring peepers.
4/15: Amidst the cold and new snow on Powell, we found our FOYs American coot and a small flock of greater yellowlegs .
4/16: One more time on Powell, we saw our FOYs buffleheads, blue-winged teals, and several swallows (couldn’t get a good enough look to ID the species).
Ross’s Goose
As noted above, we initially misidentified the Ross’s goose on Powell for a snow goose – they’re very similar in shape and coloration, but the Ross’s is overall much smaller. I have to admit Ross’s goose wasn’t even in my consciousness to consider, which made it all the more enjoyable to have our misidentification corrected and converted into a species we had never seen before.
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| Ross's goose |
So, what makes the Ross’s goose of interest? Well, the species wasn’t described in detail for science until the later 1800s, and their arctic nesting grounds remained unknown for another 80 years until Angus Gavin, a manager with the Hudson's Bay Company, located them in the Perry River region of the central Canadian Arctic in 1940.
The Ross's goose formerly only wintered in central California, and was sold in California markets between 1880 and 1913. So many were killed during this period that they were thought to be threatened with extinction.
Hunting of the Ross's Goose became illegal in 1931, but poaching and incidental killing helped keep numbers to only 2,000 to 3,000 into the early 1950s, but enforcement of hunting laws and protection of habitats eventually helped the birds recover.
Now, over the past few decades, the bird has expanded its range and its numbers so much so that the continental population is estimated to exceed 2 million birds! And, as with many good things, their numbers, along with the equally expansive population of snow geese, have grown too large, and both species are seriously impacting arctic wetland habitats. Liberalized hunting regulations are attempting to bring the numbers under control, but with limited success.
So, why was this bird named after some guy named Ross? Well, the Ross's Goose was named in 1861 after Bernard Rogan Ross, a Hudson's Bay Company clerk and chief trader at various forts owned by the company in what was called in those pre-Canada days, The North-Western Territory and Rupert's Land. Ross was a keen naturalist who sent hundreds of specimens to the Smithsonian in Washington and the British Museum (Natural History) in London, along with excellent notes on the habitats and nesting habits of each species that he collected.
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| Range map for Ross's goose |
Oldest Known Common Loon Returns on 4/11!
ABJ, the oldest known banded common loon, has returned once again to his natal grounds at the 95,000-acre Seney National Wildlife Refuge in the U.P. of Michigan. He was banded as a chick in 1987 and turns 38 this summer. His former mate of 25 years, Fe, who has yet to return, was banded as a breeding adult in 1990 and may be at least 39 years old.
It took ABJ ten years before he acquired a territory and his mate, Fe. They hatched their first chick in 1998 and their last chick in 2020. They were together for an unprecedented 25 years, raising a record number of 32 chicks, many of whom have returned as breeding adults to Seney, until the two unexpectedly split in the spring of 2022.
They’ve been spotted together briefly since then, but both have also been with other partners since the split. Fe has had other loon suiters while ABJ has been in territorial skirmishes with other males. He’s suffered a broken beak, has nested unsuccessfully with Daisy, a loon 20 years his junior, and had a “brief dalliance with” Aye-Aye, the loon that is said to have “precipitated” his split with Fe (I wonder what she did!).
ABJ begins his 35th season with the same intent all adult loons have: Claim a territory, find a mate, fight off challenges from would-be usurpers, share egg incubation duties for roughly a month, hatch one or two chicks, and diligently feed and protect them until they fledge in the early autumn.
In the meantime, common loons have returned to a number of area wetlands where the water has opened – we saw our first pair of loons on 4/15 on Powell Marsh – but most loons, as of this writing on 4/18, are still flying daily recon missions over frozen lakes impatient for the ice to disappear and open water to rein again.
Celestial Events
The new moon occurs on 4/27.
Planets in May include at dusk, Mars high in the southwest and Jupiter bright in the west-northwest.
Before dawn, look for Venus brilliant and low in the east, and Saturn in the east south-east.
Look after dusk on 5/3 for Mars 2° below the waxing crescent moon.
May 5 marks the mid-way point between spring equinox and summer solstice. Look before dawn for the peak Eta Aquarid meteor shower – expect 20 per or so hour.
Thought for the Week
“Familiarity with things about one should not dull the edge of curiosity or interest. The walk you take today is the walk you should take tomorrow, and the next day, and next. What you miss, you will hit upon next time. If Nature is not at home today, call tomorrow, or next week.” - John Burroughs
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
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