A Northwoods Almanac for 8/29 – 9/11/25

 A Northwoods Almanac for 8/29 – 9/11/25  

 

Early Frosts No Longer Early 

            The first frost of autumn occurs at a much later date these days than it did in recent decades – now typically mid-to-late September. I checked some of my notes to make sure my memory was correct on this, and here’s an example of what I found:

            “We had frosts on August 12 and 13 in 1990. Our last frost of ‘spring’ occurred on June 21 of that year, so we had a 52-day growing season. Consider that most of those 52 days were below average in temperature and often very cool at night. The end result was a gardener's nightmare on Manitowish Street. Our garden was mercifully laid to rest on August 12, and we were relieved to see it put out of its misery.” 

             We’ll see what happens this September. The day-to-day weather can always vary despite the climate changing over the long-term, so you we may yet get an earlier frost. But if was a betting man, I’d put my money on mid-to-late September.

 

Sightings – Merlins, Great Egret, Trumpeter Swans, A “Crèche” of Mergansers

            Bob Von Holdt sent me this note and a photo on 8/16: “All six trumpeter swan cygnets that were born in Presque Isle in May have survived and thrived.” Trumpeters are indeed thriving not only in our area but throughout the Northwoods with an estimated population in 2021 that exceeded 7,000. A more recent estimate suggest around 11,000.

            Judy Ruch sent me this note along with a photo of a pair of merlins: “This [merlin] pair was in our yard on July 30. The team doing a lake survey mentioned they had heard them on 7/29. So when I was on the porch at 5:20 AM, there they were. Two of this survey team are falconers so they were tuned in at the sound.  Pretty exciting.” Wisconsin’s merlin population appears to be on the increase, but the birds remain a “species of concern” and are monitored by the Wisconsin Natural Heritage Inventory Program.

            A great egret appeared at Powell Marsh in the third week of August, and as of this writing on 8/21, is still present. Great egrets are state-threatened. Wisconsin is on the extreme northern edge of their breeding range, so they are uncommon residents in southern Wisconsin rare in the central part of the state, and extremely rare up here. Great egrets nest in colonies ranging in size from several pairs to thousands of pairs, often in association with great blue herons, but they typically don’t forage further than 20 miles from their colony sites. The number of nesting colonies statewide has fluctuated from as few as five to as many as ten during the recent Breeding Bird Atlas work. In Breeding Bird Atlas II, great egrets were found at 15 sites in 10 counties, but with only two or three sites with over 10 breeding pairs. 

great egret photo by Bev Engstrom

            Joan Galloway sent me a photo of a female common merganser followed by a small navy of chicks. She noted, “Couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw this row of common mergansers swimming past our dock!  It looked like one adult female merganser leading 20+ young mergansers!” 

common merganser creche, photo by Joan Galloway

            Female common mergansers only lay a maximum of 12 eggs at a time (an average brood is 8 to 11), so it’s safe to say that not all of the babies are the offspring of this female. So, what’s happening here? The term for this process is “post-hatch brood amalgamation,” and the combining of families can occur through a number of methods. Chicks can be adopted, they can be aggressively kidnapped, or several broods may simply combine to form what’s called a “crèche,” with one or more of the adults acting as the day care teacher(s).

            The adults attending to the chicks perform only two real functions—they guard the young, and they guide them to good foraging areas and safe resting sites. Waterfowl chicks are highly “precocial,” meaning they’re born mobile and able to feed themselves. Thus, the adult parental duties for waterfowl are significantly less complicated than if their chicks were born immobile, with their eyes closed, and totally dependent on food provided by the parents, as is the case for all songbirds.

            Diving ducks like mergansers employ brood amalgamation most commonly, but Canada geese do so as well. 

            Why brood amalgamation occurs remains unclear. Broods may be combined as a result

of competition between females for brood-rearing areas, as a means of competing more successfully for food resources, as a means of reducing predation, or because birds with poor parenting skills or who are in poor condition simply give up their young to adults more capable of parenting them. 

 

Pelecinid Wasp

            Ken Larsen sent me the following email on 8/21: “Yesterday, I was walking on my driveway at our home on Strawberry Point Drive on Fence lake, and I saw an unusual insect barely alive on the ground. My long ago college Entomology class helped me to immediately identify it as a Pelecinid wasp, which while not uncommon in this area, is not often recognized as a member of the wasp family. They are a beautiful jet black in color, are very poor flyers and look somewhat like a damselfly when in flight.

photo by Ken Larsen

            “Most people would be afraid of the long ovipositer on the abdomen, incorrectly thinking it could sting them. However, that is not its purpose. This family of wasps are very important in the control of various beetle species, as they use this long ovipositor to reach an inch or two into the soil to deposit an egg on the back of underground beetle larvae as food for their young. As a result, they are a very important insect in the control of various destructive beetle species.”

            I was unfamiliar with pelecinid wasps, so kudos to Ken for helping us to see the reason for protecting something that most of us would otherwise likely try to kill.

 

Great Wisconsin Birdathon Results

            This year’s Great Wisconsin Birdathon saw Wisconsin birder lovers come together to raise $127,001 to protect Wisconsin’s birds. More than 620 birders made up a record-breaking 91 teams across 39 Wisconsin counties and spotted 283 bird species! 

            These donations support the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin’s Bird Protection Fund, which supports Wisconsin’s highest-priority bird conservation projects such as long-term bird monitoring, conservation of endangered birds, and restoring historic grasslands for grassland-loving birds.

 

Norway! Invasive Species on Their Native Soil

            Mary and I recently returned from 8 days in Norway, and whenever we visit a foreign country, I’m always curious to find their native plants that are considered invasive in our country. The list was pretty long: yellow hawkweed, birds-foot trefoil, tansy, chicory, mullein, purple loosestrife, burdock, St. John’s wort, reed canary grass, bladder campion, among others.   Most interesting, of course, is that these plants aren’t problems on their native soils, purple loosestrife being the best example. I saw it along shorelines in numerous places, but only a few were mixed in here and there with the other native plants, their purple plumes quite lovely when seen in proper proportion and not as a monotype. 

purple loosestrife in proper balance in Norway, photo by John Bates

            We’ve sent a few plant species from the U.S. their way as well that became invasive – common ragweed and the pond weed Elodea canadensis are two examples. 

            In terms of invasive birds here, mute swans, European starlings and house sparrows were common but not overwhelming in numbers, again fitting into their native ecosystem and balanced in numbers through coevolution over millennia.  

            The most exciting native bird species I saw there? Three pairs of great crested grebes, all with chicks, seen relatively close from my rented sea kayak. 

great crested grebes, photo by Andrew Parkinson

 

Ripening Wild Rice 

            Look for wild rice to be coming ripe here at the end of August. Wild rice beds ripen gradually, so beds can be riced over the course of several weeks.  

            If you’ve never tried ricing before, be sure to check with the DNR to see when the season is open, and to get a license. The rice falls easily when the rice is ripe. The seed heads “shatter,” meaning the seed simply falls from the plant when tapped.

            Even if you have no interest in ricing, rice beds are worth watching for the number of birds and mammals they attract. Waterfowl and blackbirds feast on the rice, as do muskrats. 

            Archaeological evidence suggests that wild rice has been an important food for native people in the upper Midwest for over 2,500 years.

 

Women and Water

            My wife, Mary Burns, recently spoke at the opening of her “Women and Water: Woven Portraits from around the World” exhibit at the Kenosha Public Museum. Her other exhibit, “Ancestral Women: Portraits of Elders from Wisconsin’s Twelve Tribes,” also opened the same day, making for a combined showing of 54 weavings. 

            I bring this up simply because her work speaks to things important to those of us who live here in the Northwoods – the conservation and protection of water, and the honoring of the stories of those who came before us. I’m certainly biased, but her work is worth seeing and the women’s stories are worth knowing.

            See https://museums.kenosha.org/kenosha-public-museum/special-exhibitions for more information.

 

Celestial Events

            For planet watching in September, look after dusk in the east for Saturn rising. Before dawn, look low in the east-northeast for Venus, and high in the east for Jupiter.

            The full moon – the “Leaves Changing Color Moon” or “Harvest Moon” – occurs on 9/7. That night there will be a total lunar eclipse, but it’s not visible over North America (hop a plane to Antarctica, Australia, Asia, the western Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, Europe, the eastern Atlantic Ocean, or Africa if you’d like to see it.)

            We’re careening headlong toward autumn equinox. We’ll be down to less than 13 hours of sunlight as of 9/7.

 

Thought for the Week

            “The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are our biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity – then we will treat each one with greater respect. That is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective.” – David Suzuki

            

 

A Northwoods Almanac for August 15 – 28, 2025

 A Northwoods Almanac for August 15 – 28, 2025  

 

Aquatic Flowers Rein!

In August, wetland flowers festoon the shorelands and shallows of our lakes, rivers, and wetlands in an artist’s palette of color, from purple bladderworts, pickerelweeds, and marsh skullcaps, to the yellow of pond lilies, water marigolds and horned bladderworts, to the white of white water lilies, arrowheads and pipeworts, to the reds of swamp milkweeds, smartweeds, and pitcher plants, and to the blues of blue flag irises, blue vervains, and monkey flowers. Every one of them has a story for those who take the time to learn it.

Some of my favorite flowers are those of arrowheads, though arrowheads display a less showy flower than many of our more vain species. Arrowhead flowers grace river edges and lakeshores from late July through mid-August, the male flower displaying three silky-white petals arranged in whorls of three high-up on a separate stem, while the female flowers also bloom in whorls of three, but lower on the stem and clustered inconspicuously in a head. 

The Northwoods hosts numerous species of arrowheads, the leaves varying dramatically from grass-leaved arrowhead (Sagittaria graminea) with its narrow to broad spoon-shaped leaves, to the broad-leaf arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia) with leaves true to its name – shaped like perfect arrowheads.

arrowhead, photo by John Bates

Arrowhead can grow completely submersed in several feet of water or up on muddy banks – the leaves appear to adapt themselves to the water levels. Ribbony leaves offer the least resistance to a water current, while broad leaves well above the water offer the most photosynthetic surface area. 

Sagittarius is, of course, the archer, and the image of his sharp arrows gave rise to the genus name Sagittaria.

European settlers gave arrowhead the name of duck potato, because of the small 1- to 2-inch potato-like tubers that form at the end of long subterranean runners. “Duck” potato refers to arrowhead's delectability as a waterfowl food. Trumpeter swans, black ducks, gadwalls, mallards, pintails, wigeons, wood ducks, canvasbacks, and an array of other waterfowl help themselves at the arrowhead table. Muskrats and beavers also relish the tubers, and even porcupines venture into the water to eat the leaves and stems. 

The Ojibwe called the arrowhead tubers “wapato.” Gathered in the fall, then strung and hung to dry in the wigwam, the tubers were later boiled like potatoes. 

Their use is nothing new. According to studies in the western U.S., people were eating arrowhead tubers 3,000 years ago.

 

Sightings – Merlins

            Our most exciting local sighting (first seen on 7/30) was of a pair of merlins careening over the wetlands below our house and later that day right over our driveway while we were talking with a friend. Earlier, I had heard a loud “ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki” out my office window, but it took numerous cries until my brain finally registered what I was hearing as a merlin. I raced outside with my phone and binocs, and the “Merlin” bird App (aptly named in this case) immediately confirmed the call as a merlin. A minute later, Mary spotted one perched at the top of a dead silver maple below our house undoubtedly watching our bird feeders for its next meal. 

merlin, photo by Tim Lenz

            I had always wished that the name “merlin” somehow was connected to King Arthur legends, but no, “merlin” derives from esmerillon, the Old French name for this species.

            Most of their songbird prey are captured in mid-air, with their hunting flights originating typically from perches where large areas can be scanned for prey. They’re even known to hunt cooperatively. One merlin flies down a tree corridor beneath the canopy and climbs to flush the birds, while the other flies behind and swoops in for the catch.     

merlin range map

                                                                                    

Deer Fly Mania

            Mosquitoes have been surprisingly less numerous this summer, for reasons that I can’t explain but am very grateful for. Deer flies, however, are another story. I’ve no idea if their numbers are up or down, but as far as I’m concerned, there are always too many of them.

            Deer flies mimic some of the life cycle of mosquitoes. Both begin life as larva in or near water. The adults of both families emerge from the water or mud with the males seeking out pollen and nectar while the females search for blood to nourish their eggs.

            They diverge in their ways after that. Mosquitoes are attracted to carbon dioxide (and heat and dark clothing), and bug sprays like DEET are effective because they create a chemical barrier on our skin. 

            But deer flies are mainly lured by movement, and less so by dark clothing, heat and CO2, which is why they have such big eyes – the better to see you, my pretty. So, they rely on sight, which means DEET or any other chemical spray does little to deter them. 

            The bite of a deer fly hurts more and lasts longer than mosquito bites. The females use scissor-like mandibles and maxillae to make a cross-shaped incision into our skin, then insert anti-coagulants from their saliva to prevent our blood from clotting, and finally lap up the blood. 

            They’re fast fliers, too – you can’t outrun them or even out-bike them. Speed just seems to excite them even more.

            The only control I’m aware of is the use of two-sided tape on the top of a ballcap. One side is duct tape, which is attached to your hat. The other side is skin-colored fly paper that ensnares the little beasts and doesn’t let go (see “Tred Not” deer fly patches in your local sport store). 

            Deer flies aren’t ankle-biters – they like to fly around your head for some reason – thus the reason for placing the tape on your hat. When you’re done hiking, simply roll up the tape and dispose of it in a waste can. 

            Deer flies always seem to be waiting for you when you get out of your car. What’s with that? Well, remember, they’re attracted to movement and heat. Consider sitting in your car for a couple minutes and letting the car cool before getting out, and the flies should be settled down.

 

What’s That Sweet Smell in the Woods?

            In late July, Mary and I began noticing in a few woodlands a sweet smell that didn’t seem to have any origin via a wildflower. We were perplexed, and then we remembered honeydew. 

            You may recall back in 2015 when a sticky sweet-smelling liquid seemed to be coating many peoples’ cars and outdoor furniture. I remarked then that it seemed like we were always walking through a Waffle House adrift in hot maple syrup. The cause? “Honeydew.” 

            Honeydew is the alias for the sticky, misty excretions made by aphids and scale insects that feed on sap in tree leaves. The insects take in much more sap than they can hold, and then exude the excess, the dew falling onto leaves, decks, cars, etc.

            The extent this summer of honeydew seems far less than a decade ago, but unless my nose is deceiving me, the aphids and scale insects are present this year, though in smaller numbers, and busily producing honeydew.

 

Nighthawk and Hummer Migration

            It’s nearly time for nighthawks to be migrating through our area – I usually think of August 20 as the time to start looking. They are most commonly seen near dusk over open lands and shorelines, or even right over highways where they’re feeding on insects that are attracted to the radiating heat of the asphalt. 

            What’s in a name? Nothing in this case. The name “nighthawk” doesn’t fit because nighthawks are most active at dawn and dusk, not night. And, like other members of its family, the common nighthawk is not related to the hawks. However, they are adept at catching insects, dipping and diving and careening around with a very wide, open mouth, effectively trawling the air. 

nighthawk, photo by Bev Engstrom

            Hummers will soon be on the wing, too, the males leaving before the females, and the juveniles lagging behind the females. Peak migration for the males is typically late August, but it depends on the timing of frosts.

range map for ruby-throated hummingbirds

            Migration of individuals from northern latitudes in North America is nearly synchronous with the peak flowering of jewelweed (aka spotted touch-me-not - Impatiens capensis), suggesting this flower provides an important nectar source during migration and may in fact influence its timing.

            Our first jewelweeds on our property came into flower on 7/26, but the plants often continue flowering until frost. 

 

Orb Weavers

            If you drive along wetlands on a late August morning with the sun just up, you will often see hundreds of glistening orb spider webs. Many orb spinners create a new web almost every morning, keeping the main foundation lines intact but laying down new radii and spirals.

            Orb weavers have very poor vision, experiencing the world mainly as a series of web vibrations. However, they're fine-tuned enough to easily distinguish between a human wiggling a stick in the silken threads and the struggles of an insect that's trapped in the lines.

            How do spiders produce such remarkably symmetrical webs? They are thought to make measurements as they probe along the web with their legs. One naturalist suggests testing this hypothesis by removing one front leg (out of a total of eight) with a tweezers, and observing changes in the ensuing web structure. This seems a bit extreme, so I think I'll just take his word for it.

            Here's a tip for photographers. Pat some cornstarch through a cloth to produce a powdery cloud that will settle on the sticky web, highlighting the strands.

 

Celestial Events

            The new moon occurs on 8/23. Our days continue to grow shorter by more than three minutes per day. By 8/28, we’ll be down to 13 hours and 29 minutes of sun, or 56% of the day.

 

Thought for the Week

            “I know that I have life only insofar as I have love.” - Wendell Berry, This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems

 

NWA for 8/1/25

 A Northwoods Almanac for August 1 – 14, 2025  

 

Goldenrods!

            I found several stands of goldenrods in flower on July 18, which for me is a harbinger of the coming autumn. We are blessed with at least 10 species of native goldenrods in northern Wisconsin, which are somewhat challenging to identify, so I usually just default to the generalized ID of “goldenrod.” 

            BTW, goldenrod is insect pollinated, thus its pollen is NOT wind-dispersed and can’t be blamed, as it often still is, for anyone’s hay fever.

 

August

            “Sunrise comes later now, and dusk creeps over the hills earlier in the evening . . . Another month and the Autumn equinox will be here and daylight will equal darkness, briefly.  The year has turned, noticeably, and Summer is walking down the long hill toward Autumn and Winter beyond.  

            “If the season is already moving downhill, why do the temperatures remain here on the summit? The reason is that it takes the earth a time to warm up, and it does not cool off in a moment. But the trees show the true season, and so do the grasses in the meadow and the tall weeds at the roadside . . . Another Summer sweeps away as dusk settles in the valleys a few minutes earlier one day after another.” –  Hal Borland,  Sundial of the Seasons     

 

Monarchs, Viceroys, and Batesian Mimicry

            I’ve confused viceroy butterflies with monarch butterflies many times. They look alike, for sure, but viceroys have a black line crisscrossing the veins on both hind wings, and they’re smaller. Still, it’s a tough ID when they’re flitting around and not offering good looks of their wings. 

monarch on the left, viceroy on the right

            I’ve recently realized I’ve also confused the natural history of the viceroy. Viceroys have been characterized as a textbook example of “Batesian mimicry,” which is when a harmless species mimics the appearance or behavior of another species that’s distasteful or dangerous to predators. Monarchs taste terrible to predators and can make them ill because of a toxin occurring in their body via their consumption of milkweed plants. The story in ecology textbooks has always been that viceroys evolved as a close copycat of monarchs as a simple means to deter predators that would otherwise find them perfectly edible. The “Batesian” part comes from the English naturalist Henry Walter Bates (no relation, I assure you), who worked on butterflies in the rainforests of Brazil.

            Turns out, however, that viceroys are distasteful, too, and perhaps even more so than monarchs. Rather than eating noxious milkweed, viceroys feed on the leaves of willows and aspens, both of which contain salicin, which is converted into salicylic acid, the bitter ingredient in aspirin.

            Viceroys sequester the salicylic acid in their tissues, causing both the caterpillar and the adult butterfly to taste awful, too, but just in a different way than monarchs.

            So, viceroys aren’t a case of Batesian mimicry, but rather “Müllerian mimicry,” which is when two species evolved separately but converged in their appearance to mimic the other and thus reinforce a signal to predators to stay clear. Predators only need one taste of either species to quickly learn that anything that looks like one of these is worthy of avoidance. 

            Just to add a bit of complexity to the story, the two species don’t look alike in the caterpillar and chrysalis stages. The monarch butterfly’s caterpillar is boldly colored as another easy warning to a predator to cease and desist its attack. 

            But a viceroy’s caterpillar and chrysalis stages are cryptically colored, both looking a lot like bird droppings, which aren’t on anyone’s menu, so visual predators like birds don’t bother to even try them.

            Evolutionary adaptations! They never fail to amaze me.

 

Master Naturalist Programs

            Wisconsin’s Master Naturalist program promotes awareness, understanding, and stewardship of the natural environment by developing a network of well-informed volunteers dedicated to conservation service within their communities.

            To become a “Master Naturalist,” individuals complete 40 hours of expert-led training at locations across the state. Equipped with new knowledge, experiences, and connections, Master Naturalists then go on to serve citizen science and education efforts throughout Wisconsin. 

            Each training is unique based on the location, field experiences and the guest experts, but the key concepts remain consistent from training to training. Once trained, Wisconsin Master Naturalists record 40 hours of service and 8 hours of advanced training each year to maintain certification.

            Typically, 10 to 15 Master Naturalist trainings are held across the state annually, and their locations, dates, and schedules vary based on the host organization. In our area, both Trees for Tomorrow in Eagle River and the North Lakeland Discovery Center in Manitowish Waters host annual trainings.

            I get to lead hikes every year for both trainings, and last week I hiked the Star Lake nature trail with 19 participants, all of whom had to tolerate, and eventually be soaked by, rain.

            Still, we had a wonderful time together, in large part because of the many stories to be told of the logging history and ecology of the Star Lake area. 

            The first train ran from Minocqua to Star Lake in 1895, opening the area to intensive logging, but the site needed a sawmill. Well, a sawmill in McKenna, Jackson County, Wisconsin, owned by Williams and Salsich, had closed in September of 1894, was torn down, and then trained to Star Lake and reconstructed in 1895.

            The town of Star Lake rose in a breath, including a sawmill, a planing mill, warehouses, company offices, a hotel, a boarding house, 84 company houses, a general store, a railroad depot, a three room school, a town hall, a doctor's office, and a barbershop.

            The Star Lake mill was built on the peninsula jutting into the lake, and for 11 years ran like gangbusters. The mill sawed its last log in 1906 after turning out 525 million board feet in 11 years. 

Star Lake saw mill

            What does that number mean? On average, it takes 6.3 board feet of lumber to build one square foot of a house. For ease of the math, let’s use a house of 1,600 board feet, which would use about 10,000 board feet of lumber. Divide 10,000 into 525,000,000, and you get 52,500 homes that could have been built from lumber sawn at Star Lake.

         Extensive forest fires charred the area in 1903 and 1908, and a 1910 fire burned throughout the summer.

         Between 1908 and 1910, most of the town was torn down, packed up, and trained to Columbus, WI, where it began yet another life. 

            Thus in the course of 15 years, 1895-1910, the Star Lake area went from an old growth forest and boom town to a cutover forest and virtual ghost town, just one of the reported 155 ghost towns in Wisconsin.

            Today’s tiny town of Star Lake has a delightful general store, two state campgrounds, the Star Lake nature trail, and on the other side of the lake, the Plum Lake Hemlocks State Natural Area, all well worth visiting.

 

North Lakeland Discovery Center Annual Report 

            The North Lakeland Discovery Center began in 1995 when a group of community and school leaders envisioned repurposing the former Youth Conservation Corps Camp (YCC) at Statehouse Lake in Manitowish Waters into an environmental center. Initially leased from the DNR for $1 annually, the Center was established as a nonprofit in 1998 and has grown into a thriving outdoor learning facility with a wonderful diversity of innovative programs and citizen science initiatives,

            The Center recently issued an impressive annual report highlighting the impacts it made in 2024:

270 public programs serving 3,360 participants

19 Eco Series programs served 142 children from 4 to 11 years old

44 field education days serving 1,600+ students pre-K to high school

43 traveling naturalist programs serving 12,460 participants

            So, kudos to the NLDC, and to those who financially support the Center and those who serve as volunteeers, for making a difference in environmental awareness in the Northwoods! 

 

Wolves and Cattle – The Stats

            In the continuing discussion of the impact of wolves in Wisconsin, retired wildlife biologist Peter David related the following numbers (which I checked and confirmed): The number of cattle killed or maimed by wolves in WI in a typical year is about 40, which is the number that on average go to slaughter in Wisconsin every 20 minutes.

Cattle killed or injured by wolves in Wisconsin

             As of January 1, 2025, the total cattle and calf inventory in Wisconsin was estimated at 3.25 million head. The most recent statistics I can find for the Wisconsin harvest of cattle for beef was approximately 1,379,400 cattle in 2019. 

            A more recent statistic from 2023 shows wolf-caused livestock losses occurred at about 20 Wisconsin farms. Currently around 13,000 Wisconsin farmers engage in beef production.

            For anyone who loses any animal in any unfortunate manner, it’s a real loss. I don’t wish to minimize that. But the significance of loss via wolves to the overall beef industry is virtually nil.

            Peter noted also the fact that the losses for cattle have not trended upwards, since 2005 while the wolf population went from roughly 400 to around 1,200 today. This suggests that most wolves have learned how to avoid people.

 

Celestial Events

            From 49 years of Woody Hagge’s data on 37-acre Foster Lake in Hazelhurst,  August 6 marks the midway date between ice-out and ice-up. August 7 marks the midway point between summer solstice and autumn equinox.

            The full moon, known variously as the Sturgeon Moon/Corn Moon/Ricing Moon occurs on August 9.

            Every summer, Earth drifts through the dusty trail of Comet Swift-Tuttle, and the result is one of the most spectacular meteor showers of the year. This shower can produce up to 75 meteors per hour under dark skies. The Perseid meteor shower peaks on August 12, and even though there will be some moonlight washing the sky, it’s still worth taking the time to look for them. Find a dark sky, let your eyes adjust, and enjoy one of the best meteor showers of the year!          That same early morning look in the northeast for Venus and Jupiter just one degree apart.

 

Thought for the Week

            “When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us . . . So much depends on how we look at things. The quality of our looking determines what we come to see. Too often we squander the invitations extended to us because our looking has become repetitive and blind. The mystery and beauty is all around us . . . When the imagination awakens, the inner world illuminates. We begin to glimpse things that no one speaks about.” – John O’Donahue, from the book Beauty: The Invisible Embrace