A Northwoods Almanac for 7/18-31, 2025
World’s Oldest Known Loon Still Producing Chicks
Thirty-five years ago (1990), a territorial female on a remote pool in the Seney National Wildlife Refuge in the U.P. was color-banded as the sixth adult common loon ever banded on the Refuge. She later came to be known as “Fe,” and that year produced one chick. At the time, she had to be at least four years old, which is functionally the minimum age of reproduction for common loons.
During that same July in 1990, “ABJ,” who in 1987 was among the first three loon juveniles color-banded at Seney, had returned to the Refuge as a breeding adult, and was embarking upon his search for a territory and a mate. Seven years later in 1997, he finally found a home territory by forcefully evicting the resident male with whom Fe had produced seven young between 1990-1996.
Over the following quarter century, ABJ and Fe produced 32 hatchlings. However, they parted ways in 2022, with Fe quickly finding a new partner and raising a chick. She then failed to breed in 2023, but rebounded with two chicks in 2024.
This year, in Fe’s second nesting attempt, two chicks emerged after nearly a month of shared incubation between her and an unbanded mate, her 43rd and 44th chicks that researchers know about.
“That researchers know about” is a key phrase, because remember that when she was banded, her age was unknown, but she had to be at least four years old. In the late 1980s, before Fe was banded, her territory was a productive one, and researchers think it’s likely that these hatchlings were also hers. So, at this point Fe’s actual lifetime tally of chicks could well be in the 50s.
And her true age is at least 39, but likely older.
Meanwhile, on a nearby pool, ABJ’s breeding season was once again less fruitful, but he’s still trying!
Black Terns
Mary and I recently paddled 513-acre Wabikon Lake, a gorgeous, shallow lake just a few miles east of Crandon in Forest County. We were scouting the lake prior to a trip we’re leading today (7/18) for the North Lakeland Discovery Center. A creek connects Wabikon to the 220-acre undeveloped Riley Lake to its south, so we had miles of wild shoreline to explore (Wabikon is 98% undeveloped).
Wabikon Lake SNA |
“Charismatic megafauna” abounded here, from bald eagles to great blue herons to common loons to trumpeter swans, but the best discovery was of a black tern colony on Wabikon.
Black terns are listed as endangered in Wisconsin, so seeing them is a privilege and a rare treat. They’re categorized as “S2,” which in the parlance of bird researchers means they are “imperiled in Wisconsin due to a restricted range, few populations or occurrences, steep declines, severe threats, or other factors.”
photo by Gordon Petersen |
In flight, they dart and flutter and zigzag like a swallow, and they don’t seem the least concerned to be around people. Their careening flight allows them to capture dragonflies, moths, and other flying insects, and they are adept at hovering over the water and then swooping down to pick insects from the vegetation or to capture small forage fish.
One doesn’t want to get too close to their semi-colonial nesting territory, however. They can get loud and aggressive, and will mob perceived potential predators, sometimes striking them, and may “defecate in flight with unpleasant accuracy.”
Needless to say, we avoided paddling close to the colony and tried to reassure them we were harmless and actually friends of the family.
Systematic surveys of black terns in Wisconsin were conducted in 1980-82, 1995-97 and 2009-11, and the researchers found a 70 percent reduction in the number of birds observed, and a notable reduction or disappearance of sites that formerly held breeding black terns.
A more recent four-year long survey found as of 2018 more than 2,300 black tern breeding adults at 115 colonies in 32 counties, with most of these colonies being from two to 25 breeding adults.
Arthur Cleveland Bent wrote beautifully about black terns in 1921: [They are] “a restless waif of the air, flitting about hither and thither with a wayward, desultory flight, light and buoyant as a butterfly. Its darting zigzag flight as it mounts into the air to chase a fluttering moth is suggestive of a flycatcher or a nighthawk; as it skims swiftly over the surface of the water it reminds me of a swallow; and its true relationship to the terns is shown as it hovers along over the billowing tops of a great sea of tall waving grass, dipping down occasionally to snatch an insect from the slender, swaying tops.”
Black terns nest amidst emergent vegetation in fresh-water wetlands, building flimsy, often floating nests that are easily destroyed by wind or changing water levels. On Wisconsin flowages and wetlands where water levels fluctuate, providing nesting platforms has proven to be really successful. In one study, black terns nested on 65% of nest platforms provided, and the platform-nesting pairs exhibited higher nest survival rates and hatching success during one year relative to natural nests.
Swarming Bees!
Mary and I tend two bee hives on our property in Manitowish, and on 7/5, we looked out a window to see bees pouring out of one of the hives into a rising funnel of tens of thousands of bees. We stepped outside just on the edge of the swarm and listened and watched as they eventually congregated in a young balsam fir tree next to our house. The branches were literally dripping with bees, and it was all a bit unnerving as well as amazing.
We knew intellectually and from working in the hives, that a healthy colony contains around 30,000 to 60,000 bees. But knowing that and seeing much of that number in the air all at once is two very different things. No picture we took can do it justice, but we did take some video that gives a sense of the swarm – see https://www.facebook.com/100011449936447/videos/1460337101649802
Swarms happen usually because the deeps where the queen and all the workers and drones reside become overcrowded. The queen typically then leaves with half of her offspring to relocate to a new home, leaving behind the other half to produce a new queen.
The swarm flies to a nearby location as an interim place to rest, while scouts start checking the area for a suitable new location. The scouts soon return, and somehow communicate the options to the colony who then “vote” on where to go (read the book Bee Democracy by Thomas Seeley for the whole amazing story).
Our bees chose differently, eventually flying back into their hive, likely because the queen, often a poor flyer, hadn’t followed them or had been injured or eaten. A colony without a queen is lost and will return!
The next day we went into our hive and removed four frames that were full of honey and/or brood and replaced them with four emptier frames to give the colony room to expand. We also added a second “super” above the deeps to provide more room yet. Hopefully that will ease the crowding.
Here’s some fun and amazing bee math. Each "deep" (just the name for the box where the queen and the rest of the bees live) has 10 frames in it. There are two sides to each frame, and each side if completely filled with bees could have 3,397 bees per side - that’s 6,794 bees per frame. If you had one deep 10-frame box filled with frames that were 100% covered with brood, then you would have 67,940 bees just in that one deep, and recall that there are two deeps per hive.
LOTS of bees, in other words, could have been in our swarm.
If that seems like a ridiculous number of bees, you need all those bees to make any substantial amount of honey. Last year, we spun out over 13 quarts of honey, about 39 pounds. How many bees did it take to produce this relatively minor amount of honey? Follow along.
One honey bee produces about 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime; 12 bees, therefore, can make a teaspoon; 36 bees can make a tablespoon; 576 will make a cup (16 tbsp in a cup); 2,304 will make a quart of honey (4 cups in a quart). A quart of honey weighs a little less than 3 pounds So, it takes 768 bees to make a pound of honey.
To make our 39 pounds last year? Around 30,000 bees worked to make that happen!
One last rather crazy fact: It takes 2 million flowers to produce one pound of honey, which is really hard to imagine, I know, but that’s what the research says.
Great Success for the Great Wisconsin Birdathon
This year’s Great Wisconsin Birdathon raised over $126,000 for bird conservation, a record total.
More than 620 birders from 39 counties participated, setting new records in both categories. From backyard feeders to birding by boat, a record high 283 species were counted, including sightings of 39 Species of Special Concern, 11 threatened species, and 9 endangered birds.
Mary and I participated in two counts: One driving and walking in various spots in southern Iron County and the other paddling on the Bear River as one of numerous rivers statewide that were counted via kayak or canoe.
The latest Wisconsin breeding bird atlas says that Wisconsin boasts 243 breeding species, so 40 of those species counted were still in migration, assuming every breeding species was found.
Check out the full 2025 species list at WiBirdathon.org.
Celestial Events
On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle landed on the moon, and Neil Armstrong left the first human footprint on the moon’s surface.
The new moon occurs on 7/24.
On 7/28, look after dusk for Mars about one degree above the waxing crescent moon. And in the pre-dawn hours of 7/29, the peak Delta Aquarid meteor shower occurs with an average showing of 15 to 20 meteors per hour.
Our days are now growing shorter by two minutes/day. Enjoy the evening light while we have it!
Thought for the Week
“There are some good things to be said about walking . . . Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details . . . To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.” – Edward Abbey
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