A Northwoods Almanac for 8/14-27/26

 A Northwoods Almanac for 8/14-27/26  

 

Old-Growth Sturgeon!

            I love old-growth forests, have hiked in many of them, and then subsequently written extensively about them. One quote that has always stuck in my mind is this: “Old trees are the only terrestrial organisms to have lived through the entirely of the Industrial Age” (N. G. Phillips). 

            That still holds true, but according to a recent study, there’s an aquatic species that also lived through all of the Industrial Age. Researchers from the Michigan DNR, Michigan State University, Michigan Technological University and the Wisconsin DNR now estimate that female lake sturgeon may live to be 427 years old, while males may live up to 279 years (“Lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) growth and longevity estimated from adult capture–mark–recapture data,” Journal of Fish Biology, April 2026). Previous studies had estimated the species lived up to “only” 150 years.

            The research team analyzed 44 years of capture-mark-recapture data from five Great Lakes populations. Because fish, unlike humans, continue growing throughout their lives, scientists could repeatedly recapture tagged sturgeon and thus estimate how long it takes a sturgeon to reach a particular size based on its growth rate. The team found that longevity varied among the five different populations, ranging for 63-inch-long male sturgeon from 90 to 279 years and for females reaching 71 inches long from 99 to 427 years.

photo by WDNR

            Lake sturgeon first appeared in the fossil record at least 100 million years ago and are often called living fossils. This data provides remarkable new insight into sturgeon survival rates, and will likely impact how sturgeon populations are managed long into the future.

 

Great Wisconsin Bat Count | 2026 Results

            Scientists, landowners and volunteers spent a few summer evenings this year observing bats as they left their roosts both before and after the newborn pups took flight. This year’s post-flight count included over 120 roosts and more than 20,000 bats.

            Two species dominated the count: Little brown bats totaled 16,865 individuals at 57 sites, while 3,714 big brown bats individuals were counted at 67 sites.

            These numbers are down a tad from last year’s totals of 20,944 little brown bats and 4,570 big brown bats. However, a few counts are still coming in so that may push the numbers up another few thousand bats. 

            Why the lower number? Many roost monitors noted many fewer or no bats at some sites, possibly because the very hot conditions caused them to seek cooler places as soon as the juveniles were able to fly. Big brown bats are travelers, moving around among sites depending on what’s going on with temperature, time of year and even parasites. They sometimes even return to a site in large numbers later in the season.

            Relative to the decrease in little brown bats, researchers suggest that the cold weather in May and June may have limited available food for pregnant bats and forced them to use up energy to stay warm, thus reducing their reproduction.    

            Seventeen thousand little brown bats is still worth celebrating given how devestating white-nose syndrome (WNS) was to bat populations. Perhaps this is the new normal and the bat colonies have now recovered to a relatively stable number. 

 

Bryostatin 

Nearly every summer I get a call or two from folks who have come across in a lake a large mass of hard “jello” the size of a softball and larger. These organisms are bryozoas, and I often have to 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. 

photo by John Bates

The large, hard gelatin-like masses that we most commonly see 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 (lophophores), and most are found attached to plants, logs, rocks and other firm substrates. 

            I bring this up, because I recently was introduced to a man who worked as a chemist for a pharmaceutical company, and he specifically worked on developing a drug called bryostatin-1. What intrigued me about this drug is that it’s a powerful, marine-derived antiparasitic extracted from the bryozoan Bugula neritina and was being investigated for its broad anti-cancer properties, its potential to enhance the effectiveness of other chemotherapies, and for potential use in Alzheimer’s disease.

            The drug needed to be synthesized in a lab because to get eighteen grams of bryostatin took fourteen tons of B. neritina (0.00014% yield), which is hardly a sustainable yield, and certainly harmful to this marine organism.

            I’m amazed that someone thought to test this species of bryozoa for its medical properties and then found it’s potential uses - that’s a pretty crazy discovery.

            

Circumnutation - Vining Grapes, Woodbine, and Oriental Bittersweet

            Two decades ago, we planted grapes along a trellis at the entrance to our house, and every year they send out vines for many dozens of feet in all directions. Grapes utilize tendrils that curl tightly around a branch or trellis without a set growth pattern - they just seek out the closest prop, wrap a tendril around it for support, and move on to the next prop. 

            Their rapid growth exceeds everything else on our property except for two other vining plants - Virginia creeper and American bittersweet, both native species. 

            All plants move, slowly swaying from side to side seeking sunlight, a process called nutation. Charles Darwin was fascinated by climbing plants and described circumnutation, a type of nutation in which plants move in a circle or ellipse. The terminal shoot initially reaches out parallel to the ground, then sweeps around in increasingly large circles, searching until it comes into contact with a support and starts to climb. The movement is caused by plant organs growing at different times and at different rates throughout the day. As the plant grows, opposite sides expand at different rates, causing the tip to sway in loops, ellipses, or zigzags.

            Vining saves the plant the energy it would otherwise have to expend to develop its own supportive tissue to reach sunlight - it minimizes the investment.

            Vines use a variety of methods to climb depending on species. The tendrils of Virginia creeper even have adhesive pads at the end of their tendrils. 

    American bittersweet climbs by twining its entire stem around the trunk or branch of a tree. It’s super aggressive, and is known to climb into the crown of mature trees to a height of at least 65 feet. 

            The problem that bittersweet presents is that it basically strangles a tree. The outward growth of the tree eventually tightens the constriction of the vine, inhibiting the downward flow of carbohydrates from the leaves and can kill the tree. Sometimes, the vine dies first, and leaves a disfigured tree that looks like a corkscrew.

            I pull bittersweet out wherever I find it, but birds like the fruits, so it readily gets distributed around our property.

 

Wake Surfing - Arrogance and Disdain

            The wake surfing issue has taken a new turn. Some 90 townships statewide have enacted ordinances restricting the use of wake surf boats on their respective lakes. However, the DNR states it cannot enforce local town ordinances against wake surfing because state law gives the DNR jurisdiction only over statewide regulations, leaving the enforcement of localized municipal rules strictly to local law enforcement or town-appointed patrols. The problem is most townships have little or no budgetary ability to enforce the ordinances.

            So, some wake surfers on our lakes are thumbing their noses at the ordinances and continuing to wake surf illegally wherever they want. And doing so, I’m told, with middle fingers contemptuously raised to anyone opposing them. Add on their filing of lawsuits against the townships claiming their God-given rights are somehow being trampled, and we have a major issue crying for a solution.

            The question thus arises as to what communities can do to stop this arrogant disdain for everyone else living on our lakes. 

            Until the state finally issues the appropriate legislation (boats must operate at least 700 feet from shore and in at least 30 feet of water with large fines for transgressions), I don’t have an answer other than for townships to hire patrol boats and issue fines that grow in size as the tickets accumulate. However, that’s prohibitively expensive for townships already strapped budgetarily. 

            Yet something has to be done. Without the rule of law, where are we? The wake surfers feel they are immune to the laws and immune to any moral accountability to their neighbors. What should be our collective response to those who feel they are above the law?

 

Celestial Events

            On 8/15, look after dusk for Venus 2°above the waxing crescent moon. 

            By the 24^th, our days are growing shorter by more than 3 minutes a day.

            The full moon, the Sturgeon Moon/Ricing Moon/Corn Moon, occurs on 8/27.

 

Thought for the Week 

            “What makes life livable is our ability - our willingness - to move through the world wonder-smitten by reality. The most wonderful thing about wonder is that it knows no scale, no class, no category - it can be found in a geranium or in a galaxy, in the burble of a brook.” - Maria Popova

 

 

 

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 7/31 - 8/13/26

A Northwoods Almanac for 7/31/26  - John Bates

Spruce Budworm Killing Balsam Trees Now for Well Over a Decade

            A reader in Eagle River sent me an email inquiring about balsam trees on her property that are showing signs of stress on the tips of their branches. She also noted she had seen many other balsams throughout the area that appeared to be affected.

            I thought it very likely that this was due to spruce budworm, but to be sure about forest pests or tree diseases, I always email Linda Williams at the Woodruff DNR (Linda.Williams@wisconsin.gov). Linda is the “forest health specialist” there.I’ll simply quote from the information she sent me: 

            “Spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana) is a native insect that has periodic outbreaks in the Midwest. Outbreaks occur every 30-50 years, and each outbreak lasts for an average of 10 years. Our previous outbreak ran from 1970-1980, and our current outbreak began approximately in 2012. Unfortunately, it appears populations are still going strong, and we are unsure when the population will collapse again. 

            “Spruce budworm preferentially feeds on current-year needles of balsam fir and spruce, [though] balsam fir is most heavily impacted . . . Tiny caterpillars overwinter on the tree and feed on expanding buds and new needles in May. The caterpillars spin silk webbing and clip needles, turning damaged foliage rusty reddish-brown, giving forests a scorched look.

            “After three years of significant defoliation, or additional years of lighter defoliation, you may see dieback in the tops of trees. Repeated defoliation causes top mortality and eventually whole-tree mortality.”  

            Tens of thousands of balsams, as well as spruces, have been killed by spruce budworms across the Upper Midwest and in Canada, amply demonstrating that just because an insect species is native doesn’t mean it isn’t destructive.

            Crucially, after the balsams and spruces have died, they become perfect torches for spreading a lightning-strike fire, which leads us to the next concern. 

 

Fires in Canada, Smoke in the U.S.

            Canada's boreal forest is one of the largest intact forests on Earth, covering about 1.3 billion acres - an area roughly the size of the entire United States. Most of this forest has no roads, no towns, and virtually no permanent human presence, meaning most of it is inaccessible - just check a map.  

            In July, wildfires, mostly sparked by lightning deep in these remote wilderness areas, arose and were eventually detected by satellite, often days after they began and without effective means to fight them.

            The smoke billowed down into the U.S., and suddenly numerous politicians, national and local, became expert foresters, castigating Canada for poor forest management. They revived the long-standing notion that such fires were due to fuel build-up that occurred because Canadian foresters weren’t thinning enough forests and or weren’t cutting enough timber. 

            The facts are, of course, different. Industrial logging in Canada clear-cuts more than one million acres every year from the boreal forest. Government reports from Natural Resources Canada note that the annual industrial harvest remains relatively steady year-over-year.

            To be fair regarding the mismanagement debate, in some forest systems, the suppression in particular of natural cyclical fire has indeed contributed to fuel build-ups and more catastrophic fires. But that’s specific to some dry conifer/pine systems in the western U.S.

            This is Canada we’re talking about, and more importantly, this is a boreal forest where balsam fir and spruce are the dominant species. 

            And here’s perhaps the key point. This forest type is a fire-based ecosystem - it’s always burned and is meant to burn. The boreal burns in high-intensity crown fires on a natural cycle measured usually in a century or more, across enormous remote areas that have never been logged or thinned, or effectively suppressed. As one ecologist recently wrote, “Only about a fifth of Canada’s burned area over the past four decades was even inside forest regions that have ever been actively managed. You cannot have a fuel-buildup from forest mismanagement in a forest you were never managing.”

            The mismanagement argument also leaves out the extraordinary number of standing and fallen dead trees that have been left in the wake of the spruce budworm outbreak - those trees are a crown fire in waiting. Crown fires create hurricane-like wind updrafts that carry burning bark and branches way beyond the main fire lines, thus starting spot fires across huge expanses that are often beyond the reach of limited firefighting crews. You can’t thin or prescribe-burn your way to prevent it - crown fires don’t stop at a fuel break.

            Another major issue has been the weather. Record hot temperatures have been recorded in the boreal forest region along with near non-existent humidity. Fire managers are referring to the conditions in some areas as “flash droughts,” because the droughts are occurring so rapidly.

            Along with all that heat have come multiple violent thunderstorms. A single lightning event on July 7–8 in northern Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area, an area that was also sending smoke our way, sparked an estimated nineteen to twenty-one fires simultaneously across the forest. That's not the slow accumulation of small human-caused fires over a season, it's one storm system seeding dozens of fires at once, across a huge and remote area.

            Now add in the fact that hot and dry weather is occurring more regularly, and lasting longer, due to climate change. Regional fire experts say this is a pattern, not an anomaly. Summer wildfires were once rare in Minnesota, but they have increased roughly tenfold since the 1990s, representing a documented shift, not a one-summer fluke.

            Canadian fire seasons (May through September) have warmed about 4°F on average

since 1959 (Canada has been warming at roughly twice the global rate). That warming matters because warmer air is exponentially “thirstier”, meaning it more rapidly pulls moisture out of live vegetation and dead fuels alike, priming the landscape to burn. Fire seasons now start earlier and end later, with many more days with conditions suitable for fire spread.

            Smoke doesn't carry a passport and doesn't stop at customs. No country on Earth can prevent every wildfire across a wilderness of this scale under these conditions.

            Bottom line? The fires have nothing to do with mismanagement by Canadian foresters. “What is unfolding is what climate and forest scientists have been predicting for 30 years,” says Werner Kurz, a retired senior research scientist at Natural Resources Canada. “That as the world gets hotter and drier, we are exposing forests to more and more risk, and the old strategies of fire suppression are simply being overwhelmed.”

 

Purples and Burgundies

            Late-summer wildflowers seem to specialize in shades of purple and burgundy. In bloom now are colonies of exuberant purple flowers like wild bergamot, joe-pye weed, marsh milkweed, pickerelweed, fireweed, blue vervain, steeplebush, purple asters and three invasives -  spotted knapweed, purple loosestrife, and cow-vetch.

joe-pye weed, photo by John Bates

 

Some Good News!

            Brazil’s humpback whale population has made a remarkable recovery since commercial whaling ended, rising from about 2,000 whales in 1986 to roughly 35,000 today. 

            Between June and November, the whales migrate from their Antarctic feeding grounds to Brazil’s warmer waters to breed. Their growing numbers have made whale-watching excursions increasingly popular and created new opportunities for responsible tourism.

 

National Moth Week

            I suspect you didn’t know that the last full week in July is designated as National Moth Week - I didn’t! We’ll have missed it by the time this column comes out, but the moths will still be out there after the final day has passed. 

            Moths get short shrift next to the more popular viewing of butterflies, but many moths can mesmerize us with their coloration. Three come to mind: The brilliant lime green luna moth (Actias luna), the polyphemus moth (Antheraea polyphemus), and the daytime flying sphinx moths, which are also known as hummingbird moths because they are at first glance often mistaken for hummers (check out the white-lined sphinx moth (Hyles lineata).

            Keep an eye out in the week for hummingbird moths - this is their peak time of year.

white-lined sphinx moth, photo by Bev Engstrom

Celestial Events

            For planet-watching in August, look after dusk very low in the west-southwest for brilliant Venus. Saturn rises in the east after 10 p.m and then transits to the high in the southwest by dawn.

            Before dawn, look in the east for Mars and Jupiter rising in the east-northeast.

            August 7^th marks the midway between summer solstice and autumn equinox. 

            Look for the Perseid meteor shower from 8/10 to 8/13 with the peak occurring on the evening of 8/12 and the predawn of 8/13. The Perseids average 60 meteors per hour, so this can be the best meteor shower of the year. Face the northeast sky, looking toward the constellation Perseus, where the meteors appear to originate. And bring a reclining chair and blanket, and allow about 20 to 30 minutes for your eyes to fully adjust to the dark. The new moon occurs this night, so if it’s a clear night, conditions will be perfect.

            A partial solar eclipse will occur during the day on 8/12. In our area, the eclipse will begin at 11:45 a.m., peak at 12:18, and end at 12:51. Only a sliver of the sun will be covered.

 

Thought for the Week

            The object of a full life “is to dig for the  submerged sunrise of wonder.” - G.K. Chesterton

 

 

A Northwoods Almanac for July 17-30, 2026

 A Northwoods Almanac for July 17-30, 2026  

 

Sightings - Pie-bald Gray Squirrels and Merlins

            Scott Ruesch sent me photos of a pair of piebald squirrels that were frolicking in his backyard in Harshaw. I’ve seen an albino squirrel before, but never a piebald one, or in this case, two! Piebaldism develops when albinism only affects certain areas of the skin, producing a “pied” or “piebald” effect with irregular patches of white. In piebald individuals, at least some of the cells can produce pigment. The unpigmented patches are due to localized mutations in skin cells that occurred during embryo development.

            We’ve been observing and hearing a merlin in Manitowish for over three weeks. I first heard one calling from the edge of a wetland on 6/26, and then Mary and I saw it repeatedly along the same road in the same area on 7/1 and 7/2. And then one woke us up on 7/7 at 5:30 crying its harsh, high-pitched  ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki right outside our bedroom window, likely to the detriment of some poor songbird that was visiting one of our feeders. 

            The merlin’s call comes loud, fast and furious and really can’t be misidentified, so even in the hazy subconscious moment of coming out of a deep sleep, you know what you’ve got. 

            We suspect the merlin(s?) are nesting in that area, but so far we’ve been unable to find the nest. A pair of merlins nested in this same spot a number of years ago, and we have watched for the pair to return over the following years, but we never spotted them. 

            Is it possible that it’s the same nesting pair? Who knows? Merlins are primarily monogamous. During a 9-year study, a researcher (Wiklund 1996) observed 9 males and 10 females who retained the same mate during 2 to 3 consecutive seasons. 

            Well, that’s not a long time, but perhaps this pair had a more lasting commitment!

            Merlins often nest in abandoned crows or hawks nests, and most often in a white pine, so the nest usually can be easily seen.

            They prey on songbirds that they catch in mid-air, but they also hawk flying insects, primarily dragonflies, especially in late summer and during migration. In one study, males brought on average 9.6 birds per day to the female and chicks during the nestling period.

            Researchers have also observed that they often hunt cooperatively! Bengston (1975) observed 30% of hunts were done in pairs, generally male and female. One merlin flies down a tree corridor beneath the canopy and climbs to flush the birds, while the other flying behind initiates the attack. Remarkable!

 

Swamp Candles (Lysimachia terrestris) 

            Swamp loosestrife, or more commonly “swamp candles,” came into full bloom in the first week of July. That week I hiked one of the dikes on the Lac du Flambeau portion of Powell Marsh, and I came across a huge expanse of wetland completely covered in swamp candles - by far the most I’d ever seen in one area. It was beautiful!

            The plant produces star-like yellow flowers that grow in a narrow spike, four to twelve inches long, and almost always occurs in wetlands  Each petal has two red dots at its base forming a circle of ten red dots in the center of the flower. The rhizomes can grow rapidly, forming a large colony of plants in a season.   

            The name Lysimachia is in honor of Lysimachus, bodyguard to Alexander the Great.

Legend has it that Lysimachus, chased by a raging bull, pacified it by waving a

branch of loosestrife in front of it, the plant having long been known for its calming properties.

            Thus, this is the apparent source of the name loosestrife. Lysimachia, is a likely translation of the common name: lysis meaning “a release from” and mache, “strife.” 

            Swamp candles are a native loosestrife unlike the non-native purple loosestrife, which is terribly invasive. We have several other native loosestrifes in our area that you can look for: swamp loosestrife/water willow (Decodon verticillatus), whorled loosestrife (Lysimachia quadrifolia) and tufted loosestrife (Lysimachia thyrsiflora). 

 

Great Horned Owl Visiting in Manitowish

            We have had a great horned owl apparently feeding a young owlet or owlets below our house since the beginning of July. The fledged owlets give a begging call that sounds similar to a hawk-like scream, though softer. This communicates their position to the adult, but may also indicate stress or danger.

            Not only is the adult owl feeding its young at night, but it then roosts on a branch in a silver maple just forty or so yards from the our breakfast window. So, every morning now for at least a week, we’ve watched a great horned owl watch us as we eat breakfast.

            We’ve been able to easily focus our spotting scope on the owl and see its yellow eyes. But what has impressed us most are the size of the talons! A great horned owl’s  talons take a force of 28 pounds to open, and are so strong that they can sever the spinal column of prey even larger than itself. They can capture animals as large as raccoons, and can take flight with six pounds of prey even though they only weight four pounds. They’re known to kill great blue herons and take red-tailed hawks out of the air, as well as having been observed killing an adult male osprey at its nest. They’re primarily nocturnal hunters though, and take nestlings especially of larger birds like American crow, common raven, northern goshawk, and red-tailed, red-shouldered, and broad-winged hawks.

            That’s why crows will mob great horned owls to try and force them out of the area. When that happens, the owl likely had taken a crow nestling, or adult, at night from their roost.

 

Loon Stats

            From Walter Piper at loonproject.org: Dr. Piper first marked and studied loons in Oneida County, Wisconsin in 1993, later established a Minnesota study population in 2021 at a site 200 miles west-northwest of his Wisconsin Study Area (both study populations comprise 110 to 120 breeding pairs.)                                                           

            This May, Piper recorded in his Wisconsin study area that 52 of 70 banded males returned to the territory they occupied in 2025, and 51 of 66 females did so. In Minnesota, 65 of 71 males returned, and 61 of 68 females came back. He cautions, however, that a few pairs in Wisconsin may have settled on some of these lakes after he stopped by to look.

            His research is of utmost importance because he has shown that as of 2020 the Wisconsin loon population is declining. Collaborating for two years with researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, they made a critical finding. “A drop in water clarity in northern Wisconsin is reducing survival of loon chicks. Specifically, loss of water clarity in summer caused by heavier rainfall is strongly associated with loss of weight and lower survival among loon chicks. The only plausible explanation for this pattern is that loon parents, which hunt fish visually underwater, cannot catch enough fish to sustain their young when water clarity falls.”

            He further notes, “Loss of clarity is likely to have dire consequences for loons, if it continues. The northern Wisconsin loon population is already producing far fewer young adults than necessary to replace breeders that do not return from the wintering grounds. In the next decade or sooner, we expect to see breeding pairs disappear from one and then another breeding lake in the state, owing to this dwindling of young replacements.”

            Wisconsin loon pairs are producing fewer chicks; chicks are growing more slowly; and chicks are dying at much higher rates now than 30 years ago when Piper’s work began. His population model projects that the northern Wisconsin loon population is shrinking by as much as 6% each year. 

 

Necessity - Invention and Motivation

            The old cliché goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” 

            Well, it’s also the mother of motivation. The continuing Middle East War has increased costs of every type of fuel worldwide, as well as associated products like fertilizers that are made with fossil fuels. The Strait of Hormuz closure removed an estimated 20% of global oil and liquid natural gas supply, triggering the largest energy disruption in modern history, according to the July 3, “Shockwaves From The Gulf: The Iran War And Its Impact On The Global Economy And Energy Markets – Analysis,” Eurasia Review. 

            The silver lining in this is those prices and shortages have catalyzed many nations to push ahead with creating their own energy independence, supercharging efforts to speed up shifts to renewables, nuclear, and clean tech as a security imperative. As Selwin Hart, a UN envoy, puts it: “Renewables offer something fossil fuels never did: stability and sovereignty. There are no embargoes, price shocks or tariffs.”

            Over the past decade, the share of wind and solar power in the global electricity mix has risen by more than 10 percentage points, from 23% to 33.8%. Over the same time period, the share of coal has dropped from 38.7% to 33.0% in 2025. New global data shows that renewables have overtaken coal to become the largest source of worldwide electricity production

            What specifically is being built worldwide to meet new electricity demands? Solar - 75% of the growth in global electricity demand was met by solar power in 2025.

            For an in depth view on all this, see the Eurasia Review article. The article concludes by saying, “The crisis has powerfully accelerated the global energy transition providing . . . a strategic urgency that prior environmental or economic arguments had not succeeded in generating at equivalent speed. Nations with diversified and domestically renewable electricity mixes proved substantially more resilient; those reliant on imported fossil fuels suffered acutely. The structural case for clean energy as a security asset—complementing its environmental justification—has been made with unprecedented empirical force.”

            So, an unintended good has occurred. The war has forced nations to more quickly transition to non-fossil fuel sources of energy, and thus reducing the market for fossil fuels. 

 

Celestial Events

            Look for the peak Delta Aquarid meteor shower in the predawn hours of 7/29. The only problem will be that this is also the night of the full moon, which will wash the sky of its darkness.

            

Thought for the Week

            “Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.” - Thomas Merton.

 

 

A Northwoods Almanac for July 3 - 16, 2026

A Northwoods Almanac for July 3 - 16, 2026  by John Bates

Bee-eating Birds

            Mary and I have been keeping bees for five years now, and most of what the bees do remains a sweet mystery to us. We realize we are little more than landlords who charge the bees rent via the theft of a portion of their honey.

            A few days ago, I was looking at our bee house (yes, we built a tiny house to keep our hives inside during the winter), and I noticed a nest of Eastern phoebes tucked into the eaves of the house. This led me to wonder if the phoebes could be eating “our” bees. 

Eastern phoebe

            Well, yes, they likely are eating the bees! In a study that examined 370 stomachs of phoebes, the researcher found 26% of their annual diet was from the huge insect order Hymenopetera, which is comprised of sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants. Apparently, phoebes can avoid issues with stings by quickly killing their prey by beating it to death (watch this video: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXRzQmFDpg9/).

            Another study examined which birds prey on the Vespidae, a family of stinging wasps that includes yellowjackets. The study’s findings indicated that blue jays, Cape May warblers, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, Nashville warblers, and several flycatcher species eat Vespidae wasps. 

            Bird species that feed on the ground, such as American robins and eastern bluebirds, are likely to eat bees regularly, says Spencer Hardy, a bee biologist at Vermont Center for Ecostudies, “since many bees are ground nesters and on cool mornings can occasionally be found crawling around near nest sites.”

            Pamela D. Hunt, senior biologist for avian conservation at New Hampshire Audubon, thinks “that [bees and wasps] are usually killed outright in the process [of being captured] or shortly thereafter when the bird beats them against a solid surface such as a branch. Either way, bill length likely minimizes the chance of being stung.”

            Anecdotal reports suggest that tanager species, such as scarlet tanager and the more southern summer tanager, remove their prey’s stinger by wiping it off on a branch before consuming it.

            Yet other studies indicate Eastern kingbirds, who are masters at mid-air hunting, frequently target flying honey bees near apiaries and fields

            To round out the quick research I did on this, purple matins, Eastern wood pewees, and great crested flycatchers have also been seen catching bees in mid-flight. Northern cardinals apparently are even known to attack a hive to eat the adult bees. 

            So, should I worry that birds may be decimating our honey bees? Nope. A healthy queen honey bee can lay between 1,500 and 2,000 eggs per day during peak season, and an average hive holds 30,000 bees. I don’t think the phoebes, and any other birds in our yard, can make even a dent in the thousands of bees that live in our hive.

            What does kill honey bees is the amount of work they do. A female worker bee (all worker bees are females) lives 15 to 38 days in the summer, spending the first half of her life inside the hive cleaning cells, feeding larvae, producing wax, and supporting the colony.

            Then she becomes a forager, and for the final weeks of her life, she flies every day - thousands of trips - until her wings simply wear out and she dies from simply being used up. 

            

Sightings - Orchids, Spotted Salamander, American Bullfrog

            6/19: I found a stand of northern green bog orchids (Platanthera aquilonis), or possibly green bog orchids (Platanthera huronensis) - they look almost identical - in the Rhinelander area. They can grow almost two feet tall with 20 to 45 tiny flowers on their flower stalk, and aren’t in the least showy, that is unless you have a magnifying hand lens to see the intricacy of the flowers.

            6/20: The first fireweed came into bloom.

            6/24: We heard our first bullfrogs calling on Powell Marsh. They’re the largest frog species in North America, and also the last to sing of our nine species of frogs and toads. The “song” is unlike any song in nature that I have ever heard, and is usually described as a deep, reverberating “jug-o-rum” that slurs upward. The first time I heard one, I had no idea what it was, and I’ve never forgotten it since. 

            These guys are significant predators. The literature says their diet includes small birds (ducklings), mammals (rodents), crayfish, and juvenile frogs.

            6/26: Ken Larsen sent me the following email: “Last week, I moved a bag of potting soil and to my surprise, there was a large spotted salamander underneath, taking advantage of the cool, moist environment below.  Because of the large size, I assumed this was a female, since they are generally much larger than the males, and I carefully picked her up. Like most salamanders I have encountered, they are never aggressive, generally slow moving and are very cool and moist to the touch. I gently handled her for a few minutes before placing her near a pile of logs to provide her with a safe, alternative refuge. 

photo by Ken Larsen

                                                                        

            “I do not recall coming across a spotted salamander in this area previously, but I have handled a few of the seven species that are known to inhabit Wisconsin and are generally quite common – the blue-spotted salamander, the Eastern red-backed salamander and common mudpuppy.  I have yet to encounter the Eastern newt, four-toed salamander or Eastern tiger salamander, but I will keep looking.”                                                                                                        Spotted salamanders thrive in vernal pools and ephemeral wetland in mature forests throughout most of northern Wisconsin as well as a few counties in the southeast, but they also live throughout the eastern U.S. from Georgia to Maine. Researchers view spotted salamanders as a bioindicator species of ecosystem health - wherever they’re found, it indicates a high quality area worth protecting.

 

Deer Fly Mania

            I’ve just returned from an early evening hike accompanied by a small Air Force of deer flies doing their endless orbits around my head. I’ve written about the easy fix for these devils for many years, but the solution bears repeating - buy “Tred Not” Deerfly Patches. Each patch is a non-chemical, odorless, and disposable 2 inch x 6 inch double-sided, skin-colored adhesive patch that is placed on the back of your cap. Since deer flies are attracted to movement and always seem to seek the highest place, they rapidly land on the very sticky tape, and get stuck. 

            When your walk is done, you peel the tape off your cap, roll it up, and toss it in the trash. Easy peasy. 

            My record remains at 73 deer flies on one tape during one walk. And, oh, is it satisfying!

 

Hawkweeds

            By mid-summer, many roadside and field flowers come into bloom, some native, and some non-native. One common genus of flowers that has both native species and non-native species is hawkweed (Hieracium). Orange hawkweed displays red to orange ray flowers and is perhaps the most common and most invasive of the hawkweeds, favoring disturbed open ground. However, there are two other invasive hawkweeds, both of which sport yellow ray flowers - meadow hawkweed and yellow or tall hawkweed. 

orange hawkweed

            The native hawkweeds in our area, however, also exhibit yellow ray flowers - Canada hawkweed and rough or sticky hawkweed.

            The quickest way to know if you have a native or non-native hawkweed is to look at the leaves. The non-natives have mostly basal leaves (leaves only at the base of the plant), while the natives have leaves along the length of the stem.

yellow hawkweed, an invasive

            Pliny the Elder, the Roman scholar, naturalist, and naval and army commander, somehow concluded that hawks fed on the plants to improve their eyesight. How he came up with this idea is utterly unknown, but it may be linked to too much ouzo.

            Pliny wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia, a thirty-seven-volume work, as well as six other works that in all totaled 102 volumes. Naturalis Historia tried to cover the entire field of ancient knowledge, based on the best authorities available to Pliny, and encompasses the fields of botany, zoology, astronomy, geology, and mineralogy. 

            Each book of the Natural History covers a different topic, and they remain the only surviving writing of Pliny’s. The encyclopedia is considered about 50% accurate, with the other half heavily taken from folklore, legends, and rumors. 

            He died suddenly in AD 79 at the age of 55 or 56 while attempting to rescue people during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

             

Free Electricity in Australia 

            Starting July 1, Australians across a huge swath of the continent will begin getting three free hours of up to 24 kWh of electricity every afternoon - to charge their cars, run their dishwashers, or fill up a storage battery to run the house at night. The afternoon hours align with the periods of peak daytime solar generation when the Australian grid experiences a power surplus. 

            Now, in one large part of a continent, for one large part of the day, electricity will be too cheap to meter. That’s the future of solar in many parts of the world.

 

Celestial Events

            For planet-watching in July, look after dusk low in the west for brilliant Venus. And before dawn, look low in the east for Mars, and high in the south for Saturn.

            July 2 marks the mid-point of the calendar year.

            On 7/6, the Earth will be at its furthest from the Sun, at “aphelion” - 94.5 miles away - and 3.1 million miles more distant than at perihelion on January 3. The day will likely be very warm, amply demonstrating that it is the tilt of the earth, not the distance from the sun, that determines our seasons.

 

Thought for the Week

            “Write it in your heart that every day is the best day of the year. Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, breathe the wild air. Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson