A Northwoods Almanac for 9/11/26

 A Northwoods Almanac for 9/11-24/26 

 

Sightings: Nighthawks, Ladies Tresses, Lapland Longspurs, Fen Grass-of-Parnassus

            Several people reported seeing common nighthawks migrating through our area in the last week of August. The largest count for nighthawks at Duluth’s Hawk Ridge occurred much earlier in the month on 8/16  and was “only” 1,400. For Hawk Ridge, this is a relatively low number - last year on August 22, 17,870 were counted funneling over the ridge and along the shore of Lake Superior. 

            Keep a watch out still - a few latecomers may yet be passing through on their way to South America and as far south as Argentina. Nighthawks migrate a great distance between their breeding range and winter range, making their journey one of the longest migrations of any North American bird. 

On a hike in Powell Marsh on 9/2, Mary and I spotted several Lapland longspurs foraging along the dikes and giving us close views. Lapland longspurs breed in tundra habitats across the arctic, their name referring to the Lapland region of Scandinavia. We rarely see these birds in migration, so this was a treat.

We also found a small patch of nodding ladies tresses orchids (Spiranthes cernua) along one of the dikes in a spot we now watch for every year. I usually think of orchids as living in stable, older habitats, but this species is an early successional one, a lover of disturbed habitats and often persisting in mowed habitats. And that is exactly where we’re finding these - along a mowed dike.

nodding ladies tresses, photo by John Bates

            Mary and I traveled over to Petoskey, Michigan, in the last week of August to set up her “Women and Water” exhibit, and afterwards we walked in the Grass River Natural Area, a 1,502 acre nature preserve surrounding the Grass river. We walked 1.5 miles on wooden boardwalks traversing the northern fen and cedar wetlands - spectacular! 

            All that wetland harbors an immense array of wildflowers and birds, and we were thrilled to find numerous clusters of fen grass-of-parnassus (Parnassia glauca), a threatened species in Michigan. It’s not a grass, though its leaves resemble a grass. The gorgeous five-petaled white flowers just popped amongst the greenery of the fen.

            

fen grass of parnassus, photo by John Bates

Hartwick Pines - Old-growth White Pines

            We were also able to visit Harwick Pines State Park, which contains one of the most-visited old-growth forests in the nation. A paved 1.25 mile trail leads through a 49-acre remnant of Michigan's original forest dominated by remnant white pines. 

            In 1927, Karen Michelson Hartwick purchased over 8,000 acres of land here, which included 86 acres of old growth white pine. A short while later she donated the land to the State of Michigan as a memorial park to be named for her husband who died in World War I. She also specified the forest should never be logged.

            Today Hartwick Pines covers 9,672 acres and is one of the largest state parks in the Northern Lower Peninsula. A windstorm in 1940 reduced the old-growth pines area from 86 acres to 49 acres.  

            Of course, I’d forgotten to bring my diameter tape, but many of the pines were at least three feet in diameter and provided a fleeting sense of what the original pineries likely looked like prior to the cutover.

 

Common Green Darners

            When we think of fall migration, most of us think only of birds, but there are a number of species of insects that engage in remarkable movements, monarch butterflies, of course, being the most famous. However, several species of dragonflies fly long distances as well, and in great numbers. 

            The champion migrator among the dragonflies is the common green darner. In August, counters at Hawk Ridge tallied 4,277 passing over the ridge and heading south. 

            Their migration is somewhat similar to that of the monarchs in that it spans three generations every year. The first generation of insects emerges in the southern United States, Mexico and the Caribbean from about February to May, and then as early as March, they migrate north 500 to 800 miles to lay eggs in northern ponds before dying. 

            The new second generation that emerges from the ponds lives in our area all summer, and then migrates south from about July until late October, though they have never seen where they’re heading. 

            A third generation then emerges down south around November, and lives entirely in the south during winter. It’s their offspring that start the cycle again by swarming northward as temperatures warm in the spring. With a wingspan as wide as a hand, they devote their whole lives to flying hundreds of kilometers to repeat a journey their great-grandparents made.

            How do scientists know where the green darners go? Remarkably, they can determine their hatch location by examining the chemistry locked in their wings. Stable hydrogen isotopes are ideal to infer where dragonflies were hatched because they reflect the latitude at which body tissues were grown. By vaporizing a segment of wing in a mass spectrometer researchers can find the chemical “signature” needed to determine latitude of the natal pond where a given dragonfly emerged. 

            A research team in Vermont spent two years using 21 years of citizen science data, more than 800 dragonfly wing specimens going back 140 years, and specimens caught in the wild to ultimately discern the three-generation migration system.

            Amazing.

 

White-faced Meadowhawks 

            And then there’s white-faced meadowhawks, a non-migratory species, but one that can be seen in huge numbers in the early fall. On August 27, counters at Duluth’s Hawk Ridge, tallied 35,485 white-faced meadowhawks passing over the ridge! 

            Wow! 

            Of this moment, they wrote, “Late morning, an absurd number of Meadowhawks lifted off, boiling into a wall of dragons.”

            “A wall of dragons” - I love that. 

            The next day, Aug. 28, they counted 1,754, and then another estimated 7,000 passed over the ridge on 9/2!

            White-faced meadowhawk males are identifiable by a distinctive pure white face and red bodies, though females are usually yellowish or brown. 

white-faced meadow hawk

            As I mentioned, they are not long-distance migrators! Rather, they move short distances away from water into fields, meadows, or forest edges to feed and find mates. Why were so many flying over Hawk Ridge and where were they were going? I don’t think anyone knows! 

 

Monarch Migration

            On August 23 as Mary and I were traveling east across the U.P. to get to Petoskey, we stopped in Manistique to take a walk along Lake Michigan. As we walked, we kept noticing monarch butterflies fluttering past us heading west along the shore, and it dawned on us that we were witnessing the early migration of monarchs heading south.

            The monarch migration through the U.P. works like this. Every autumn during the last two weeks of August and the first two weeks of September, the monarchs gather at the Garden Peninsula or Stonington Point just east of Escanaba and Gladstone where they wait until the winds are right for the migration flight south across Lake Michigan to the Door Peninsula and Green Bay. They cross using the chain of islands running north off of Door County as stepping stones.

            Once in Wisconsin, the monarchs travel another 2,000 miles or so to central Mexico where they  aggregate in oyamel fir trees on south-southwest facing mountain slopes. These locations provide cool temperatures, water, and adequate shelter to protect them from predators and allow them to conserve enough energy to survive winter.

            Unlike summer generations that live for two to six weeks as adults, adults in the migratory generation can live for up to nine months. In March, this generation begins the journey north into Texas and southern states, laying eggs and nectaring as they migrate and breed. The first generation offspring from the overwintering population continue the journey from the southern U.S. to recolonize the eastern breeding grounds, migrating north through the central latitudes in approximately late April through May. Second and third generations populate the breeding grounds throughout the summer. It is generally the fourth generation that migrate in the fall to the wintering sites in central Mexico about 3000 meters (almost 2 miles) above sea level.

            How do millions of monarchs start their southbound journey from all over eastern and central North America and end up in a very small area in the mountains of central Mexico? They don’t learn the route from their parents since only every fourth generation of North American monarch migrates. 

            Since monarchs migrate during the day, it’s proposed that they use a sun compass. Monarchs may use the angle of the sun along the horizon in combination with an internal body clock (like a circadian rhythm) in their antennae to maintain a southwesterly flight path.

            However, scientists have also suggested that monarchs use a magnetic compass to orient, possibly in addition to a sun compass as a “back-up” orientation guide on cloudy days. 

            Research showed that migratory monarchs indeed possess a magnetic compass using short wave UV-light that aids in orienting them south towards their overwintering grounds. 

            Along the way, the monarchs have to eat to provide the fuel for this arduous flight, and the nectar of jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) appears to be an important flower fulfilling that purpose. Which brings us to:

 

Jewelweed or Spotted Touch-Me-Not 

            Jewelweed currently bedecks many a wetland edge from here in the Northwoods all the way to the Gulf Coast. Its beautiful bright orange flowers have one of the sepals (outer parts of the flower) modified into a large, pouch-like structure with a long spur that is loaded with nectar. During late summer, these nectar spurs attract numerous hummingbirds, sphinx moths, and bumblebees, all of whom cross-pollinate the flowers.

            But as fall comes on, jewelweed becomes essential to monarch butterflies. The monarch's long, flexible proboscis allows it to easily reach deep into the blossom to extract the nectar, and jewelweed nectar is exceptionally rich, boasting a sugar concentration of up to 43%. This is significantly higher than the nectar of many other late-summer wild flowers. The caloric density of jewelweed allows migrating monarchs to rapidly accumulate lipid (fat) reserves, which they store in their abdomens to fuel their long-distance flight all along the way to the Gulf.

            

Celestial Events - Autumn Equinox

            The big celestial news in this time period is, of course, that autumn equinox occurs on 9/22. The sun now crosses the celestial equator (an imaginary line in space above Earth's equator) heading south. Official autumn has commenced, and longer nights than days become the rule.

            

Thought for the Week

            “Essentially, autumn is the quiet completion of spring and summer. Spring was all eagerness and beginnings, summer was growth and flowering. Autumn is the achievement summarized, the harvested grain, the grape in the wine press . . . the bright leaf in the woodland . . . the froth of asters at the roadside . . . See it, smell it, taste it, and forget the time of year or day.” - Hal Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

                                                 

A Northwoods Almanac for 8/28 - 9/10/26

 A Northwoods Almanac for 8/28 - 9/10/26 

 

Border Lakes Forest Legacy Conservation Easement

            The policymaking board for the WDNR recently approved the agency’s request to purchase a conservation easement from the Michael A. Uihlein Exemption Trust near Land O’Lakes. The acquisition was made possible through a roughly $600,000 grant from the federal Forest Legacy Program and more than $305,000 in the last remaining funds set aside under the now-expired Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program.

            The property will be known as the Border Lakes Legacy Forest Conservation Easement and consists of two separate parcels that include a roughly 481-acre-tract of land near Forest Lake and 771 acres surrounding Emil Lake, a 29-acre lake with a maximum depth of 3 feet.

            Here is the key fact to keep in mind about conservation easements - the land remains private property. The Uihlein family trust will continue to own the land, they can sell it to whoever they like in the future, and the land will stay on the property tax rolls. The land simply can’t be subdivided or developed beyond the scope of the limits placed upon it

            The Uihlein family will open their property for hunting, trapping, hiking, fishing and cross-country skiing, but most private conservation easements remain closed to the public.

            The property will also continue to be sustainably managed under the state’s Managed Forest Law program as it has been for roughly 30 years. The property is enrolled in the MFL Certified Group which is dually certified under the American Tree Farm System and the Forest Stewardship Council, assuring the forests are managed to the highest environmental and social standards. Forestry generates more than $25 billion annually in Wisconsin, creating 57,000 jobs. Most conservation easements allow for timber harvesting and many are also enrolled in MFL.

            In 1990, the federal Forest Legacy Program was established to conserve forest land that is under threat of being converted for other uses, and it had bipartisan support, as it does now. Wisconsin has been part of the program since 2000.

            The property includes red and white pine, aspen and northern hardwood trees along with wetlands and meadows. The Emil Lake tract also includes nearly three miles of scenic bike and pedestrian trails.

            In previous years, the Michael Uihlein family had allowed the beautiful three mile Forest Lake segment of the Wilderness Lakes bike trail to cross their land, so they’ve been providing recreational opportunities for the public for quite some time.

            Joe Hovel, director of the nonprofit Northwoods Alliance, worked with the Uihlein family and the DNR over several years to secure federal funding and local support for the project from the town of Land O’Lakes and Vilas County.

            Land conservation via easements is an essential part of property rights. People have the right to leave a conservation legacy with their land, and all of us for generations to come are the beneficiaries. 

            

Sighting - Juvenile Summer Tanager

            Janell Westimayer in Hazelhurst sent me a photo on 8/20/26 of a juvenile summer tanager at her feeder. The coloration on the juveniles is a wild combo of yellows and reds and greens. This is an unusual sighting - summer tanagers nest only as far north as northern Illinois, so this bird must have ridden north on one of our recent storms. However, a confirmed active nest was recently documented at Blue Mound State Park in southern Wisconsin. This marked the first verified nesting record in the state since the 19th century.

 

photo by Janell Westimayer

Walter Piper Loon Studies Show Common Loons in Decline                                                                                      Walter Piper has been conducting two studies on common loons - one in northern Wisconsin since 1993, and the other in northern Minnesota since 2021 (see loonproject.org). Piper has recorded careful data on 105 marked breeding pairs in chiefly Oneida County and 110 marked pairs in north-central Minnesota (Crow Wing and Cass counties). He’s published 35 scientific articles on loon behavior, ecology and conservation, and is a nationally recognized expert on common loons.

            Besides Piper’s work, Breeding Bird Surveys conducted by expert birders on fixed routes across North American also have been providing a picture of loon populations. This comprehensive statewide data shows that common loon populations were on an upswing from 1967 until about 2010 in Wisconsin and Minnesota, but have been falling sharply in the past decade and a half.

            Data collected by Piper’s team in northern Wisconsin since 1993 echo those results; breeding success and population size in our area rose in the late 1990s and early 2000s but are now in sharp decline. 

            Piper’s research data in northern Wisconsin shows that the loon population has declined overall by 22% during the past quarter century. He’s determined that 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 his work began. His data further suggests that the northern Wisconsin loon population is shrinking by as much as 6% each year, which is roughly consistent with the BBS data.  

            The decline is not so much taking place among the breeding adult pairs, but rather among the young adults who have returned from the Gulf of Mexico in recent years but have yet to find a breeding territory. Piper’s findings suggest that many young adults have received insufficient food as chicks, a pattern that he has found is linked to lower survival and breeding success during adulthood. 

            Piper is still assessing the specific causes of all this, but in part, he believes declining water clarity is responsible for the poor feeding conditions. But why are our waters becoming more turbid? Is the reduced water clarity due to increased fertilizer and other nutrient inputs? Or is climate change the larger culprit due to warming our waters? 

            Other factors are also part of the picture. What about black flies forcing the loons off their nests, eagles harassing and/or eating the chicks, and speedboat wakes destroying nests?

            Understanding these causes is at the heart of Piper’s work now. Whatever the causes turn out to be, if his findings are accurate, Piper believes we will see noticeably fewer loons on northern Wisconsin lakes within the next five to ten years.

            

Sanford Lake Study - Wood Is Good

            On a more positive note, a recently released DNR study on 100-acre Sanford Lake near Boulder Junction tested whether adding “fish sticks” - coarse woody habitat, like tree branches and trunks - would improve fish population. The researchers first documented the fisheries in the lake from 2015 to 2018 for baseline data. They then dragged or dropped 140 full-sized trees into Sanford’s shallows along one-fourth of its shorelines to document if and how much the toppled trees attract and produce fish.

            Following the 2018 tree additions, the fish community biomass and production significantly increased. Fish productivity more than quadrupled, growing from roughly 3.3 lbs/acre to nearly 13 lbs/acre, with the spike in production largely driven by smaller prey fish like bluegill.

            The study provides further proof that submerged branches create a thriving base for the aquatic food web by fostering a complex mixture of algae, cyanobacteria, microbes, and detritus, which provide food for insects and small fish. 

            The lesson here? After a tree falls in the water, leave the dead. The trees in their death may provide as much, if not more, habitat for a myriad of life forms than when alive.

 

A Bumper Year for White Cedar Cones

            Mary and I continue to notice white cedar trees laden with cones. The cones appear almost yellow against the green background of the cedar’s needles. Mary thought they looked like Christmas tree lights on the cedars. 

            This abundance will hopefully result in some seedlings eventually making it into the canopy. Unfortunately for white cedars, deer find their foliage heavenly, so it’s a rare seedling that makes its way to adulthood in our deer-overrun forests. 

            Cedar seeds germinate well on rotting logs and moss in undisturbed forests, allowing them to continually replace themselves in forests without needing a fire, windstorm, or other major disturbance. The seedlings can withstand shade for many years while waiting for a canopy gap to appear.

             If and when a seedling does make it into the canopy, it can live for centuries. The oldest living white cedar in Minnesota is believed to be on Basswood Lake. The center of the tree has become pulpy, so the rings are unclear, but it’s estimated to be over 1,100 years old.

            The oldest known white cedar in North America juts precariously out from the Niagara Escarpment in Ontario and was found to begin life in 688 A.D. making it now 1,338- years-old. A dead one was aged at the base of a cliff at 1,890 years.

            In Wisconsin, white cedars on the Niagara Escarpment have been aged up to 900 years, but older ones are likely if only we had a courageous PhD student or researcher willing to invest the time and the rappelling skill to core more of the trees jutting from the cliff faces.

 

Drought!

            It sure is dry! According to the Palmer drought severity index (PDSI), a regional drought index commonly used for monitoring drought events, as of mid-August, nearly all of northern Wisconsin is in moderate to severe drought. The PDSI is updated weekly by the Climate Prediction Center and is based on rainfall, temperature and historic data.

             According to the UW Trout Lake Limnology Station, we’re also in the early years of an average 13-year low water level cycle due to these warm and dry conditions. We had low water from around 2000 to 2010, and then high water beginning 2010 to 2021. But since then, water levels have again declined. Most lakes in our area are low this summer, and in years when water levels are low, the forest marches in on the exposed sediments. When the cycle flips and we have high water again, those new shrubs and trees will be drowned out.

 

Celestial Events

            Looking for planets in September? Look just after dusk very low in the southwest for brilliant Venus, and also look in the east for Saturn rising after 8 p.m.

            Before dawn, look for Mars high in the east and Jupiter lower and rising also in the east. 

            On 9/6, look before dawn for Mars three degrees below the waning crescent moon.

            On 9/8, look before dawn for Jupiter less than a degree below the waning sliver moon.

 

Thought for the Week

            “Summer is walking down the long hill toward Autumn and Winter beyond . . . The trees show the true season, and so do the grasses in the meadow and the tall weeds at the roadside. Early apples begin to ripen. Daisies fade and goldenrod shows impatient yellow . . . seed pods fatten; the soft growth of May hardens toward maturity. Dog days are virtually over. Another Summer sweeps away as dusk settles in the valleys a few minutes earlier one day after another.” - Hal Borland,  Sundial of the Seasons

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.