A Northwoods Almanac for 9/25 - 10/8/2026

 A Northwoods Almanac for 9/25 - 10/8/2026 

 

The Magic of Migration and Navigation 

            Over five billion birds, comprising some 500 North American species, migrate annually across the Northern Hemisphere. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology estimates an average of 4 billion birds pass from Canada across the northern border of the U.S. in autumn, with 2.6 billion birds returning to Canada in the spring.

            Across our southern U.S. border, an average of 4.7 billion birds leave the U.S. for Mexico and points south each fall, with 3.5 billion birds coming back across the border in the spring.

            In Wisconsin, 133 of our 240 nesting species migrate to Central and/or South America. Many of these neotropical migrants started their journeys in August with many still currently on the wing.

            But why migrate at all? After all, it’s incredibly dangerous and arduous. Most songbirds migrate at night, landing in the morning to feed and refuel for the next evening’s flight. The dangers are endless, including weather extremes, food not being available in the quantity and quality needed, predators, power lines, the lights on city buildings, windows, cats, et al. 

            And there are topographical barriers to migration like Lake Superior, mountain ranges, deserts, Gulf of Mexico, etc. 

            The general consensus is that 80% of the juvenile neotropical birds migrating this autumn won’t make it back this spring. 

            Still, it’s the best option in a limited menu of options, which comes down to a cost-benefit equation. Birds have learned to exploit resources that are seasonally abundant, and to avoid places during seasons when resources are scarce, or conditions are harsh or over-crowded.

            In temperate/Arctic regions, food is abundant during the short summer, so billions of birds migrate north to take advantage of our troves of insects. More food means increased reproductive success, which outweighs the risks of migration.

            In autumn, of course, the reverse occurs. Our insect population crashes with the first frost, and if you are an insect-eating bird, you need to stay ahead of the frosts.

            The mystery remains, however, of how these birds so precisely navigate. Birds utilize the sun, the moon, the stars, landscape cues, and even olfactory cues to guide them, all of which can act in consort to orient them in the right direction. 

            But the true precision tool they utilize appears to be their ability to “see” magnetic fields. There are three components of our planet’s magnetic field that play a role in helping birds navigate during their migrations: 

            1- Intensity, which is the magnetic field’s strength.

            2- Declination, or the angle between the Earth’s magnetic North (which varies with the magnetic field, and is what compass needles point to) and true North (a fixed point).

            3. Inclination, which is the angle between the Earth’s magnetic field and its surface.

            However, the Earth’s magnetic field shifts slightly every year. If the magnetic field guides the birds, then they should end up in a slightly different location every migration season,  and yet, they return to the same places with baffling precision.

            Well, here is where it gets truly amazing. Experimental evidence suggests a bird’s compass “relies on subtle, fundamentally quantum effects in short-lived molecular fragments, known as radical pairs, formed photochemically in its eyes.” 

            Got that?

            Me neither. 

            In somewhat simpler terms, in birds’ eyes, a light-dependent reaction yields a chemical that’s proportional to the environment’s active magnetic fields. As the birds move their heads through the field, the chemical reaction fluctuates. This chemical reaction in the eyes sends a signal to the brain to interpret, providing precise directions. 

            Researchers have also discovered a small spot on the beak of pigeons and some other birds that contains magnetite. Magnetite is a magnetized rock, which may act as a tiny GPS unit by giving birds information about their position relative to Earth’s poles. Magnetite detects variations in magnetic field intensity, helping birds map roughly how far north or south they have traveled and signaling an invisible "stop" sign when they reach their destination. 

It’s one thing, of course, to know exactly what direction to go, but another thing to know exactly when to stop.                                                                                                               

            See this article for more detail: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-migrating-birds-use-quantum-effects-to-navigate/)

            Joe Wynn, one of the principal researchers who has studied how bird’s eyes can interpret magnetic fields (Science, Jan. 2022), wrote that this ability “is about as close to magic as is possible.” 

            I thinks so, too. Tom Clancy famously wrote, “The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.”

            That pretty well sums up the whole story of migration - it almost exceeds what we believe is possible from “reality.”

 

Sightings - Duluth’s Hawk Ridge Count

            19,768 broad-winged hawks on 9/17 (record is over 101,000!)

            1,282 sharp-shinned hawks on 9/16

            13,427 blue jays on 9/16

            20,738 green darner dragonflies on 9/17

 

First Frost

            A siren went off all around the Northwoods on the morning of 9/14 when we experienced our first hard frost. What we humans may interpret as an inconvenience - we had to cover the garden, poor us - animals and plants interpret as an impending catastrophe if they don’t react and adapt. Wrote Diane Kappel-Smith, “[The coming] winter is a predictable kind of Armageddon, a calamity calmly weathered, an end of a world that they [wildlife] understand and are preparing for.”

            Indeed. 

            I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating. The options for wildlife are MAD - Migrate, Adapt, or Die. 

            So, migration is in full tilt, and adaptations are now triggered and beginning to be implemented, some in haste, some more calmly.

            Most of the plant world heard the siren, too, and is shutting down. The first frost is a cliff edge for nearly all plant species, a time when cells can freeze and burst if they haven’t adapted. The photosynthetic engine stops producing chlorophyll and begins to salvage nutrients, withdrawing nitrogen and phosphorus from the leaves and pumping them into the branches and roots. 

            Hormonal changes cause cells at the base of leaf stems to cut off the flow of water and nutrients to the leaves, forming what’s called the abscission layer. Once the tourniquet is completed, the dead leaves drop off.

            And as the chlorophyll fades, pigments that have been hidden in the leaves like carotenoids (yellow/orange) and anthocyanins (red) are revealed, allowing the curtain to come up and reveal the fall riot of colors. 

 

Is There Any Value to Autumn Colors Beyond Beauty?

            There may be more to trees and shrubs revealing colors than simply a chemical quirk. Research suggests a number of plausible roles that having colorful leaves may play for a species.

Two theories have been advanced. One suggests bright autumn leaves carry a message to insects via their vivid colors to leave them alone. The intensity of the pigments can act as a warning signal to insects that a plant is really healthy and able to fend off any use by an insect for over-wintering. Many insect species choose trees in the fall to lay their eggs, and when they hatch in the spring, they often feed on the tree with potentially killing effects. But healthy trees typically ward off insect attack better than unhealthy ones, so just as male birds intimate their reproductive vigor to females and maintain their territories through the display of their brilliant breeding plumage, trees might be advertising to insects the same sort of story. I’m bright, I’m strong, I’m potentially lethal – go away.

photo by Jeff Richter

The second hypothesis, the “sunscreen theory,” argues that by the time the leaves change in a Wisconsin autumn, the foliage-feeding insects are already gone, so bright leaves have no insects to warn away. The theory suggests that fall colors, particularly the reds of the anthocyanins, act as a sunscreen to protect the leaves from harmful rays of sunlight in the reduction and eventual absence of chlorophyll. 

But, some trees like birches produce no anthocyanins, instead only making yellow carotenoids. Carotenoids help chlorophyll absorb sunlight in the summer, but they don’t shield the leaves in the fall, so birches must have another process by which they protect their leaves.

The truth is that there is no truth that fits all species. And that’s fine by me. I’m just grateful for the beauty of fall, whatever the ecological value may be.

 

Celestial Events

            The full moon - the Harvest/Acorn/Leaves Changing Color Moon - occurs on 9/26.

            For planet watching in October, look after dusk for Venus very low in the WSW (lost by mid-month), and Saturn rising in the E.

            Before dawn, look for Mars high in the SE and Jupiter high in the E. 

            We’re down to 11 hours and 29 minutes of sunlight as of 10/4.

            Look on 10/5 for Mars below the waning crescent moon. On 10/6, Jupiter will trade places with Mars and be just below the waning crescent moon. 

 

Thought for the Week

            “Make a home. Help to make a community.

Be loyal to what you have made.

Put the interest of the community first.

Love your neighbors - not the neighbors you pick out, but the ones you have.

Love this miraculous world that we did not make, that is a gift to us.

As far as you are able make your lives dependent upon your local place, neighborhood, and household - which thrive by care and generosity - and independent of the industrial economy, which thrives by damage.

Find work, if you can, that does no damage.

Enjoy your work. Work well.”

-Wendell Berry, from an essay published in 1989, “The Futility of Global Thinking”

 

 

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