A Northwoods Almanac for March 13-26

 A Northwoods Almanac for March 13-26, 2026 

 

Sightings - Golden-crowned Kinglet 

            Mary and I were snowshoeing near dusk a few weeks back when I leaned against a decaying red pine with lots of large and small holes in it, and a golden-crowned kinglet flew out from just under my arm and landed on a nearby branch. It was obviously roosting for the evening in one of the holes, and I disturbed it.

            Bernd Heinrich in his book Winter World wrote several chapters on the extraordinary lengths that golden-crowned kinglets go to survive a northern winter. To begin with, they are the smallest songbird of all that winters in our Northwoods, and the second smallest in the summer, only out-smalled by ruby-throated hummingbirds. Golden-crowned kinglets weigh all of 5 grams, which is about a fifth of an ounce, or two pennies worth, and stretched out they may reach four inches in length. Heinrich says they own the title of the world’s smallest perching songbird (hummingbirds are not considered songbirds). Their size matters in winter, because the smaller the animal, the proportionately larger is the surface mass, leading to the greater loss of heat.

            Toss in the fact that they maintain their body temperature at 109° to 111°F (43 to 44°C), some 5°F (3°C) higher than most birds. That means they have to burn more calories in winter to stay warm (BTW, their body temperature would cause most of us to die of heat stroke).

            Nevertheless, few birds can out-tough them - they can survive down to minus 40 degrees F. Add in the fact that Heinrich found tiny geometrid (“inchworm”) caterpillars comprised the bulk of the kinglet’s diet, which are truly few in number, tiny, and difficult to find. Heinrich observed that kinglets feed incessantly, all day long, foraging tirelessly and averaging 45 short “hop-flights” per minute. 

            Our winter nights can reach -30°F and last 15 hours, so it would seem that their survival would be an impossible task. One research team measured the amount of fat the kinglets put on during the day, and while proportionately it was very high compared to other birds, they calculated that the kinglets would need twice the calories in their fat reserves to last the night.           Heinrich thinks they may go into torpor overnight to lessen their calorie loss, but that’s not proven. He then took some of his students and tracked birds at dusk to see what they did at night, and they found that the tiny birds may conserve energy by huddling together in small

groups, and that the birds may roost together sometimes in miniature snow caves on evergreen branches, thereby benefitting from the snow’s insulating properties.

            Even utilizing all their behavior and physical adaptations, Heinrich writes, “[Their survival] defies physics and physiology. We don’t know for sure how they do it.”

 

Beaver Lodge and Safe Ice - A Cautionary Tale

            I was walking along a frozen lakeshore a few weeks ago when I came upon what appeared to be a relatively modest “hump” of snow. Our dog walked up on top of it, and as I was standing there, I thought, “This looks like a new beaver lodge. I better go around it on shore.” As that realization dawned on me, the ice under my feet immediately gave way, and I was plunged into water up to my chest.

            A few shocked swear words later, I was able to pull myself up onto shore, but I was soaked. Fortunately, I was only 300 yards or so from my car, so I sloshed my way through the snow and was in the car and home stripping off my “not yet frozen but getting there” clothes a few minutes later.

            I know not to walk on ice around a beaver lodge. I just didn’t recognize it as a lodge right away, and I paid the price. Fair warning - because beavers swim out daily under the ice and collect branches from their winter cache to eat in their lodge, the ice around the lodge is often thin.

 

Moose in Wisconsin and the U.P.

            In northern Wisconsin, moose remain a true rarity with perhaps a few breeding pairs among an estimated 20+ total individuals. For decades, Moose have not been recognized by the DNR as a resident species in Wisconsin, thus limiting any formal research into their current status. However, the Wisconsin DNR and Natural Heritage Inventory (NHI) recently said they intend to update the state rank for moose from SNA (Status Not Assessed) to SU (Status Uncertain) reflecting the recognition that moose are here and part of Wisconsin’s native fauna.

            In the DNR’s stead, an Iron County resident, Amanda Griggs, began many years ago conducting moose surveys on her own in our area. She founded “Hidden Moose of Wisconsin,” a long-term research project trying to uncover and document Wisconsin’s moose population (see hiddenmoosewisconsin.wixsite.com). As a volunteer, she’s deployed dozens of trail cameras and is actively investigating a host of questions about moose in northern Wisconsin.  

            The moose story is quite different in the U.P. of Michigan. In the mid-1980s, the Michigan DNR translocated 59 moose from Algonquin Provincial Park to Marquette County. The goal was to establish a self-sustaining population in the U.P. of 1,000 moose by the year 2000.

            All the translocated moose were fitted with radio collars to track survival and movement, and though there were some natural losses, the population grew steadily from the late 1980s through 2007. 

            But data from over the last 16 years obtained via aerial population surveys shows that their annual growth has slowed to less than 1%.

            In the most recent moose survey conducted by the DNR in January 2023, an estimated 426 moose were counted in the western Upper Peninsula (the remainder of the U.P. is not systematically surveyed).

            In February of this year (2026),  a cooperative team from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and Northern Michigan University captured and collared 41 new moose and additionally recollared two of last year's yearlings.             With these additions, researchers now have 56 active GPS collars deployed across the population with the intent to understand why moose numbers in the western Upper Peninsula have remained relatively stagnant. 

            So, the question always arises as to why there are so few moose in Wisconsin when there are so many in the U.P. In 1989, the Wisconsin State Legislature directed the DNR to investigate the feasibility of reintroducing elk, moose, and caribou. The resulting report, published in 1990, evaluated whether Wisconsin could realistically support these species again, and came back saying an elk reintroduction could likely succeed, but that moose and caribou would face significant challenges. 

            The report identified several limiting factors for moose, including ecological pressures from high white-tailed deer densities which result in presence of brainworm, a fatal parasitic nematode for moose that is carried by deer (in Minnesota’s moose population, for instance, brainworm causes between 25% and 45% of adult moose deaths).

            As a result of that assessment, Wisconsin chose to begin reintroducing elk near Clam Lake in 1995, but declined to introduce moose.

            Would moose do well in northern Wisconsin if reintroduced? The 1990 report suggested we don’t have the specific mix of habitats that moose favor. Frankly, I question that - moose occupied the northern half of the state prior to settlement - so, the habitat was adequate then, and should be so today. But I do agree that brainworm from our too high whitetail deer population is now and will continue to be a limiting factor, as are our warming winters.

            It’s difficult to answer the question whether moose could be reintroduced into northern Wisconsin and survive. Climate change likely dooms them in the long run. In the meantime, keep an eye on Griggs’ website to see what she comes up with.

 

Canada Jay Nesting

            Speaking of warm winters impacting moose, they are also impacting the nesting population of Canada jays in our area. I’ve coordinated the Manitowish Waters Christmas Bird Count since 1993, and up until 2011, we always had multiple sightings of Canada jays. In fact, we counted 13 individuals in 1994 in our count circle and 10 in 1998.

            But, we’ve not seen any during our counts since 2011 - 14 years running now. 

            Why? Well, that requires us to understand their breeding strategy. Canada jays mate and lay their eggs in late February into early March, rearing a family of young jays by mid-March, an extraordinarily early timing requiring large amounts of high energy food. Why they raise their chicks so early in the year, with heavy snow around them and deep cold often well below zero, is a mystery, but they are only able to do it because of all the food they cached in the fall. 

            Canada jays cache insects, berries, mushrooms, and strips of flesh they’ve pulled from carcasses, sometimes caching up to 50 pounds per bird. They coat the food items with their sticky saliva - the stickiest saliva of any North American bird - making a little package that they jam in amongst spruce needles, in a tree crevice, a broken-off stump, or under loose bark, and then they somehow recall where to find it months later in the dead of winter.

            They are “scatter-hoarders,” and as one writer says, Canada jays “have a memory like a Vegas card counter.” They create thousands of food caches, by some estimates up to 8,000, and somehow remember where to retrieve some 80 percent of those morsels.

            So why are their numbers declining in our area? Because winters are warming in northern Wisconsin, and a January or February extended warm spell thaws out the frozen food caches, spoiling the food and leaving nothing to feed the chicks. 

            We’re at the southernmost edge of their range as it is, so any warming impacts their nesting success. Thus, Canada jays have been moving further north where winters are more consistently cold. 

 

Celestial Events - Spring Equinox

            Hooray for March 20, the official day marking the spring (vernal) equinox - our days are now longer than our nights!

 

Climate Stats

            2025 was Earth’s third-warmest year since records began in 1850. Global average temperatures in 2025 were 2.4°F (1.3°C) above pre-industrial (1850-1900) levels.

            The planet is rapidly approaching warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial averages, a number scientists believe is a threshold for much greater risks to lives, livelihoods, and ecosystems.

            Global coastal sea level was recently measured to be on average around 1 foot higher than assumed, according to a recent report in the journal Nature, with some places - such as Southeast Asia and parts of the Pacific - reaching up to 3 feet higher.

 

Thought for the Week

            “To travel well within your neighborhood is the greatest of journeys.” - attributed to Samuel Johnson

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 2/27 - 3/12/26

 A Northwoods Almanac for 2/27 - 3/12/26  

March Madness

            March instigates an emotional yo-yo, a roller coaster of glorious ups and dismal downs. No month is more promising but also deceiving, more transformative but also relapsing, more exciting but so quickly depressing. Only those who haven’t lived here think spring is actually coming, while those of us who have been led down this bridal path over many years know it’s fool’s gold. 

            Still, even those of us who should know better are prone to thinking, well, maybe THIS time will be different, proving that hope springs eternal no matter how hopeless the case.

            Of course, we’re not the only ones who have experienced March’s deception. March, the carnival barker of months, has teased and tormented many, many others. Here is just a small sampling of the laments made over centuries:

            It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. - Charles Dickens

            In March, winter is holding back, and spring is pulling forward. Something holds and something pulls inside of us too. - Jean Hersey

            March: where weather forecasts take wild guesses! - Unknown

            Our life is March weather, savage and serene in one hour.  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

            March was an unpredictable month, when it was never clear what might happen. Warm days raised hopes until ice and grey skies shut over the town again. - Tracy Chevalier

            So, buckle up. When I think of March, I see in my mind’s eye the unforgettable beginning of ABC’s Wide World of Sports - “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat - the human drama” - as the Yugoslavian ski jumper Vinko Bogotaj goes careening of the ski jump head over heels. March will always be like that, a drama of risky transformation, a veritable jump off a cliff. But if we can tamper our expectations, ease our dreams and desires, we can smile at it, albeit ruefully, and just, seatbelt fastened, go along for the ride.

 

Sightings - Trumpeter Swans

            Trumpeter swans must be the earliest of our nesting waterfowl to return in the spring, even when the ice is still a foot thick on all of our lakes. Mary, Callie and I saw a pair of trumpeters resting on the ice of the Little Turtle Flowage on 2/12. And Jennifer and Joe Heitz reported seeing four trumpeters fly over their heads in the Star Lake area on 2/15, noting there was no open water anywhere in the area.

            It’s true, however, that some trumpeters winter-over in our area. A small flock has spent the winter for many years on the open water of the Manitowish River between Rest Lake and Benson Lake, and some are seen on the open Wisconsin River by Rhinelander. Could those that we saw and that Jennifer and Joe saw be from over-wintering flocks?

            Yes, it’s certainly possible, but given how far they were from open water would seemingly make it less likely. 

            Trumpeters are aquatic plant eaters, so they have to feed on open water. So, why return so early when ice-off is at least a month or more away? Is it the vying for optimal territories?             I honestly don’t know, but assuredly they know what they’re doing. It just isn’t at all apparent to me.

 

2025 Deer Hunt Stats

(All data from Paul Smith, 2/8 article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel):

*In the fall, the DNR estimated the state herd at 1.82 million deer, the highest ever on record.

*As of Jan. 27, 2026, hunters registered 338,685 white-tailed deer through the various hunting seasons.

*The total harvest is on track to be about 4% higher than the previous year and the highest since 2012, when 368,313 deer were registered.

*The buck kill of 165,614 is 14th highest on record and the most since 2007.

*The Nov. 22-30 gun season resulted in 183,094 deer registered, a drop of 4% from the previous year. Take into account, however, a heavy snowstorm hit much of the state late in the nine-day season (you might remember that little 30+ inch snowfall) and likely reduced hunter effort.

*The crossbow deer kill of 70,047 (43,006 bucks and 27,041 antlerless) is up 10% from last year.

*The archery (vertical bow) deer harvest increased. As of Jan. 27 the total was 41,459 (25,701 bucks and 15,758 antlerless), a 7% year-over-year increase.

*Yet, the number of deer hunters has dropped by 116,640 (or 16%) in the last 25 years, according to the DNR.

            The question when presented with an array of data points like this is what conclusions one can draw from them? What do these numbers say about the state of our deer herd, the impacts of winter weather, of wolves, the continuing decline in deer hunters, the increase in bow hunting and archery on the gun season, et al?

            It’s complicated, so I’ll listen to voices that have been around the longest time and speak with the most experience and integrity. Two come to mind: Keith McCaffery, retired deer biologist and likely the most trusted voice on deer ecology in the state, and recently retired deer biologist Jeff Pritzl. I recommend trusting their writings.

 

Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program

            The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program was created in 1989 as a bipartisan initiative to provide funding for the DNR to protect natural areas, water quality, and fisheries while expanding outdoor recreation. Signed by Governor Tommy Thompson, it was renamed in 1993 to honor former governors Warren Knowles (Republican) and Gaylord Nelson (Democrat), highlighting a long-standing bipartisan commitment to conservation. 

            The program has provided over 1,500 grants in all 72 counties of Wisconsin to land trusts and conservation nonprofit organizations, state park friends groups, and local governments, enabling improvements to parks, trails, and waterways. The program has helped permanently protect well over 750,000 acres in Wisconsin, and almost every Wisconsin resident has a Knowles-Nelson project within a mile or two of their home. In a poll taken of Wisconsin residents, 93% said they favored the program - nine out of ten.

            From its inception, the Stewardship program has funded not just DNR land acquisition and recreational development, but a family of grants through which local communities and nonprofits, matching the state investment dollar-for-dollar, have expanded parks and public nature preserves, boat landings, town parks, ATV trails, snowmobile bridges, you name it.

            On 2/18, Senate Republicans canceled a vote on a $28.25 million GOP-authored bill to extend the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program for two years ($14.12 million per year). The amount may sound like plenty, but the bill provides nothing for buying land, except $1 million designated for the Ice Age Trail. Everything else in the bill would fund maintenance work and habitat restoration.

            This is a dramatic decrease in funding from the program’s inception. The key loss is the elimination of funding for buying land over the next two years, thus tying the state’s hands to take advantage of any opportunity to increase lands for hunting, timbering, recreating in any form, and to secure critical wildlife habitats.

            I’ve heard a few people saying, “So what? We have too much land already, and the cost is too much. My taxes are already too high.”

            For the record, the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program costs $11 per Wisconsin resident annually, debt service included, way less than the cost of a state park sticker, a fishing license, or a typical campground fee for one night. 

            Still, it’s eleven bucks. What are you getting for it? 

            Well, for extensive details of why the Stewardship program matters, go to the link: https://knowlesnelson.org/toolkit/, and click on the “Explore Impact Sheets” tab. 

            There you can search by county, Assembly district, Senate district or “Ice Age Trail” community, and learn how many projects, how many acres, and how much taxpayer money Knowles-Nelson has invested in Wisconsin, and specifically your county, over the last 36 years.  

            Still, some are saying the program is only for buying more land and helping hikers and the non-motorized crowd.          

            Nope. It benefits everybody. Everybody. 

            Examples abound. In Oneida County, 135 projects have been done including new restrooms and renovation of the Lake Tomahawk Boat Landing, a new bathhouse and boat landing renovation at Hodag park, landscaping with benches and picnic tables along with the construction of the Newbold Recreational Trail, and new bathrooms, beach improvement, a picnic area and swing set at the Monico Town Park. It did include a 680-acre expansion to the Oneida County Forest, but remember, timber harvests on county forest lands provide large revenues for nearly every northern county.

            In Vilas County, 180 projects have been done, including to help purchase 960 acres of land in the Tenderfoot Forest Preserve, perhaps the best stand of old-growth forest left in our state. But over a half million dollars also went to an ATV wash station, shower facility, utility upgrades and expansion of the Torch Lake Campground. One-third million went to a new pavilion and playground at the Conover Town Park, and a couple hundred thousand went to a picnic area, parking and restrooms at Rearing Pond Park in Presque Isle.

            In Forest County, money went for a 2,800-acre expansion of the Forest County Forest (counties harvest timber!), but grants also were given for the reconstruction of a snowmobile bridge on the Nicolet State Trail, aquatic weed harvesting equipment for the Pine Lake Protection and Rehabilitation District, and the construction of a bike trail connecting the Crandon School complex to the Wolf River State Trail.

            Money went in Florence County for County Forest ATV trail rehabilitation and a new culvert, along with a boat landing and shelter at the Long Lake Swimming Beach.

            So, please look more deeply into what this program does for our state and for your county, and then decide what your 11 bucks is worth to you. 

            For me, it’s one of the best ways I can think of to spend it. 

            As outdoor writer Pat Durkin says, “Stewardship isn’t a burden – it’s a smart investment.” If you agree, call your legislators and tell them to fully fund the program.

 

Celestial Events

            For planet watching in March, look after dusk very low in the west for Venus, for Jupiter high in the South, and for Saturn very low in the west but only through mid-month. Before dawn, there’s not much - look for Mercury very low in the southeast.

            As of the first of the month, our average high temperature reaches 32° for the first time since November 29.  

            The full moon occurs on 3/3 with a total lunar eclipse in the morning reaching maximum at 5:33 AM. The eclipse will be viewable by nearly everyone in the U.S.

            On 3/8 look after dusk low in the west for Venus just one degree above Saturn.

 

Thought for the Week

            A land ethic “reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of land . . . Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves the public interest.” - Aldo Leopold 

            

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 2/13-26/2026

 A Northwoods Almanac for 2/13-26/2026  

 

Valentines Day – A Matter of the Heart

            I typically write in this column entirely about the outer landscape – the stories of all the species that form this natural community we call the Northwoods. But actually I’m also writing about the inner landscape – yours and mine – which is the emotional landscape we employ to love this place and to work hard to protect it. 

            Examining one landscape without the other fails to fully describe what our common experiences actually amount to. And one without the other will also fail to ultimately conserve the Northwoods for all those to come. 

            Physicist Chet Raymo wrote, “Two things are required to truly see: knowledge and love. Without love, we don’t look. Without knowledge, we don’t know what it is we are seeing.”

            Does one come before the other? John Burroughs, famous American naturalist, thought so: “Knowledge without love will not stick. But if love comes first, knowledge is sure to follow.” 

            I’m not sure of that order, or that it matters. We all have come to our love for the Northwoods via a thousand paths, whether from simply sitting on the end of a dock and watching the water, or deer hunting, or picking blueberries, or smelling a wild rose, or catching a fish, or watching a great blue heron take off. We each experience these differently, because we all experience the world in “our” way, the way we have come to filter the world and then interpret its myriad meanings. Thus, all places are inside our heads (and hearts), with our perceptions and beliefs filtering how and what we see.

            In whatever manner we have come to realize our love of the North Country, stewardship is the translation of that love into action, the translation of our personal sense of place into the way we enact our lives. 

            Kathleen Dean Moore writes, “Loving isn’t just a way of being, it’s a way of acting in the world. Love isn’t a sort of bliss, it’s a kind of work.”

            What should that loving work look like? That’s for each of us to decide. Whatever it may be, it hopefully will be expressed through ethical actions based in love. Leopold wrote, “It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land.”

            I’ve always believed that if we can fall more deeply in love with the world, we will treat all beings with greater empathy and thus with greater respect, enabling each of us in our own way to best steward our part of the Northwoods.

 

What is an Education of the Heart?

            How can we fall more deeply in love with the natural world? Here are what I see as the elements of an education of the heart:

1 - To become receptive, to pay attention

            Begin with awareness, give things the dignity of their names, and then inquire into their lives, their stories. To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. - Mary Oliver

2 - To get past the charismatic, to look small

            It’s easy to be in awe of the magnificent, but much harder to find the magic in smaller things. We’re always seeking big peak experiences - the Grand Canyon, for instance - when we could be daily gathering the small peaks - perhaps a beautiful stone on Lake Superior’s shoreline. Every single species challenges us with nearly all the mysteries of life. The trick is to have the center of the world be anywhere, wherever we go, wherever we are. Kathleen Dean Mooresays, Wisdom grows as a river grows, from the accumulation of many small things.  

3 - To be mindful

            This is the quality and power of mind that is deeply aware of what’s happening without commentary and without interference. This is how we become receivers rather than broadcasters. 

4 - To become connected/to build relationships

            How deep we feel we are a part of our communities - human and nature - is in direct proportion to how many of its members we truly know and appreciate. E.O.Wilson wrote, The more we know of other forms of life, the more we enjoy and respect others  . . . Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life. 

5 - To become compassionate

            The Dalai Lama says that real change is in the heart, that the problems of the world are at the emotional level. The solution? To develop compassion for all life without exception. We have to feel for all life, everywhere.

6 - To feel reverence

            Reverence is contact with the essence of each thing and person and plant and bird and animal, wrote Gary Zukav. We have to see the world as something far more valuable than resources. How does one love a resource? Love is never a taking.

7 - To feel gratitude

            To recognize how much we have been given, for the gift of life itself, and to then choose to speak on behalf of the larger whole.

8 - To see beauty

            I heard of a boy once who was brought up an atheist. He changed his mind when he saw that there were a hundred-odd species of warbler, each bedecked like a rainbow, and each performing yearly sundry thousands of miles of migration about which scientists wrote wisely but did not understand. No fortuitous concourse of elements working blindly through any number of millions of years could quite account for why warblers are so beautiful. – Aldo Leopold

9 - To become ecologically literate

Conservation requires a broad literacy. Science must inform the discussion and the decision. We must be able to read the landscape and to think complexly. By making the landscape visible, then bringing it into focus, then bringing it to life, we then make it part of our life. We only grieve for what we know. – Aldo Leopold

10 - To find a balance between head and heart - to find wisdom

Decisions are made from a mix of thought and feeling, data and values, rational argument, and intuition. Loving a place is a process of learning to see, of transforming disconnected images into vision so we are no longer lost in our own neighborhood. 

 

Great Backyard Bird Count - This Weekend!

            The annual Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) takes place starting today, Friday, February 13 through Monday, February 16. The GBBC represents a chance to take a 4-day snapshot of bird populations around the world, creating the largest instantaneous snapshot of global bird populations ever recorded.

            Participants are asked to count birds for as little as 15 minutes (or as long as they wish) on one or more days of the four-day event, and then report their sightings online at birdcount.org. 

            Anyone can take part in the count, from beginning bird watchers to experts, and you can participate from your backyard, or anywhere in the world.

            Each checklist submitted during the GBBC helps researchers at Audubon, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Birds Canada learn more about how birds are doing, and how to protect them. In 2024, more than 600,000 participants worldwide submitted their bird observations online, and identified 7,920 species, which is absolutely remarkable.

            Please visit the official website at birdcount.org for more information and for the protocol on how best to count your birds.

 

Progress in Renewables!

            From Katherine Hayhoe’s excellent Substack, Talking Climate. “Renewables, including solar, onshore wind, and battery storage have reached a price point where they are virtually unstoppable. Wind and solar alone are projected to account for 32% of global power by 2030, surging to over half of the world’s electricity by 2040.”

            "What about the United States, you may be thinking? Well, despite the current US administration’s active opposition to clean energy which is stalling hundreds of new wind and energy projects, EIA data is still forecasting that renewable energy will supply 99 percent of new US generating capacity this year. Last year, together wind and solar produced 28% of US electricity, more than coal.

            "Meanwhile in the UK, where coal was phased out entirely in 2024, renewables supplied 47% of all electricity last year. And Australia hit a new milestone in the last quarter of 2025, with renewables making up a full half of the national grid’s power mix."

 

Celestial Events

            As of 2/15, our days are now growing longer by more than 3 minutes per day.

            The new moon occurs on 2/17. 

            The 64^th anniversary of John Glenn’s space mission as the first American to orbit the Earth takes place on 2/20. I was 10 years old, and I remember watching it in 1962 on our little black-and-white TV. He was a hero.

 

Thought for the week

            “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way . . . As a man is, so he sees.” – William Blake

 

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 1/30 – 2/ 12/2026

 A Northwoods Almanac for 1/30 – 2/ 12/2026  

 

Cold! There’s An Upside

            Last week brought some serious cold weather, with lows reaching minus 41° on 1/24. Cold like that always tests the quality of our winter clothing, with cold fingers and feet proving their insufficiency. I suspect outdoor clothing retailers had a very good week, as did the utility companies (a hot bath when you’re really cold? – How wonderful is that!)

            A strange thing to say, I know, but I celebrate cold like this, admittedly while inside sitting near our woodstove. I’m happy when it’s bitter cold because overall it has positive environmental impacts. Why? Cold kills. 

            That may be a strange thing to say because it swings both ways – it depends, of course, on who is doing the dying. The “good” dying occurs on some invasive insects – intense cold helps to keep them at bay. Take, for instance, hemlock wooly adelgids, spongy moths (aka gypsy moths), and emerald ash borers. All three species have killed tens of millions of trees, and will kill millions more well into the future. But all of them begin dying at -5°,  and once temperatures reach -30°, up to 99% die.

            Unfortunately, some individuals always survive because of microhabitats that insulate them, thus the populations eventually rebound. But the overall population gets knocked back every year as long as winter temperatures regularly reach those intense lows, and thus the insects cause far less harm.  

            Beech trees also approve of intense cold. Though beech trees don’t grow in our part of the state, they’re common in northeastern Wisconsin counties, and dominant throughout New England. Beech trees have been dying by the millions due to several issues, one being beech scale insects which lead to beech bark disease.

            The good news? Extreme cold also kills beech scale insects.            

            There are many more examples, some positive, some not so much. But while extreme cold has some limitations on killing invasive organisms, without it, we’ll be in a lot more trouble from invasive species.

 

Does This Cold Snap Prove Climate Change Is A Hoax?

            For those folks who want to immediately say this intense cold proves climate change is a crock, I always compare how our climate is changing to a serious, and often fatal, illness. There will be good days when the illness appears to be in remission, days that are a blessing. But the course of the illness continues unremitting and unforgiving. That’s climate change. Just as the warm thaw we had earlier this month doesn’t prove climate change exists, neither does a cold spell prove it doesn’t exist. That’s weather, short term and temporary, not climate, which is long term and far more permanent.                     

            BTW, this was a cold, very cold spell, but not as cold as some of the truly bitter weather we’ve had in the past. The winter of 1995-96 was the worst by far in my experience. For five days straight, Jan. 31 to Feb. 4, real temperatures, not wind chills, were at -45° or lower. The record cold for the state at -55° was set in Couderay, Sawyer County, on Feb. 4, 1996. We had    -50° at our house in Manitowish that same day.

            The winter of 2013-14  was substantially more severe than this, too – we had 5 days in a row of -30° from Jan. 5-9. The term “polar vortex” came into its own that winter. 

 

Pileated Woodpeckers

            Bird numbers continue to be down at our feeders this winter, an observation I’ve heard from many other people, though there are pockets of birds being seen in some areas. We have zero pine siskins, American goldfinches, purple finches, evening grosbeaks, pine grosbeaks, and bohemian waxwings, along with just one redpoll. It’s quiet!!

            But we do have a pair of pileated woodpeckers working on some of our dying black ash trees, and occasionally one lands on our suet feeder about 5 feet away from our breakfast table, and that sure wakes everyone up no matter how many times we see it!

photo by Bev Engstrom

            Crow-sized, pileateds rank as the largest woodpecker in North America, and the third largest in the world, so they make an impression when flying by one’s window. 

            They also make the largest feeding holes in trees of any North American woodpecker, holes that are almost always rectangular and can easily measure more than a foot in length. Pileateds predominately eat carpenter ants and woodboring beetle larvae, so the hole size is commensurate with how many ants and beetles are present. They use their long, extensible, pointed and barbed tongue along with sticky saliva to catch and extract the ants and beetles from their tunnels within the trees.

photo by John Bates

            They forage in dead trees, dying trees, downed logs, and live trees, wherever the insects are most plentiful. I remember when we first moved here in 1984 cutting down an old, large white spruce that had a pileated feeding hole near its base. The tree was next to our house, and had to come down so we could build an addition. Well, after admiring how the tree fell the direction I wanted it to (a rarity), I looked down at the stump and about a gazillion carpenter ants were streaming out and heading at a full ant sprint for our house. I must have stomped hundreds of ants in a frenzy of fear for what they might do our already very old house, and so I quickly gained an appreciation for just how many ants a large old tree might harbor.

            An ecology professor of mine used to say that pileateds were nature’s best insecticide –  by eating so many ants and insect larvae over the winter, they reduce the insect hatch in the spring. The prof’s little ditty went like this: “Eat one in winter a day, kill a thousand in May.”

            I have often thought of them as surgeons, taking out the invasive organisms attacking a living tree. But a case can be made that their holes make a tree more vulnerable to species of fungi that can kill the tree, so perhaps it’s a wash. 

            Pileateds also eat fruits when they’re available. I’ve seen them ingesting highbush cranberries below our house, and the list of other fruits that they consume is long, including blackberry, raspberry, woodbine, sumac, elderberry, American holly, various dogwoods, and even poison ivy.

            That same prof I mentioned above also believed pileateds were the most ecologically beneficial birds we have, and I agree with him. Their excavations are used for nesting or roosting by at least 38 other bird species, and sometimes even as den sites for smaller mammals like American martens and bats. 

            These birds can live a long time – the oldest known male was at least 12 years, 11 months old when he was recaptured and rereleased during banding operations in Maryland. So, if you have a pair on your property, they may have been there up to a decade, and their young may have followed them onto the territory upon their death, making your property their family homestead, too. 

pileated range map

            

The Economics of Bicycling in the Northwoods

            The Heart of Vilas paved bike trail runs for 52 miles connecting St. Germain, Sayner, Boulder Junction, Manitowish Waters and Mercer. The trail was designated a National Recreation Trail in 2022 in recognition of its exceptional quality and value to our communities.

            Mary and I have ridden portions of the trail countless times over the years, sometimes seeing so many riders, riders of all shapes and sizes and ages, that it feels crowded. Well, that occasional sense of “crowdedness” is borne out by a recent report summarizing the use of the trail in 2025. More than 162,500 cyclists rode the trail from May through September of 2025 (October data, prime fall color season, was not yet available), with over 45,000 of those users in August alone.

            Let that sink in for a minute: 45,000 riders in August alone, and over 160,000 over a five-month period, just on this trail.

            In a detailed survey of riders, on average, trail users spent $188 per day, generating an estimated $25.7 million in economic activity for the area. Lodging was the highest spending category, followed by food and beverages and souvenirs

            Overnight visitors spent more, approximately $287 per day, while day trippers spent $43 per day. Their overnight stays varied in length, with almost half (47%) staying one to three days, and more than a third (37%) staying seven days or longer, while another 16% stayed 4 to 6 days.

            More than three quarters of the trail users came from out of town, their spending injecting revenue into the five local economies along the trail. The economic study estimates the trail supports 141 jobs and generates almost $2 million in local and state tax revenues.

            We tend too often to measure the value of things via the money they generate, but not only does the trail system draw people to the area, it allows residents and visitors alike to travel safely on two wheels to and from campgrounds, resorts, hotels, dining, shopping and even other trails. We see a whole lot of smiling going on from most of the riders. Need I add that biking contributes to one’s health as well.

            The future expansion of the trail looks exciting, too. The Great Headwaters Trails Foundation is fundraising for an expansion to link Eagle River to St. Germain and the Heart of Vilas Bike Trail System. Additionally, ICORE (Iron County Outdoor Recreation Enthusiasts) in Mercer plans to create a new trail segment to connect existing trails to the WinMan Trails, an off-road biking and hiking destination that already generates $4.3 million annually in economic impact. 

            Future expansion plans also include a connection to Arbor Vitae and Minocqua. Not incidentally, that addition will hopefully connect to the 21.5 mile-long Bearskin Trail, which is estimated by the DNR to have drawn over 80,000 users in 2024.

            When we first moved here in 1984, folks used to say hikers, bikers, canoeists and skiers came with a $20 bill and a pair of socks, and didn’t change either. There was no truth to it then, but it clearly is nonsense now. Non-motorized recreation is, in fact, a major economic driver.

 

Celestial Events

            Look tomorrow night, 1/30, after dusk, for Jupiter four degrees south of the waxing gibbous moon. 

            February’s full moon (the “Snow Moon”/“Hunger Moon”/“Sucker Moon”) occurs on the first of the month.

            The midpoint between winter solstice and spring equinox take place on 2/3.

            We hit 10 hours of sunlight as of 2/7. The sun will now be setting an hour later than the earliest sunsets in December.

            For planet watching in February, the action is all after dusk. Look for Saturn in the west, Jupiter in the east, and Venus after mid-month in the west-southwest.

 

Thought for the Week (Perhaps the Year)

            “Here is what I believe: that the natural world – the stuff of our lives, the world we plod through, hardly hearing, the world we burn and poke and stuff and conquer and irradiate – that THIS WORLD (not another world on another plane) is irreplaceable, astonishing, contingent, eternal and changing, beautiful and fearsome, beyond human understanding, worthy of reverence and awe, worthy of celebration and protection.

            “If the good English word for this combination of qualities is ‘sacred,’ then so be it..” – Kathleen Dean Moore, Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 1/16-29/ 2026

 A Northwoods Almanac for 1/16-29/ 2026  

 

Adult Painted Turtles Extreme Responses to Winter

            Cold-blooded animals (better referred to as “ectotherms”) like reptiles and amphibians have to go to great extremes to survive northern winters. Even mild freezing temperatures will cause the water inside their bodies to expand and freeze, the sharp ice crystals potentially shredding cell membranes and rupturing the cells, leading to a quick death.

            Thus, every species of ectotherm has had to evolve a strategy to make it to spring, and sometimes even within a given species, the strategy may differ. Take, for instance, painted turtles. Adult painted turtles can’t survive below-freezing temperatures, and adapt by typically ensconcing themselves onto lake or river sediments prior to ice-up and waiting out the winter.

            The minor problem with this strategy is that turtles breathe via their lungs, and lungs, if you haven’t noticed for yourself, don’t work underwater. To survive, painted turtles drop their internal body temperatures to the same as the water, usually a few degrees above 32°F, and their

metabolic rate drops by about 95%. This reduces their oxygen demand so much that they usually can get all the oxygen they need by respiring through their skin, especially the skin inside and around their mouth as well as their cloaca (less scientifically called “butt breathing”).

Turtles under ice

            But oxygen levels in shallow lakes often crash as the winter progresses (a process called “anoxia”), which can kill fish, reptiles, and amphibians. At this point, painted turtles are unable to get any oxygen via “butt breathing” and compensate by dropping their metabolism to just 1% that of summer levels. Now with no oxygen available whatsoever, they start burning glycogen from muscle tissue to produce enough ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate, the fundamental energy currency for all cellular activities) to power their cells. 

            Now, however, a new problem arises. Lactic acid is produced as a byproduct and steadily rises during periods of anoxia, eventually leading to a condition called anoxic acidosis, which leads to an eventual death. Of all the turtle species in North America, painted turtles have the greatest tolerance to anoxia and the resulting acid buildup. They balance out the lactic acid by precipitating calcium and potassium from their skeleton and shell into their blood stream, which buffers the acidity and staves off the symptoms of acidosis. 

            Remarkably, they can survive without food or oxygen for 100 days. One study found that painted turtles can reduce their heart rate to 8 beats per hour, or 1 beat every 7 ½ minutes.

            Even so, some adult painted turtles die after prolonged periods in anoxic conditions. The best solution for defeating anoxia is to have an early ice-off so atmospheric oxygen can mix with the water. So, while early ice-off is great for anglers, or for those of us starved to see open water, it can be crucial for adult painted turtle survival.

            

Hatchling Painted Turtles Do Something Different, But Equally Extreme

            Painted turtle hatchlings offer a different story. Painted turtle eggs typically hatch in the early fall and the tiny hatchlings head immediately for open water. But some hatchlings remain in their shallow underground nest all winter, and are regularly exposed to freezing temperatures that kill adults. 

            To survive, the hatchlings have evolved two methods of coping with the freezing temperatures. They can “supercool,” a process by which liquids in the turtle’s body drop

to well below their normal freezing points without actually freezing. It’s basically like using an antifreeze, but in this case using high concentrations of glucose and other cryoprotectants

(compounds that protect tissue from freezing conditions). High glucose concentrations can allow the hatchlings to remain unfrozen down to an average of 14°F. 

            There are variables, however. The moisture in the soils and the type of soils surrounding the nests impact the temperature to which the turtles can supercool. In wet sandy soils,

turtles can only supercool to about  28°F before freezing, but in clay soils they can chill to 9°F, the difference being with how ice crystals form in the different substrates. 

            The second strategy they use is extra-cellular freezing whereby water is drawn out of the cells and into the spaces between the cells where it can freeze and expand without rupturing the cells. All but the liver and other vital organs freeze solid and can remain so for several days without causing harm to the hatchlings. 

            Bottom line: For most of the winter, the hatchlings utilize supercooling because they can’t tolerate long periods of being frozen.

            Come spring, the hatchlings will emerge and head for the nearest water.

            Amazing!

 

Garter Snakes Can Freeze, Too!

            Well, turtles don’t have the market cornered on freeze tolerance. Common garter snakes typically swarm together in an underground site called a hibernacula where they can freeze, too (they are known to also spend the winter underwater). They, too, are capable of supercooling to about 23°F, though this apparently isn’t an adaptation to winter freezing, but rather to freezing in the spring when they have emerged from their hibernacula and there’s an overnight frost. They can only freeze for a short period, around 10 hours, but that’s enough to get them by, and explains why garter snakes range so much farther north than other snake species – as far north as the southernmost tip of the Northwest Territories in Canada. 

Common garter snake range map

 

Some Species of Northern Frogs Also Freeze!

            Four out of our nine native species of frogs in the Northwoods – spring peepers, wood frogs, Eastern gray tree frogs, and boreal chorus frogs – also freeze over the winter. They freeze via a very similar mechanism to that of hatchling turtles, drawing water out of their cells so that freezing occurs outside of cells rather than within. 

            These frogs appear from the outside to be entirely frozen, their skin and eyes rock hard and most of their bodies solid – about 60% frozen. Their liver and heart, however, remain in a super-cooled state, though the heart ceases to beat and no breath is drawn. Basically, they’re in a state of suspended animation, appearing totally dead to the world.

Frozen wood frog

            Then in mid-April, they begin to thaw, and something yet more remarkable happens. In the fall, they freeze from the outside to the inside, but if the frog’s tissues and organs thawed in that same order, the frog would die. The skin, limbs, and eyes would thaw out without being connected to a beating heart, and tissue on the frog’s exterior would become necrotic – dying due to no blood flow.

            Instead, the frogs thaw from the core outward, starting with the heart beginning to beat. As each subsequent layer of tissue thaws, blood flows to the tissue until the skin and eyes soften, a process that only takes a couple hours. And then they can begin calling. and the

frogs can resume normal body function immediately afterward.

            Winners of the award for the most frozen of all organisms, wood frogs in Alaska were found to survive freezing to temperatures as low as zero and remained frozen for upwards of 200 consecutive days. Those Alaskan frogs concentrated ten times the amount of glucose in their musculature compared to Wood Frogs studied farther south.

            It should be noted that these four species of frogs overwinter in upland forests under leaf litter, logs and tree roots while air temperatures regularly fall way below that  in which the frogs can survive. But the frogs survive because of the snow cover that insulates them those microhabitats, providing yet another reason why having good snow depth beyond skiing and snowmobiling is important in the North country.

            BTW, where do our other five species of frogs overwinter (mink frogs, leopard frogs, green frogs, bullfrogs, and American toads)? Except for toads, underwater. Toads dig down into loose soil to below the frost line and spend the winter underground.

             

Sightings – Leucistic Black-capped Chickadee and Northern Shrike

            Zach Wilson sent me a photo of a leucistic black-capped chickadee that is coming to a feeder on the Turtle Flambeau Flowage. If you’re not familiar with leucism, it’s a partial loss of pigmentation in animals, causing patchy coloration.  

Leucistic black-capped chickadee, photo by Amanda Griggs

            We continue to have a northern shrike perching atop a large silver maple and overlooking our bird feeders. Our songbird numbers have been low so far this winter, and I suspect the shrike’s predilection for eating songbirds is partially responsible for that.

 

Great Lakes Ice Cover

            Great Lakes ice coverage stands at 14.43% as of January 05, 2026. What the future holds for ice formation depends entirely on the weather. Prolonged periods of below freezing temperatures and calm winds enhance ice formation. High winds, warmer temps, and wavy surfaces inhibit ice formation.

 

Celestial Events

            Our days are growing longer now by more than two minutes per day.

            The new moon occurs on 1/18.

            The year’s coldest days on average occur between 1/20 and 1/29, though the first week of February has a history of also being pretty brutal.

            On 1/23, look after dusk for Saturn about 4° below the waxing crescent moon. 

            Best planet watching for the rest of January? Jupiter rises in the east at dusk at -2.7 magnitude, so it’s the brightest star in the night sky these days. And Saturn (1.1 magnitude) is high in the south at dusk, then setting in the west.

 

Thought for the Week

            “ In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity.” –  John Burroughs, "The Snow-Walkers," 1866

 

Please share your outdoor sightings and thoughts: e-mail me at johnbates2828@gmail.com, call 715-476-2828, snail-mail at 4245N State Highway 47, Mercer, WI, or see my blog at www.manitowishriver.blogspot.com