A Northwoods Almanac for December 17 – 30, 2010
You Think We Have It Bad
It was mighty cold last weekend with near-blizzard conditions, and the newscasters were making it sound like we survived a near-Armageddon. But like everything in life, we need to keep some perspective. For instance, it’s certainly true that we sometimes face pretty tough conditions when we do our Christmas bird counts, but consider doing the count in the Arctic. Folks there have done count days with windchills of minus 65°F at Sanningaruq, Alaska, and minus 70° at Prudhoe Bay. Plus an Arctic CBC is usually done in a “twilight zone,” given that the sun last sets in November and does not rise above the horizon again until February17.
Arctic CBCs can be completely birdless as well, even though observers spend hours on snowshoes, skis, and snowmobiles trying to find something avian. Many Arctic CBCs do find some life, but turn up only one species – common ravens – and usually only because there’s a town dump nearby where the ravens can find food daily.
But as with most outdoor ventures, the counters still say they have a great time. In a recent article in the journal American Birds (“Birding in the Twilight Zone”), one bird counter in Nunavut, a bayside Inuit hamlet of 600 people on the north coast of Baffin Island, said he considers its tundra, fjords, and frozen ocean to be “one of the magical places in the world.” He made the record books in 2008 when he found a rock ptarmigan, and not only doubled the size of the Arctic Bay’s CBC list, but was the first to ever record another species other than ravens north of 70° latitude.
I particularly enjoyed this quote from another birder in Prudhoe Bay who has only recorded one species – common ravens – in 23 years of doing the CBC there: “Only ravens? That’s a good one! Have you ever seen a common raven, its face covered with frost, sitting nonchalantly on the ground six feet from an Arctic fox? Or two of them performing aerobatics and exchanging an empty cigarette pack in mid-flight as if the sub-zero weather was just perfect?”
Besides trying to help the scientific data-collecting world, that ebullience is why we’re out there counting birds in the winter. Yes, when the cold creeps in, sometimes we wonder if we’ve lost our minds, but usually the world offers us something of interest, if not of great value and we come up a good story or two that we can tell later on. Winter’s a quiet time, but life is going on out there, and we can best honor it by making ourselves present as observers. Besides, the experience of cold is often more in our head than in our bodies – if bird counters in the Arctic can enjoy a day (night?) out in -70°, I think we can handle 15° with a smile.
Sightings
Mary Madsen on Twin Island Lake in Presque Isle e-mailed on 12/6 to say she has been enjoying two male cardinals and a red-bellied woodpecker at her feeders for the last two weeks.
On 12/10, Sandi Hodek Arbor Vitae sent me a photo of a grouse that has visited their flowering crabapple tree for several years. And now a second grouse has joined it in the feasting. Sandi noted, “Though it would probably be geriatric by now, we can't help wondering if one of them is the same grouse that played with our lab-mix one October day four years ago.”
On 12/1, Jim Kruse sent a photo of a great horned owl that had been sitting in a tree behind their house for quite a long time.
That same day, Mark Pflieger sent a photo of a barred owl feeding on some bear fat he had put out. Over several years, a barred owl has visited his feeder around this time, and he’s wondering if the same one has returned.
As of 12/13, we still have three tree sparrows, a white-throated sparrow, and a northern junco visiting our feeders. Given the recent heavy snowfall, it will be interesting to see if these ground-feeding birds remain or if they hightail it south as they should have a month or more ago.
Celestial Events – Total Lunar Eclipse
Winter solstice arrives on 12/21, along with the full moon and a total lunar eclipse! We will be graced with only 8 hours and 39 minutes of daylight, but we will have been compensated by the total eclipse, which will "officially" begin on Dec. 20 at 11:29 p.m. CST as the moon begins to enter Earth's outer, or penumbral, shadow. Totality occurs at 1:40 a.m. on 12/21, and ends at 2:52 a.m., so this total lunar eclipse lasts only 72 minutes from start to finish.
The entire total lunar eclipse will be visible from all of North and South America, the northern and western parts of Europe, and a small part of northeast Asia, including Korea and much of Japan. In all, an estimated 1.5 billion people will have an opportunity to enjoy the best part of this lunar show.
Christmas day, 12/25, not only brings material presents, but also marks the first day since summer solstice that our days start growing longer. We’ll be blessed with one whole additional minute of sunlight – 8 hours and 40 minutes worth – but on every day for the next week, we’ll get another minute yet.
Our latest sunrises of the year (7:40 a.m.) begin on 12/27, and then the sun seems to hang there like a yoyo on the end of a string until January 7 when the sunrise comes a minute earlier for the first time since June 11.
View the Tundra Swan Migration
Arctic-nesting tundra swans migrate through Wisconsin in large numbers in the spring and the late fall, stopping off by the tens of thousands in November along the Mississippi River near LaCrosse. While they are most often seen feeding by the thousands in southern Wisconsin cornfields, they occasionally migrate through our area and usually are commonly seen on the Wisconsin River south of McNaughton.
If you’ve ever wondered about the actual paths of their migration, in July and August of 2008, fifty tundra swans across Alaska were surgically implanted with satellite transmitters to document inter-population differences in their migration patterns and wintering distribution. Using helicopters, planes, and inflatable boats, ten birds were captured at each of five breeding areas. Through this research, scientists hope to first better understand the swans’ movement patterns and estimate their dispersal from these areas, with the larger goals of understanding genetic differentiation within populations of tundra swans and the avian influenza viruses they carry.
You can see their migration using Google Earth. Note how many of the swans stopover in the Brownsville, MN/Lacrosse, WI area. http://alaska.usgs.gov/science/biology/avian_influenza/TUSW/index.html
A Passing
On 12/9, Mary’s father Del Burns passed away peacefully at the age of 95. He had the wonderful privilege of making his transition at home in his own bed in Manitowish Waters with his two daughters at his side, Mary and her sister Nancy, and with our daughter Callie playing the harp for him.
I note his passing out of honor for a man who expressed dignity and integrity in every fiber of his body, and who graced me with a trove of wisdom in the time I knew him. He’ll be missed in a thousand ways. But his passing also marks another loss, a loss of someone raised in the time when life on a farm was non-electric, non-motorized, non-computerized. He was born in 1915, and grew up as the eldest son on a small farm near Wausau where he milked cows by hand, plowed fields behind a horse, hauled wood he split by hand into town behind a team of two horses, and on and on – it was a time when nearly everything was still fashioned by hand and his iron-grip handshake was the result.
I loved to listen to his stories of the first time they got electricity and turned lights on in the barn, the first time they got a tractor, the first time he used a power saw, and on and on with firsts that marked the headlong modernization of life in the 20th century.
Mary wrote a poem to commemorate this part of his life and I wanted to share it with you because, as usual, she was able to find the true heart in things:
THE MORNING ROAD
We wrap my father in the colors of dawn
and lay him in a carved maple sleigh,
bones of the ancient forest he helped to clear.
Come Bill and Bob
Queenie and Bird
from the horse-shadows
to carry this man home.
You remember the boy
85 years gone by
who curried, fed
and harnessed you so gently.
Step up, step proudly
for this final journey
down the morning road.
My father, eldest of six,
goes to meet the others
all gone ahead.
The pace quickens
as he thinks of Ernest, his closest brother,
dead at 17 in a wagon accident.
Parents, aunts and uncles,
cousins and baby daughters, all waiting.
But it is my mother
whom he seeks.
They have kept a vigil
for one another
a candle in the heart
burning the same flame.
Come Bill and Bob
Queenie and Bird
from the horse-shadows
to carry this man home.
Four days before his passing
he said he could hear the horses coming,
his father driving both teams
with the sleigh bells ringing through the forest.
Step up, step proudly
for this final journey
down the morning road.
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