A Northwoods Almanac for April 22 – May 5, 2011
Crane Count – Brrrr!
On Saturday, 4/16, Mary and I participated in the annual sandhill crane count. You may remember the weather last Saturday. The forecast was for 2 to 5 inches of snow and 15 to 20 mile-an-hour winds. We dodged a bullet on that – only a half inch of ice on our kayaks greeted us at dawn, and the wind was comparatively tranquil. Still, the temperature was 28 degrees, and that’s might chilly for paddling a kayak on the Manitowish River, which was our assigned site.
Three pairs of wool socks inside rubber boots, wool long johns, wool pants . . . it was a wool day, and we wrapped ourselves in enough wool to make a sheep jealous. Mary even had a wet suit on under all her wool, a discomfort I wasn’t willing to endure. And by the end of the paddle, we were thankful for simulating the Michelin man – in particular it’s hard to keep your legs and feet warm when there’s no real way to move them!
The cranes were quiet that morning. Only one pair gave their duet call, and then only in the first five minutes of our journey. But as in every other crane count we’ve ever done, the blessings of the day were mostly provided in non-crane ways. Winter wrens were singing the day into being with their joyfully complex songs, song sparrows were adding their jumbly verses, and river was in flood, offering us full access to marshlands usually dense with tall grasses and sedges.
Snow spit at us occasionally, unable to determine if it wished to be considered solid or liquid, and the gray sky only brightened very gradually. But the waterfowl seemed happy, just as were we to see them – ring-necked duck, green-wing teal, hooded merganser, trumpeter swan, mallard, Canada goose, bufflehead. Eagles and osprey patrolled the air, trying to see fish in the gray waters. Our first kingfisher of the year gave its rattling call from a tree in a flooded bay.
And there were the usual assortment of sounds and birds flying too fast that left us scratching our heads wondering what they were.
At the restaurant where we all gathered for breakfast to share our crane stories, the mood was not quite as ebullient as other years – the cold had taken a toll. But enthusiasm for birds and having been out no matter the weather was nevertheless high. And while our count was down due to winter’s reprise, the stories flowed, the isolation of a long winter was diminished, the smiles were wide, and the breakfast tasted particularly good, as all food does after time spent in the cold outdoors.
Arizona Birding
In contrast to our shivering during the crane count, two weeks earlier Mary and I were in southeastern Arizona in 75 to 90 degree heat, and observing flocks of migratorial birds moving through on their way north. Our feeders in Bisbee, AZ, just a few miles from the Mexican border, were awash in white-crowned sparrows, a Canada-nesting species that thinks northern Wisconsin too warm for its summertime pleasure. And in various mountain canyons as well as cottonwood-lined streams, yellow-rumped warblers were too numerous to bother counting. These were the Audubon variety of yellow-rumps, not the Myrtle variety that are our mainstay in the Eastern U.S. But both are northern nesters, only dipping their summer toes into the northern tier of the U.S.
Perhaps the most exciting group of birds within the 122 species that we saw, were the hummingbirds. Thirteen species can be seen in the course of the summer in SE Arizona, but we “only” encountered nine species – four had yet to return. Every species we saw had its own remarkable beauty, though if I had to pick the most remarkable one of all, I’d opt for the magnificent hummingbird. The magnificent occurs throughout much of Mexico and Central America, but some of them make it as far north as southeastern Arizona.
Magnificents are the second-largest hummingbird in North America (typically ¼ ounce and 5 inches long). The male truly earns his “magnificent” status from his iridescent purple crown, iridescent green gorget, small white spot behind eye, black underparts, and dark green upperparts with metallic bronze, bronze green, or golden green coloration in the large feathers of his wing and tail.
For the record, we saw the following hummers: rufous, broad-billed, violet-crowned, black-chinned, Anna’s, Costa’s, calliope, broad-tailed, and magnificent.
Manitowish Sightings First-Of-Year (FOY)
3/28 – FOY turkey vultures
4/5 – FOY merlin, FOY northern harrier on Powell Marsh
4/7 – FOY woodcock peenting near our house, FOY osprey on Hwy. 47, FOY tree swallows and killdeer on Powell Marsh, as well as 13 sandhill cranes on Powell Marsh.
4/8- FOY hooded mergansers on Manitowish River
4/9- FOY song sparrows
4/10 – FOY fox sparrow, plus FOY green-winged teal, ring-necked ducks, and pintail ducks at Powell Marsh, and our first rainbow of the year!
4/12 – FOY cowbirds
4/13 – FOY flicker, yellow-bellied sapsucker, winter wren, and starling
4/14 – FOY hermit thrush
4/16 – FOY kingfisher on Crane count
4/17 – flocks and flocks of juncos everywhere
Area Sightings – Migration Heating Up!
Loons Returning:
4/12 – Ron and Pam Ahles noted that though the ice was not off of the Pike Lake Chain there was a loon swimming around the bridge between Pike and Round Lakes.
4/15 – John Werth observed four loons on Muskellunge Lake east of Sayner. The lake was only one-third open.
4/16 – Pete Johnson reported seeing a loon on San Domingo Lake in Mercer despite the fact that very little of the lake was open.
4/16 – Paul and Carole Goetz live on Spring Lake in Lac du Flambeau, which they report was only 2/3 open, “but there were already two loons out there wailing to each other.”
Yellow-rumped Warblers Returning
The first two reports I received of yellow- rumped warblers occurred on 4/11: Jane Flanigan in Hazelhurst saw many of them along Bearskin Creek, and Pete Dring reported a few near his feeders on Helen Creek near Land O’Lakes.
Then during the snowstorm on 4/16, Ed Marshall in Lac du Flambeau reported a yellow-rumped warbler next to his feeder area trying to glean food from the branches and the bark, and Zach Wilson observed a yellow-rump in his yard in the Manitowish Waters area. What made Zach’s report so interesting is that the yellow-rump was actually drinking maple sap from a wound in a maple tree!
All birders fear for early arriving birds when spring periodically flips back into winter, as it almost always does. So how do the birds survive? By being flexible eaters. Yellow-rumps are the most flexible forager among all the warblers in northern forests, which allows them to withstand adverse conditions better than other more picky eaters. The diet for nearly all warblers consists mainly of insects. But while yellow-rumps likewise consume large quantities of insects, they also eat the berries of bayberry and wax myrtle, juniper, red cedar, Virginia creeper, viburnums, honeysuckles, mountain ash, poison ivy, spikenard, greenbrier, and dogwoods. They’ve also been observed eating willow buds, frozen apples, sap from sapsucker wells, maple sap, and raisins, suet, and peanut butter at feeders, as well as fruit such as oranges. Plus they’ll eat seeds including sunflower, goldenrod, and beach grass.
So, when the weather turns cold and insect hatches are delayed, the yellow-rumps have plans B, C and D to get them through. It’s likely that some still don’t make it, but perhaps that’s nature’s way of “culling the flock,” ensuring the strongest individuals survive and pass on their DNA.
More Sightings
Eagles: On 4/6, Edie Spellmeyer on Long Interlochen Lake in Lac du Flambeau observed 20 eagles, mostly adults, on the lake ice in front of their house. The eagles arrived gradually as individuals or in pairs, and there was no obvious food that attracted them.
Spring Peepers: On 4/11, Mary Beth Kowalchek heard just a few in Manitowish Waters. On 4/12, the peepers were peeping near Linda Johnson on the Tomahawk River near Minocqua as well as near Ron and Pam Ahles on the Pike Lake Chain.
Red-winged Blackbirds: On 4/16, Mary Kaminski counted over 100 male red-winged blackbirds in her yard.
Miscellaneous
4/7: Jim Sommerfeldt reported seeing a FOY yellow-bellied sapsucker in the Lac du Flambeau area.
Pete and Carolyn Dring on Helen Lake near Land O’Lakes reported the following:
4/7: We had our first tree swallows (2).
4/8: We had two flights of Whistling Swans fly over today, one flock of 66 and one flock of 45 heading north west. Also had our first Compton’s Tortoise shell and mourning cloak butterflies. Heard our first woodcock in the bog
4/9: Slugs were out in numbers – 1000s. Tag alder was shedding pollen. Common mergansers and mallards were in Helen Creek.
4-10-11 Red Worms were out in 1`000’s. Phoebe was by old nest site.
4/13: Ruth Wood saw her first pair of buffleheads on Duck Lake in Springstead.
4/14: Bill and Barb Schweisheimer reported seeing a male yellow bellied sapsucker and a male northern flicker at their feeders.
Juncos!
On Sunday, 4/17, we kicked up flock after flock of juncos in a drive along Hwy. 47. We assume most were males, because they return before the females. Juncos engage in what’s called “differential migration,” meaning the female juncos migrate farther south than males, while the adults migrate farther south than the hatching-year birds. This results in a partial segregation of sex/age classes and variation in the winter sex/age ratio. Thus wintering junco flocks in Michigan are 20% female, while in Alabama 72% are females.
Juncos do nest in our area, so some will remain. Surprisingly, the two major predators of their eggs are white-footed mice and eastern chipmunks. Because small-mammal populations fluctuate in response to acorn production, a complex ecological interaction probably exists among oaks, rodents, and juncos.
Feeder Feeding Frenzies
4/17: John Werth on the Manitowish River noted, “We are feeding about 50 juncos, fox sparrows, and we think a few chipping sparrows.”
On the same day, Pete Dring in Land O’Lakes wrote, “We had a feeding frenzy at our feeders this a.m. On the ground we had over 125 birds . . .”
Laurie Timm on Witches Lake wrote of feeding “chipping sparrows, tree sparrows, fox sparrows, redpolls, goldfinches, purple finches, juncos, chickadees, grackles, starlings, crows, doves, downy and hairy woodpeckers, red and gray squirrels and chippies.”
Pat Schwai on Cochran Lake reported, “The woods are alive with activity and song! I'd estimate we have 30 to 40 each of juncos and sparrows rooting around under the feeders, in the garden and in the woods.”
Celestial Events
Woody Hagge noted on 4/16: “The low and high temperatures were the same: 31.8°. First time I have ever recorded identical high and low temperatures for a 24-hour day.”
The peak Lyrid meteor shower, rated at 10 to 20 per hour, occurs tonight, 4/22.
On 5/1, look before dawn for Mars less than a half degree north of Jupiter. Both planets will be 6 degrees south of the waning crescent moon.
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