NWA 5/11 - 24, 2012

A Northwoods Almanac for May 11 – 24, 2012

Sightings

4/29: Pete and Carolyn Dring reported seeing FOY (first-of-year) little brown bats in their bat house in Land O’Lakes.

5/1: Mary and I observed our FOY white-crowned sparrows under our feeders in Manitowish.

5/2: We heard our first toads singing in Manitowish, and Pete Dring reported them singing the same night in Land O’Lakes. Pete also saw his first tiger swallowtail butterfly. The next night, 5/3, Pete heard Eastern gray tree frogs singing.

Dan Carney reported seeing killdeers and white-crowned sparrows on the Bearskin Trail and saw his FOY rose-breasted grosbeaks at his feeders.

May 3^rd and 4^th were big days for some long-awaited neotropical songbirds to reappear in our area:

5/3: Carol Hartman reported her FOY Baltimore oriole in Presque Isle.

Pete Dring reported his FOY ruby-throated hummingbird in Land O’Lakes.

Mary and I observed our FOY black-throated green, northern parula, and black-and-white warblers at Van Vliet Lake.

5/4 – Rod Sharka reported his FOY ruby-throated hummingbird in Land O’Lakes.

Carol Hartman reported her FOY ruby-throated hummingbird in Presque Isle.

Mary Madsen reported her FOY ruby-throated hummingbird in Presque Isle.

Deb Redemann reported her FOY ruby-throated hummer in Arbor Vitae.

Linda Thomas reported her FOY Baltimore orioles and rose-breasted grosbeaks in Sayner.

Jim Sommerfeldt reported his FOY rose-breasted grosbeak near Lac du Flambeau. He also noted an Eastern phoebe nest already with eggs just above their back door!

Cheryl and Bill Crawford reported their FOY ruby-throated hummingbird and rose-breasted grosbeaks in Harshaw.

Robert and Darleen reported their FOY ruby-throated hummingbird and Baltimore oriole, near Boulder Junction.

Peter Dring reported his FOY rose-breasted grosbeak near Land O’Lakes, and he also observed FOY red admiral, spring azure, and snout butterflies.

Mary and I observed our FOY rose-breasted grosbeaks in Manitowish, but we also saw and heard our FOY ovenbirds, blackburnian warblers, and blue-headed vireos on a hike near Star Lake.

5/5 - Carol Hartman reported her FOY rose-breasted grosbeak in Presque Isle.

Mary and I observed our FOY yellow warblers, Nashville warblers, and least flycatchers on the Bearskin Trails near Harshaw. We also had exceptional views of golden-crowned kinglets flashing their orange crown (not just golden!) and a singing winter wren.

Grace Wanta in Springstead  reported Canada goose goslings and mallard ducklings had hatched out on the Turtle Flambeau Flowage.

5/7: Ron Winter reported his FOY ruby-throated hummer in Boulder Junction, as did Pat Drought on Spider Lake in Mercer, and Karen and Bob Dalle Ave in Hazelhurst.

I saw my FOY Savannah sparrows and common yellowthroat warblers on Powell Marsh and had my FOY Eastern kingbirds on a beaver pond in Mercer.

Whooping Cranes in Mercer area?

            I received a call from a Mercer area man who accurately described seeing a pair of whooping cranes in a wetland near Mercer on 5/3. He took me to the site on 5/7, but unfortunately the cranes had departed.

On occasion, individuals from the Wisconsin flock of whoopers have strayed from their rearing sites at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge, and that may be the case here.

In other whooping crane news, a whooping crane chick hatched on April 30 in Wood County, the offspring of a pair of whooping cranes from the ultralight-led crane classes of 2002 and 2004. The pair has laid eggs every year since 2008, but until this year, their eggs have always been infertile. The pair proved to be good parents in 2010, when their infertile egg was replaced with a captive-produced whooping crane egg, and the pair hatched and raised the chick to fledging.

Of the 106 whooping cranes in the eastern migratory population, fourteen other pairs are currently incubating. Including the recently hatched chick, sixteen chicks have hatched in this population since 2006, though only three of them have fledged and joined the wild population.

While whooping Cranes were on the verge of extinction in the 1940s, today, there are about 600 birds in existence, approximately 445 of them in the wild. Aside from the 106 Wisconsin birds, the only other migratory population of whooping cranes nests at Wood Buffalo National Park in northern Alberta, Canada, and winters at Aransas NWR on the Texas Gulf Coast. 

Woodcock Courtship Flight

Every evening for well over a month now, Mary and I have been able to stand outside our house in Manitowish and hear three different male woodcocks “peenting”: one on the old railroad bed across Hwy. 47, another from the open wetlands below our home, and the third from an old field next to Hwy. 51. Hearing these plump little shorebirds display every night at dusk, and then every dawn just at first light, is a treat that will last on average only into the second week of June. The male’s courtship flights, in which they spiral up hundreds of feet on twittering wings while melodiously chirping and then circle back to the ground to resume their unique peenting display, led Aldo Leopold to write: “Up and up he goes, the spirals steeper and smaller, the twittering louder and louder, until the performer is only a speck in the sky. Then without warning, he tumbles like a crippled plane, giving voice in a soft liquid warble that a March bluebird might envy. At a few feet from the ground he levels off and returns to his peenting ground, usually to the exact spot where the performance began, and there resumes his peenting . . . [these sky dances are] “a living refutation of the theory that the utility of a game bird is to serve as a target, or to pose gracefully on a slice of toast.”
            So, how do males select their singing grounds? Apparently, these are not random choices since the same sites are used by different males over many years. The number of years sites are used is inversely dependent on the rate of vegetative change: males may use the same general openings in an aspen forest for 25 years, and in a stable, open, recovering coniferous forest for at least 40 years. The selection of a site may have to do structurally with the best sound transmission and/or the best light transmission, as well as whether females may reliably be found nearby.

The male is polygynous, meaning he establishes no pair bond with the female, gives no parental care, and offers the female no mate guarding. The female has her own promiscuity issues since some females visit at least four singing grounds before nesting and continue visits while incubating and with broods.

In Wisconsin, woodcocks begin displaying as early as mid-March. At dusk, the males fly or walk to their singing grounds commencing on average about 10 to 15 minutes after sunset. They’ll start up earlier under heavy cloud cover, and often continue later into the evening under a bright moon, but their evening performances on average last around 45 minutes.

They begin their display by “peenting,” which is a single, short, buzzy note that can be confused with the sound made by high-flying common nighthawks. So, if your hear a peent in the air, it’s a nighthawk – hear it on the ground, it’s most likely a woodcock.

The male spins around on the ground while he’s peenting, causing a directional change in intensity of his peents. His peenting last about a minute and a half before he takes off on his song flight which has five components: (1) the silent ascent which takes about two seconds; (2) the continued gradual ascent but now with light wing twittering  which lasts about 12 seconds; (3) a melodious wing twittering as the bird climbs steeper which lasts another 15 seconds; (4) the apex of flight, which may be as high as 300 feet, and now the wing twittering becomes intermittent, overlapping with loud, vocal chirping during the initial descent as the bird zigzags, banks, and finally dives down steeply; (5) and the final silent descent as the male brakes to the ground.

Look for these display in openings, including abandoned agricultural fields, forests gaps and cuts, meadows, pastures, orchards, bogs, other natural clearings, power line rights of way, and trails.

Warbler Waves Coming

            As of 5/7, Mary and I have seen and/or heard nine species of warblers in our area, beginning with yellow-rumped and pine warblers two weeks ago. Other species of warblers are literally arriving as I write this on 5/7 – one birder near Appleton reported seeing 21 species of warblers on 5/3. There’s no better birdwatching to be had than the next two weeks before we have full leaf-out.

            Maximum viewing of songbird numbers will occur if there’s a “fall-out” before sunrise. Fall-outs occur when birds take-off after sunset with great southerly winds at their back, but then they run into a front where the wind suddenly changes, and they have to “fall-out” of their migration. To know when a fall-out may have occurred near us, watch nightly weather radar to see if the birds are migrating, and then see if a front is stationed over our area.