A Northwoods
Almanac for August 3 – 16, 2012 by John Bates
Conservation
is Patriotic and Has Bipartisan Support
In the highly partisan atmosphere of a
presidential election year, The Nature Conservancy recently released a bipartisan national poll showing that at least one issue
is widely supported by Americans across the political spectrum: the
conservation of our nation’s land and water. Conducted by the bipartisan
research team of Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates (D) and
Public Opinion Strategies (R) from June 16-19, the pollsters
noted, from “Tea Party Republicans to liberal Democrats, more than four-in-five
American voters say that conserving our country's natural resources - our land,
air and water - is patriotic.”
In addition, three-quarters of the
American electorate said that “one of the things our government does best” is
protecting its “history and natural beauty through national parks, forests and
other public lands.” Not
surprisingly, then, three-fourths of voters say they would prefer to go on
vacation this summer in a national park or other public lands.
Voters also voiced overwhelming support
for a number of specific federal policies to support conservation.
Three-quarters (74 percent) of American voters say that even with federal
budget problems, funding for conservation should not be cut. Many voters are even willing to reach into their own
pockets to fund conservation, with 83 percent overall willing to pay more in
taxes to fund protection of land, water and wildlife habitat in their area.
This includes 72 percent of Tea Party Republicans, 73 percent of self-described
conservatives, 88 percent of moderates, and 94 percent of self-described
liberals.
In fact, the overwhelming majority of American voters reject the notion that
protecting our environment is at odds with a strong economy even when they
believe the state of the economy is an extremely serious problem. More
than three-quarters of voters (79 percent) said they believe we can protect
land and water and have a strong economy at the same time. In fact, voters were
twice as likely to say that protections for land, air, water and
wildlife have a positive impact on
jobs (41 percent), than a negative impact (17 percent), or little impact one
way or the other (33 percent).
This poll confirms what I personally have
experienced for many years: that conservation is an issue which more often
unites than divides. Clearly there’s far more in common among Americans’ views
on conservation than we’re often led to believe, and the false dichotomy that
we have to choose between jobs and the environment doesn’t play with most
Americans.
As a sidenote, I’m often skeptical of
polls, and of a host of other “facts,” particularly if I don’t know their
source. One non-partisan insight into sources of information is SourceWatch at www.sourcewatch.org.
To try to get objective reviews of various other rumors dressed up as
facts, try www.snopes.com
or www.urbanmyths.com.
Sightings
– Trains of Merganser Chicks and Northern Lights
Carol Pfister recently watched a female common merganser lead a train of
21 offspring behind her on Big Crooked Lake. She opined that the female was a
likely recipient of egg dumping, a phenomenon where females lay eggs in other
individual’s nests. The fancy term for this is “intraspecific brood parasitism”
and is common among ducks. However, it may also be that this particular female
adopted another female’s brood when she died or abandoned her chicks, a not
uncommon occurrence, and a process with another fancy name – “post-hatch brood
amalgamation.”
On July
14, the northern lights were dancing a bit, and Dave Eitel on Fence Lake wrote this very nice
piece: “2:30 a.m. A waning orange crescent rises above the eastern horizon and
glimmers on the glassy black surface of the lake. Jupiter, centered perfectly
on the moon's concavity, rises with it. After a few minutes Venus silently
edges above the horizon directly beneath the crescent.
“Four loons converse hauntingly across the
water as bullfrogs gossip on the shore.
“Pale green light arcs across the northern sky.
Heavenly spears of it thrust upward, slowly transform into cascading sheets,
then become a playful Wurlitzer-like display of waves moving rapidly upward and
fading into the Milky Way.”
Sphinx Moths
Barb and
Barry Whenal in Lake Tomahawk sent me this note and an accompanying picture on
7/16: “We were taking a walk with our friends, John and Sandy Anspach, on the
Nicolet Forest trail beside Shelp Lake in Forest County . . . Sandy noticed
what she thought was “a pretty flower” on one of the branches beside the
boardwalk. I said “that’s not normal for this plant.” So we took a
closer look only to find it wasn’t a flower after all but a large caterpillar
with a host of what looks like eggs on its back . . . We are wondering what
kind of moth or butterfly could this be and what is on its back?”
I’m no
expert on caterpillars, so I sent the photo to the “Butterflies and Moths of
North America” database, and they identified it as Sphinx luscitiosa, or Canadian sphinx moth. You can see pictures of
the adults and caterpillar stages at www.silkmoths.bizland.com/slusciti.htm.
Some of the
largest moths in the world belong to the sphinx moth family (also known as hawk
moths or hummingbird moths) within the order Lepidoptera, the animal order that
includes butterflies and moths. With long narrow wings and thick bodies, they
are fast, acrobatic flyers that can hover in place, briefly fly backwards or
dart away. Hawk moths are experts at finding sweet-smelling flowers after dark.
They unfurl their exceptionally long tongues like party favors to explore
flowers with long floral tubes that conceal pools of nectar.
Orb
Weavers
Cindy Schreuder in Presque Isle sent me a photo
of an orb weaver spider that was on her dock. Orb weavers make the circular
webs that one commonly sees shimmering with dew in the early morning. Some 200
species are found in North America, and many have an impressively large,
rounded abdomen with spots or lines, along with eight small eyes in two rows.
Nearly blind even with all those eyes, the orb
weavers must sit in or near their web in order to feel the vibration of their
captives as they struggle to escape. Threads called spokes, or radii, lead from
the outside edge to the center. The non-sticky spokes allow the orb weaver to
travel along the web to reach its prey – all the circular threads leading to
the center of the web are sticky.
These webs can be 20 to 30 inches in diameter
with15 to 35 radii, and typically a new web is spun every evening – quite a
nightly architectural accomplishment when you think about it!
Identifying orb weavers within the Araneus genus, the most common orb
weavers, is quite complex given their dramatically varying colorations and
patterns. Check http://bugguide.net/node/view/11644 for great
photos of all the variations of just one common orb weaver, the shamrock
spider.
Mayhem
in the Marsh
Mary, Callie, and I regularly walk in Powell
Marsh, and this year we’ve been hearing the songs of a colony of marsh wrens on
one of the pools. These tiny wrens are hard to see, but they make up for their lack
of size with a pugnaciousness pretty much unequaled in other bird species. Marsh wrens, whatever the gender or age,
peck at and destroy eggs and young nestlings of their own species as well as
those of other species. They’ve been documented destroying least bittern eggs
and destroying and partly drinking the contents of red-winged blackbird eggs.
In one study, 14 of 51 blackbird nests showed evidence of wren destruction.
Another study concluded that wrens destroyed up to 52% of red-winged blackbird
nests in a British Columbia marsh. The male wrens also destroy both eggs and
young nestlings of yellow-headed blackbirds.
Wrens
also destroy the eggs and nestlings of other wrens. One observer reported
watching a banded female repeatedly flying long distances outside her territory
to find food for her nestlings. After several such trips, she flew directly to
the opening of a neighbor’s nest and, in rapid succession, pecked each nestling
in the head until it was dead, and then dropped it to marsh floor beneath nest.
In
fairness, the wrens are also commonly attacked. Yellow-headed blackbirds are
aggressive toward marsh wrens and appear to limit their nesting area. They are
known to perch on or in front of wren brood nests, thus blocking the female’s
return to incubate. They have also been observed chasing marsh wren males and
hopping up and down on their nests, compressing them. Both male and female
red-winged blackbirds also often attack singing marsh wrens, forcing them to
escape by dropping into dense vegetation. Song sparrows and swamp sparrows on
occasion also attack marsh wrens.
Like
the proverbial playground clash, the question is: Who started it? Researchers
lay the blame at the wren’s feet, saying these aggressive interactions are
probably a consequence of the nest-destroying habits of the wrens.
Mammatus
Clouds
On 7/29, a
thunderstorm was brewing over Manitowish, and as the clouds blew in, they
formed a series of rounded, pouch-shaped forms that hung downward from the
middle cloud layer (see photo). These very odd clouds often indicate severe
weather, but on this early evening, they simply drifted by with some rumbling
thunder as background percussion.
Old
Columns
I’ve
written this column now for 22 years (since 1990), and I’m often asked where
one can read my old columns. I wrote two books in 1997 – A Northwoods Companion Spring and Summer, and A Northwoods Companion Fall and Winter – that drew heavily from
those early columns. A decade later in 2006 and 2008, I wrote another two books
– Graced by the Seasons Spring and Summer,
and Graced by the Seasons Fall and Winter
– that utilized the new columns I wrote between 1997 and 2008, and which are
completely different from the Companion books. It’s unlikely that I’ll do
another set of books from my columns from 2008 onward, so most of those columns
can be found on my blog at www.manitowishriver.blogspot.com.
Please share your outdoor sightings and
thoughts: call me at 715-476-2828, drop me an e-mail at manitowish@centurytel.net, or snail-mail me at 4245N Hwy. 47,
Mercer, WI 54547.
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