NWA 11/28/14

A Northwoods Almanac for 11/28 – 12/11/2014  

Sightings

11/11: Mary Madsen on Twin Island Lake in Presque Isle still has a single bobwhite coming to her feeders. She notes, “He's become less tame, which is a good thing. Comes for corn/seed most days. Hoping he makes it thru the winter. I'm sure it's unusual for them to be this far north.” Mary knows her range maps – bobwhites rarely winter much further north than southern Wisconsin.

11/14: Howard Peitsch in Minocqua has had a male cardinal coming to his feeders all fall. He adds, “Comes with lots of blue jays. Have one starling and 16 turkeys! Had one purple finch last week and . . . have one red-bellied woodpecker!”

11/15: Jane Lueneburg lives just south of Tomahawk and noticed purple finches “here for the first time today. And two days ago we had a red-bellied woodpecker on the sunflower feeder. I also saw a flock of nine robins on south side of Tomahawk (right by the river) eating berries from a flowering crab tree. Was so amazed when I heard the soft 'cluck' of a robin and looked up. I had been hunched down in my coat as it was cold and breezy.”

11/16: Bill and Mary Ann Thompson on the Minocqua island have a female red-bellied woodpecker visiting their suet feeder. Bill wrote, “We had them come by once or twice over the past few years but never stay. This lady has been here regularly for about two weeks.”

11/17: In Manitowish at our feeders, we had purple finches, three evening grosbeaks, a rusty blackbird, two tree sparrows, a fox sparrow, several juncos, and a dozen or more goldfinches and mourning doves. Two feet of snow and plummeting temperatures sure help convince the birds to come to feeders!

Record Finch Count at Hawk Ridge in Duluth

Hawk Ridge in Duluth is known for its huge flights of raptors, but given its location at the southwestern base of Lake Superior, it’s also a funnel for songbird migration. Bird counts in November are typically low given that most birds, raptors and songbirds have already moved south. But this November, finches have broken all expectations of what was considered possible. As of 11/16, the counters have tallied 106,147 finches, the most ever, including 51,322 pine siskins and 34,440 common redpolls. They just keep coming and coming, with flights of over 1000 every day for the first two weeks of November, including a peak of 8,435 common redpolls on 11/9 and 7,271 on 11/12.

Even more interesting, the USFWS Avian Radar Project had a radar unit stationed at Little Marais, MN, for most of the fall. They reported very good nocturnal migration during the first third of November, which in the opinion of professional ornithologists could only be finches (there are not any other birds migrating in significant numbers at this time). If over 100,000 finches have been seen in the day, how many additional hundreds of thousands have come over at night? The numbers could be staggering, further highlighting how little is still really known about migration.

And just to add to how important it is to fund professional counters at these migratory hotspots, on 11/20, they counted 209 common ravens, a new state high count, bringing their season count to 2195 common ravens.

Snowy Owl Irruption Again This Year?

At least 31 snowy owls have been recorded in Wisconsin already this month, according to Ryan Brady, research scientist with the WDNR. Last year, a record 300 snowy owls were observed in the state, making the number of snowies currently in Wisconsin even more extraordinary since last year only one snowy owl had been seen by mid-November.

Snowies aren’t just flooding into Wisconsin. As of mid-November, snowy owls had been reported by the dozens in the Northeast and Great Lakes, including birds as far south as Illinois and Maryland. One snowy owl that made it all the way to Oklahoma, unfortunately, was killed on 11/16 by a vehicle.

Last winter was the largest snowy owl irruption nationally in the last 50 years. A new initiative called Project Snowstorm funded research during the irruption. As part of their study, researchers were able to tag 22 snowy owls from Minnesota to Massachusetts, including 4 in Wisconsin, with GPS/GSM transmitters. The transmitters use cellphone technology to transmit data. When the bird is out of range of a cell tower, the transmitters can store up to 100,000 locations, then transmit that information — even years later — when the bird flies within cell coverage. The technology now is so advanced that transmitters have enough storage capacity for more than 12 years worth of data.

The transmitters weigh about 40 grams — about as much as seven U.S. quarters, and transmit a location every 30 minutes. The snowies with transmitters will hopefully migrate south again this winter, though there’s no guarantee they will. If they do, the data will be received as soon as they come within cell phone range.

This research effort hopes to answer questions such as where these irruptive birds are coming from; how far and how fast they move across the landscape during the winter; what kinds of habitats they’re using, and how that differs from daytime to darkness; and what threats they face while here in the south, including what their fate may be following a big irruption.  

Project Snowstorm’s website has maps which show the daily movement of the owls last winter. Some owls stayed all winter within a one mile area, while others traveled hundreds of miles. Go to www.projectsnowstorm.org to access the maps.

Science on Tap

Sponsored by UW-Madison Trout Lake Station, UW Kemp Natural Resources Station, and the UW Alumni Association – Lakeland Chapter, along with Minocqua Brewing Company and Minocqua Public Library, the remarkably successful “Science on Tap” series continues with How Water Works in the Northwoods. Join UW-Madison professor Emily Stanley and US Geological Survey hydrologist Randy Hunt as they explore the ecology of northern lakes and rivers on Wednesday, December 3, 6:30 pm at the Minocqua Brewing Company. 

Celestial Events

            The full moon occurs on 12/6, variously called the “Full Cold” moon or the “Long Dark” moon.

            The earliest sunsets for middle latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere happen around December 7. While it seems paradoxical, at middle latitudes throughout the Northern Hemisphere, the earliest sunsets of the year come about two weeks before the winter solstice. And as you might have guessed, the latest sunrises come in early January.

Thanksgiving Grace

            As holidays go, Thanksgiving holds a special place for me because it aspires to something very simple – to bring families together around a meal and to give thanks for all that we have been given. Thankfully, little relentless commercialism alters its essential character. The ideal is for families to feel graced to be together, and to express in the grace before the meal their gratitude for one another and for the bounty of food.

I try to hold the concept of grace close to me every day, and this week I remembered that I had written about grace in the opening chapter of my book River Life. Though the piece talks about warmer seasons and paddling a river, I thought it would be good to share with you in light of this coming Thanksgiving weekend. Here it is:

“In many spiritual texts, we are told to put ourselves in the way of grace. I think we intuitively know this when we paddle – putting-in on a river is a way of putting ourselves in the way of grace.

But there are many forms of grace. Fortunately, the river seems to embody them all. Consider the gracefulness of the dancer: the swirl, the glide, the floating-on-air otherworldliness, the effortless strength and subtlety, the symmetry, the elegance of simple beauty. The river is all of these.

Consider the saying of grace before a meal: the request for blessing of what we have been given, the thankfulness for being given anything at all, the gratitude to the animals and plants whose lives we take into our own. The river offers blessings too – the gift of seeing the world in action as it should be; the gift of free travel through an ever-changing landscape; the gift of quiet.

Consider receiving the grace of God, the hand of the divine cupped in offering, the rapture of beauty revealed, the understanding of what it means to be ALIVE, NOW, HERE. The river offers that.

Consider grace as charity and forgiveness. There but for the grace of God, go I, we say. The river washes away sins in many faiths.

Consider being graced with beauty – adorned, crowned. The river is crowned with otters, yellow warblers, dazzling dragonflies, regal water lilies.

Consider gracious people – kind, good-hearted, good-natured. Rivers are my definition of good nature.

Consider what it means to be graced by someone in your presence – to be honored, to be exalted. The river graces you in the same way.

So, to float on a river is to put yourself in the way of grace . . .

Mary Oliver says about writing poetry, “One learns the craft, and then casts off. One hopes for gifts. One hopes for direction. . . It is intimate and inapprehensible.”

Well, on the river, one learns about one's craft too – the canoe, the kayak, the raft – and then casts off, hoping for direction, for intimacy, for revelation of the inapprehensible.”