A Northwoods Almanac
for April 3 – 16, 2015 by John
Bates
Maple Syrup Success
Based on Seed Production
Spring weather is usually the
first indicator of a good or bad maple sap run with freezing nights and warming
days the desired condition. But the weather mostly affects how much sap will
run out a tree – the quantity. It doesn’t determine the sugar content of the
sap – the quality. A recent study in Vermont inversely connected autumn seed
production to sugar content, concluding that the more seeds produced in the
fall, the lower the sugar content in the spring.
The explanation is simple. When a
tree produces lots of seeds, it doesn’t have enough carbohydrates left to
produce a high sugar content in the spring.
I don’t
recall if maples produced a large crop of seeds last fall, but if they didn’t,
it bodes well for the quality of syrup this spring. As a confessed but not
penitent addict of maple syrup, I care about such things.
Haloes around the Sun
Susan Stanke sent me some beautiful
photos of a halo around the sun. She described it this way, “While I was
driving on Hwy. 70 on 3/14, I saw a spectacular sight. At first I thought I was
seeing sun dogs; however, sundogs are not usually a complete arc. Rather they
are many rainbows on both sides of the sun. This was [colors of] a rainbow
. . . seen in a complete arc around the sun.”
Haloes are caused by refracted
light passing through ice crystals in cirrus clouds. Blue is usually seen on
the outside of a halo and red on the inside due to the angle of light passing
through the crystals. The most common halo is the 22° halo, which refers to the
size of its radius, or the distance from the center to the circumference. A 48°
halo is also possible, with variations in between. If I’d paid better attention
in physics class back when, I could tell you more. But alas, such is not the
case.
Pine Siskin
Invasion Continues
I reported in my last column how Bruce Bacon, a
master bird bander from Mercer, had come over to our home in Manitowish on 3/6
and banded 106 pine siskins. Well, Bruce subsequently outdid himself on 3/26
when he banded at his home north of Mercer 212 new siskins and recaptured 165
previously banded siskins at his house, for a total of 377 in one day! Bruce
figured he still had well over 100 unbanded siskins in his yard that day, but
he was too worn out to try to get any more of them.
Bruce has banded 726 different pine siskins just at
his house so far this winter. Of his recaptures at his house, some were
originally banded in early January, so it’s clear that most of these siskins
have been spending the entire winter here. Additionally, of the 106 he captured
at our house in Manitowish, which is about 7 miles from his place, there was no
overlap between the sites. “Our” birds appear to be staying put, as do “his”
birds.
Also, as of 3/26, Bruce observed
that numerous males appeared to have a swollen cloacal protuberance, indicating
they were getting ready for breeding. (Warning: if bird reproduction offends
you, read no further!) Structurally, the cloacal protuberance is not a
penis. The cloaca is a chamber into which the digestive tract empties,
along with the sexual ducts and the urinary tubes. Cloaca comes from the
Latin for sewer, so it’s an all-purpose cavity.
Male birds have two testes, which
become hundreds of times larger during the breeding season to produce sperm. During
copulation, the female moves her tail to the side and the male mounts the
female. The cloacae then touch, so that the sperm can enter the female's
reproductive tract. This can happen very fast, sometimes in less than half a
second and is called a cloacal "kiss."
Just for the record, many waterfowl
and some other birds, such as the turkey, possess a phallus, which is kind of
like a penis, but not exactly. But perhaps we’re getting to the point of TMI.
Bruce additionally caught a female
siskin with a full incubation patch, indicating she had laid eggs already!
April breeding of siskins has been reported in the past, and since incubation
only takes 13 days, it’s likely we’ll be seeing pine siskin chicks in
mid-to-late April.
Sightings
3/15: Joan Galloway reported the
first-of-the-year (FOY) robin in her yard on Clear Lake on the Manitowish Chain.
Our first robin in Manitowish didn’t arrive until 3/29.
3/18: Pat Schwai on Cochran Lake reported
her FOY chipmunk. We saw our first chippie on 3/16.
3/19: Common grackles and red-winged blackbirds
returned to Manitowish. Linda Johnson observed two trumpeter swans on the
Tomahawk River and noted, “The river just opened two days ago, and these are
the first visitors that I have seen.”
3/22: Loons are beginning to arrive
in southern Wisconsin. They’re been reported on 3/22 at Lac LaBelle in Waukesha
Co., on 3/23 on Lake Sinissippi in Dodge Co., on 3/24 in Oconomowoc, and on
3/27, eight were reported on Eagle Lake in Racine Co.
3/22:
Debbie and Randy Augustinak in Land O' Lakes observed a pair of trumpeter swans
gracefully swimming in Helen Creek along Cty Rd B.
3/23: Linda Johnson reported the FOY
woodcock flying over her along the Tomahawk River.
3/23: Cherie Smith observed an
Oregon race dark-eyed junco in her backyard. She had never seen one here before
and noted, “He was by himself and didn't hang around the other juncos in the
yard.”
3/23: We observed our FOY marsh
hawk.
3/25: Rod Sharka reported several
hundred pine siskins at his feeder, including a leucistic pine siskin. Rod
also noted he had his FOY common grackle.
3/25: Tree sparrows returned to our
feeders in Manitowish.
3/26: Rolf Ethun also reported
either an albino or leucistic pine siskin at his feeders on Papoose Lake.
3/30: An eagle is clearly
incubating eggs in the nest across the Manitowish River from our house.
Great Horned Owl
Pellet
On 3/22 Linda Johnson on the Tomahawk River sent me a
photo of an owl pellet she found near her bird feeders. She gave it to her
8-year-old granddaughter, Alaysha Burrell, to take to AVW school. Linda then
wrote, “The teacher did not have time to open it up, but encouraged her to do
so at home and bring it back. So, last night I went over and we worked on it
together. We think it was a vole (we have tons of them here) along with a few
remnants of something larger due to a few larger bones that seemed out of place
with everything else. I've attached a photo showing what we found. Her labels
(going clockwise from the top left) read as follows:
•
possible skull
•
unknown??? [these are the larger bones]
•
teeth
•
claws
•
ribs and leg bones and spine
Although I've never found the nest,
I suspect there's one around. We've heard them courting and have heard babies
begging over the years.”
I’ve attached the photos Linda sent
of the pellet, and of Alaysha and her work dissecting the pellet. This is great
stuff – if you want your grandchildren to cherish the outdoors, doing detective
work like this is just the ticket.
Owls usually swallow their prey
whole and the food passes directly from the mouth to the gizzard. The gizzard
uses digestive fluids and bits of sand and gravel to grind and dissolve all of
the usable tissue from the prey. Muscle, fat, skin, and internal organs are
broken down, but some of these tissues (fur and tiny bones) cannot be digested.
This material is ejected from the vent as a pasty white excrement known as
urea.
The indigestible material left in
the gizzard such as teeth, skulls, claws, large bones, and feathers can’t pass
through the owl's digestive tract, so the owl's gizzard compacts it into a
tight pellet that the owl regurgitates.
Celestial Events –
Total Lunar Eclipse!
Full moon
(the Boiling Down Sap Moon or Grass Appearing Moon) occurs tomorrow, 4/4. The
big news is that a total eclipse will occur, but you’ll have to get up early to
see it. The eclipse begins at 5:15 a.m, and the moon sets in the west around
6:39 a.m., about 19 minutes before the total eclipse occurs. Still, we should
see about 90% of the moon eclipsed into hopefully a deep coppery-red light as
the light on the eastern horizon comes up. Use your binocs for the greatest
effect.
On 4/8,
look for Saturn 2° south of the waning gibbous moon.
Ice-out on our smaller lakes occurs
typically in mid-April. Woody Hagge’s 40-year average date for ice-out on
Foster Lake in Hazelhurst is 4/15. Ice on the vernal woodland ponds goes out
even earlier, an event we anticipate greatly for the first night of chorusing
spring peepers! Keep an ear tuned.
We reach 13 ½ hours of sunlight on
4/17.
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