A Northwoods Almanac
for 11/13 - 26, 2015
Sightings: Snowy Owl
Eating a Duck
Barb and Jim Moore reported the
following: “On Tuesday, October 27, about 8 a.m., we spotted a snowy owl on a
large rock in the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage in front of our house. The owl
was occasionally harassed by several ravens and had a mature eagle on another
rock within 40 feet but didn't budge from its position on the rock. About
10 a.m. the owl was in the water within 18 inches of his perch on the rock,
‘flapping’ his wings. We did not actually see how he entered the water as
we had just been watching it only a minute earlier. The owl appeared to be in
distress, but it turns out, it had nabbed a small duck and was ‘swimming’ to
the nearby island, using its wings to propel itself with the duck in its
talons. He proceeded to take the duck on shore and eat it. On Wednesday,
October 28, the owl was still on the island near the now deceased duck; he
remained there all day. The last sighting was at dark on Wednesday; he was
gone on Thursday morning.”
One doesn’t think of owls eating ducks, but ducks are
clearly on the menu of snowy owls. During the Arctic summer breeding season,
lemmings of various species are their primary prey. On their wintering grounds,
however, individuals eat a wide diversity of prey. In a study on uplands in
Alberta, Canada, deer mice comprised over one-half of their winter diet,
followed by meadow voles – the two together making up 90% of their diet.
However, in coastal southwestern British Columbia, birds comprised 100% of the
snowy owl diet, with grebes and ducks representing 80%. In another study along coastal
New England, birds comprised 48% of their diet.
Snowies are surprisingly opportunistic predators. In
an unpublished study covering 32 years at the Logan International Airport in
Boston, Norway rats and meadow voles were their most common winter prey, but
snowies were also occasionally observed to take species as unusual as Canada
goose, herring gull, great blue heron, rough-legged hawk, peregrine falcon,
barred owl, house cat, mink, and skunk.
Other Sightings:
Weasel, Snow Buntings, Sandhill Cranes
On 11/7, Sarah Krembs photographed
a weasel at her home in Manitowish Waters that had already turned white in
anticipation of snow. Last year that worked out well. This year, not so well –
the weasel looks very bright against the snowless brown ground.
Snow buntings are moving through.
We saw our first flock on 11/3.
If you
want to see vast numbers of staging sandhill cranes, head for Crex Meadows State
Wildlife Area in Burnett County. An official count done on 11/8 found 13,612
cranes! Check to see if they’re still there before visiting – they’ll be
heading south very soon.
Tundra and Trumpeter
Swans
John Werth
reported seeing 60+ swans on the Whitney Flowage on 10/30. A couple days later
on 11/1, he went back and counted 82! The following day, Carne Andrews stopped
at the same site and found 100! I visited on 11/6 and saw 22.
At this time of year, tundra swans
are migrating through, and visually identifying a trumpeter swan from a tundra
swan can be tricky. The swans were too far out for me to clearly see, but I
could hear a few trumpeting, and Carne heard many of them trumpeting. So, most
if not all of these were trumpeter swans.
The way to
easily tell the two species apart is by their voice. Trumpeters sound like a
kid with no musical talent just blaring away on a trumpet, while tundras produce
a higher-pitched call that has been likened to many things: a distant barking
of dogs, soft musical laughter, a mellow
cooing, or something akin to a Canada goose honk, which amply demonstrates how
limited human language is in describing the language of non-humans.
Tundra swans usually begin arriving
in Wisconsin the first week of November, but the peak typically occurs in
mid-November. They’ll remain for many weeks, or until ice begins to form, and
then it's time for them to fly east to their wintering grounds in Chesapeake
Bay.
Tundra swans come by their name
honestly, nesting high up on the Arctic coastline in tundra or sheltered
marshes. Tundras may fly up to ten hours a day, and with good weather
conditions, can sail along in a V-formation at 60 mph as high as 8,000 feet,
thus traveling up to 600 miles a day.
Our area is
certainly not a hotspot for the tundra swan migration – the Mississippi River
is where you want to go to see thousands. Scientists estimate that about 25% of
the Eastern Population of tundra swans utilize the Upper Mississippi River as a
stopover site during fall migration.
Lecanium Scale/Honeydew
Forecast
In a few late summer columns, I
wrote about the pervasiveness in our woodlands of “honeydew.” The sticky residue on people’s decks and
windshields, as well as the sweet smell, caught a lot of people’s attention.
Well, next year looks like more of the same, according to Linda Williams, the
Forest Health Specialist for the Northeast Region of the DNR. In her “October Forest Health Update”
newsletter, she writes about the Lecanium scale which causes the honeydew: “Although
I saw significant mortality by parasitoids and fungi in the scale populations
along the lakeshore counties this year, I did not see that level of morality in
the scale populations in the north. I recently checked the northern populations
again and found large numbers of scale crawlers (immature scales) present on
leaves and twigs. Based on that I would expect high numbers next year to
continue to prompt calls about honeydew (sticky stuff) covering everything near
infested trees.”
To see the
entire update, go to: http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/ForestHealth/documents/2015/ForestHealthNE-Oct15.pdf
Birds Shared by
Oregon and Wisconsin
I wrote in
my last column about the two weeks in October that Mary and I spent in the
old-growth forests of western Oregon. Birds were relatively few in the
old-growth, but two were quite common, and both also nest in Wisconsin as well
- winter wren and golden-crowned kinglet. The kinglets were constantly giving
their call notes in nearly every old-growth stand that we hiked. I’ve never
heard anywhere near this many golden-crowned kinglets! My only complaint was
that they were also very good at ignoring our attempts to “pish” them down. We
saw them only fleetingly as they constantly flitted in search of food.
The bird
species that we saw the most was the varied thrush. They were common, much like
robins here. We saw them mostly along roadsides, and particularly near dusk,
when they were apparently feeding in the gravel.
Seeing a
varied thrush in Wisconsin is an absolute treat, but after a few days of seeing
them so frequently in Oregon, we began to ignore them. How easily we humans
lose interest!
Big Skis!
Mercer
residents, Peggy Bronsberg and Bernie Langreck, just returned from six months
on the road to the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, and of the many exceptional
pictures they took, I particularly enjoyed the picture of the giant skis at 100
Mile House in British Columbia. Peggy wrote, “Just like in the U.S., some Canadian
towns have various big ‘mascots,’ like the loon in Mercer and the muskie in
Boulder Junction. So, we saw big fly rods, big salmon, big you-name-its along
our way. This is the only one that made us pull out the camera!” As lovers of
cross-country skiing, Mary and I think this would make a great “mascot” for a
town in our area as well.
Frog Survey Summary
for 2014
The Wisconsin Department of Natural
Resources (WDNR) began coordinating a volunteer frog and toad survey in 1984
because of concerns arising from declines in some frog populations. Wisconsin supports
twelve frog and toad species, but only nine of those live in the Northwoods.
One species (Blanchard’s cricket frog, which is not found in the Northwoods) is
endangered and four species (American bullfrog, mink frog, northern leopard
frog, and pickerel frog) are included on Wisconsin’s Natural Heritage working
list as species of “special concern.”
Survey routes are distributed
statewide and each consists of 10 sites which are monitored three times yearly.
The occurrence of each frog species is determined at each site by the presence
or absence of their call, and their abundance is ranked by the relative number
of calling individuals.
Mary and I began running a frog
survey route in western Vilas County in 1988, so we’ve been at it for 27 years
now. In Wisconsin, leopard frog and mink frog have shown a significant decline
since the initiation of the survey in 1984, while American toads have decreased
slightly. Species that have shown an increase include gray treefrog and
bullfrog. Species that have remained relatively stable include chorus frog,
green frog, spring peeper, and wood frog. These numbers are important because
frogs and toads are considered good indicators of the health of wetlands.
Celestial Events
The peak
Leonid meteor shower occurs between midnight on 11/17 and dawn on 11/18. It
occurs when Earth crosses the orbital path of Comet Tempel-Tuttle. The Leonids
are known for producing extraordinary meteor storms, but predictions this year
are quite modest – expect 10 to 15 meteors per hour.
The full moon (the “Ice is Forming”
or “Beaver” moon) occurs on 11/25.
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