A Northwoods Almanac for 2/19 –
3/3/2016
Sightings
We submitted our yard count on 2/14
for the Great Backyard Bird Count (http://gbbc.birdcount.org). We observed 20
species from our windows. Unusual species, at least for winter in Manitowish,
included a northern cardinal, a tree sparrow, a white-throated sparrow, and
eight bohemian waxwings. Redpolls have finally begun appearing, and we counted
10 that day, plus we had four pine grosbeaks, the first ones of the year in our
yard. We’re still hoping to see some evening grosbeaks and purple finches, and
if we’re particularly lucky, a few red crossbills and white-winged crossbills.
This winter remains fairly quiet as regards winter finches dropping down from
Canada, but we may yet have an uptick as natural food sources continue to
deplete.
On 2/5, Debbie and Randy Augustinak in Land o'
Lakes had two gray jays arrive at their feeders, which is unusual. Unlike blue
jays, gray jays just don’t seem to care much for feeders, though they
occasionally come to suet. In the 31 years we’ve been in Manitowish, I don’t
believe we’ve ever had a gray jay come to one of our feeders.
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| photo by Debbie Augustinak |
In northern Wisconsin, gray jays are at the
southernmost edge of their breeding range, and they don’t migrate south. So,
gray jay numbers are nominal in our area, and thus unusual to see whatever the
season. It’s a good day when one comes into your feeders!
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| Gray jay breeding range map |
Barbara McFarland in Manitowish Waters sent me this
note: “Last winter we had a Canadian goose stay in the open water of the Trout
River in front of our home. When spring arrived, he/she found a mate or his/her
mate returned to raise a family. This winter both parents are in residence on
the Trout River, and are very visible from the Alder Lake Road bridge which
crosses the river. Rather a sweet love story for Valentine's Day.”
Howard in Minocqua sent me a photo of a northern
shrike that appeared in his yard on 2/2. He commented, “My 27 turkeys were here
eating and what a surprise viewing of the shrike!”
I’ve had very few folks say they’ve seen shrikes
this winter. I don’t know if their numbers are down, they stayed north this
winter, or we just haven’t been in the right place at the right time to see
them. Given that their diet is songbirds, and most folks have had few birds at
their feeders this winter, perhaps their absence is a blessing.
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| northern shrike range map |
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| Northern shrikes, like owls, regurgitate pellets - here's an action shot! photo by Jeff Koch |
Otters
Jim Sommerfeldt on Middle Sugarbush Lake in Lac du
Flambeau wrote on 2/1:
“After
the last inch or two of snow we received overnight, I was driving out my
driveway, and on the freshly fallen snow I saw all these strange markings . . .
I finally concluded, correctly I hope, that it was an otter that made these
strange tracks. I've watched the otter slide on the snow at the Lake of
the Falls, but all these sliding marks were on level ground. They were
only 4 or 5 feet long slide marks, but there were a lot of them. These
tracks came out of the woods on the south side of the road, went down my
driveway for about two hundred yards, and then back into the woods. It's
probably 3/4 of a mile between Pokegama Lake and Middle Sugarbush Lake as the
crow flies, but I thought the otter was trying to find open water somewhere.”
Jim brings up a good point – how do
otters find open water in the winter? One method is by utilizing abandoned
beaver lodges. But I recently learned of another method that had never occurred
to me. In February 1988, three researchers
at the University of Calgary, published “River
Otters as Agents of Water Loss from Beaver Ponds,” in the Journal
of Mammalogy. They investigated “the contention that, during winter, river
otters lower water levels in ponds created by beavers.” For three winters, they
radio tracked otters that had been trapped and tagged. They also identified a
group of control beaver ponds in which otters were not observed.
What they found was that in the control ponds, there was a net loss of
water in roughly half of those ponds. But in the 97 beaver ponds where otters
were observed, only 9 did not have a net loss of water. They concluded that “ponds to which otters gained access lost
water significantly more often than ponds not visited by otters.” The
most dramatic loss in the otter-visited ponds was through trenches apparently
dug into the dams by the otters, nearly all which were uniformly a foot wide. Additionally, during the study, one otter was observed
digging a hole in a dam.
The authors speculated that the otters were able to move through the
trenched dams under the ice, providing them access to more ponds during the
winter. The otters also gained an
increased area for effective foraging because of the more extensive
air cavities under the ice caused by the lower water levels. Fish would also be
concentrated in a smaller body of water under the ice and thus more easily
caught.
This certainly makes sense, or at least “otter sense,” to do. And
interestingly, the beavers made no attempt to repair their dams, unlike what
they nearly always do in the summer if there’s a rift in their dam.
The only other way I know of for
otters to gain access to ice-locked lakes is by keeping early holes open by
biting the ice. Of course, if there’s a spring hole, they can utilize that, but
with a full ice cover on lakes, otters have to get creative.
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| photo by Nancy Burns on the Manitowish River |
Back-Country Skiing in Sylvania
Bernie Langreck and I back-country
skied in the Sylvania Wilderness and Recreation Area on 2/11, with a high
temperature of 7 degrees and plenty of snow. I’ve nicknamed Bernie, “the
bulldozer,” for his strength and durability in breaking trail, and he again
earned the tag. Width of skies matters in such conditions, and mine were a
little skinny for providing the necessary flotation on top of the snow, or at
least for not breaking through all the way. Without Bernie’s wider skies and
his greater resilience, we wouldn’t have gotten as far as we did. What a
workout!
What did we see or hear? Darn
little. It was truly quiet the further in we went. Only on two occasions did we
hear chickadees and nuthatches. And while we saw numerous deer trails crossing
our trail, we never caught sight of one.
What we heard was silence. And what we saw was the beauty of untouched
snow punctuated by the large trunks of old-growth eastern hemlocks, sugar
maples, basswoods, yellow birches, and occasional white pines. For wildlife
watching, it was a bust. For contemplation and ease of conversation, it was
perfect.
“When you give yourself to
places,” writes Rebecca Solnit, in Wanderlust,
“they give you yourself back; the more one comes to know them, the more one
seeds them with the invisible crop of memories and associations that will be
waiting for you when you come back, while new places offer up new thoughts, new
possibilities. Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the
mind, and walking travels both terrains.”
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| white pine tree in Sylvania photo by John Bates |
Celestial Events
The full moon, called the “Hunger
Moon” or the “Snow” moon, occurs on 2/22. The next night, 2/23, look for
Jupiter throughout the night hovering about two degrees above the moon.
We’re up to 11 hours of sunshine as
of 2/27. And by 3/3, the average high temperature in Minocqua will finally be
at or above freezing. Minocqua averages 95 days annually of high
temperatures below freezing.
February
Thoughts
“February will probably be capricious - it
usually is. [It’s] a whimsical month that can smother us in snow or set the sap
to flowing, paralyze us with sleet or brim the brooks. Its days are as long as
October's, but its nights can be colder than December's . . . and when it goes
we usually bid it a glad goodbye.” Hal Borland, in Twelve Moons of the Year
Environmental Ethics and Civil
Discourse
From Kathleen Dean Moore, co-editor of Moral Ground:
Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril: “When my colleagues and I host public
events about environmental ethics, we gather people in small groups and ask,
‘What do you care about most? What would you be willing to spend your whole
life taking care of? . . . Then we ask, ‘If you value this more than anything
else, what should you do? How might you make that value evident in your life?’
It’s an invitation to a respectful dialogue in which both sides listen and
might even change their minds. In civil discourse you test your beliefs against
experience – your own and others’ – and revise and improve them. Think of the
conversations the Founders had about basic principles of human rights. We can
do that too. We can talk reasonably about ethics.”
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