A Northwoods Almanac
for May 13 - 26, 2016 by John Bates
Green-up and Migration Madness
If I had to declare a particular
two-week period as my favorite of the year, this would have to be it.
Everything’s coming into full life – spring flowers bursting, leaves greening
up, birds returning en masse. It’s simply an explosion of color, of smells, of
movement, of sounds. Winter lasts a long time, but mid-May transforms it all,
offering a rebirth, a resurrection unlike any other time of the year.
Over a decade ago I wrote an essay which
was included in Jeff Richter’s gorgeous photography book, Seasons of the North. Here’s what I said then:
“Spring throws the science books
out with the snow, makes us all poets for a few weeks, jumbles us up with
emotions we can’t articulate, can’t explain, can’t control. It’s birth, and who will ever be able to
explain that? How will we quantify the first chorus of spring peepers on the
first warm evening of spring? Or measure the exuberance of wood frogs who have
thawed from tiny ice cubes in the leaf litter into the most prodigiously
sex-driven, inch-long, cold-blooded creatures imaginable?
“The flights of geese overhead, of
tundra swans, of sandhill cranes, of whistling ducks winging at breakneck
speeds, all carry the music of warm sun and the smell of rippling water.
Red-winged blackbirds rim the marshes, their musical “oak-ka–lee” songs ringing
with the consistency of a church bell over a town, calling you to come to the
service, the church is open, and it is time to sit together, tell the long
stories of winter struggle, and revel in the warmth that blows from heavens and
not from a basement furnace.
“Winter, the ultimate editor, has
passed. Spring, the temptress, has finally arrived. We’re eating maple syrup so
amber that the sun feels jealous. The snipe winnow from the heavens in the
early morning, and the woodcock peent from the ground and jump into the air to
dance at dusk. Fish spawn and eagles gluttonize from high pines.
“It’s a sumptuous feast for those
who will sit at the table and dine. The marsh choir sings every morning, herons
glide into their rookeries to feed ungainly chicks their regurgitated feast,
osprey plummet into lakes and emerge with fish in talons to be torn apart in
tree-top nests, male songbirds sing of their vitality, some proclaiming from
open perches, some warbling from woodland floors, some soloing while skulking
in dense shrubbery, too shy to be seen on their own stage.
“No southern bible-thumping
preacher could possibly exult more about the spirit than spring does. When we
think of creation, we feel the spring. Spring voices why we were put upon the
Earth - to rapturously revel, and to quietly believe.”
Sightings – FOY’s
(First-of-Year)
4/30:
Mary saw our FOY hepatica in flower in Manitowish Waters.
 |
| photo by John Bates |
5/2:
Sharon Lintereur in Lake Tomahawk sent me a photo of a barred owl peering out
from the nest box she is using on their property. She’s eagerly awaiting
owlets!
 |
| barred owl in nest box, photo by Sharon Lingerer |
5/6:
Jame Lueneburg near Tomahawk observed her FOY white-throated sparrow. She noted,
“I always associate the call of the
white throated sparrow with the beginning of fishing season. This year I
was having my doubts and just as it was starting to get light, I
heard one single call through my open bedroom window! That night I heard 4
reps of the call. Nice to know that everything is going according to
schedule.”
5/6: Uwe Wiechering on Sparkling Lake
reported the FOY ruby-throated hummingbird that I’ve heard of in our area.
5/6: We heard our first toads trilling
in the wetlands below our house in Manitowish.
5/7: Pat Schwai on Cochran Lake
reported her FOY black-throated green warbler.
5/7: We heard our FOY black-and-white
warbler while walking in Flambeau.
5/8:
Dan Carney in Hazelhurst reported his FOY Nashville warblers and rose-breasted
grosbeaks.
5/8:
John and Karin Randolph had their FOY Baltimore orioles and rose-breasted
grosbeaks at their feeders in Minocqua.
5/8:
Mary and I saw our FOY rose-breasted grosbeak in Manitowish.
5/8:
Peggy Kleinhans in Milton sent me a photo of a turkey nest with 16 eggs in it
that she discovered in their woods. That’s a lot of chicks to raise!
 |
| photo by Peggy Kleinhans |
5/8:
Mary, her sister Nancy, and good friend Denise Fauntleroy observed a pair of
broad-winged hawks flying low in the woods along the Agonikak National
Recreation Trail north of Land O’Lakes. One of the hawks was carrying something
and dropped it near them. Upon investigating, they found it was a large baby
bird – species unknown. Broadwings are deep woods hawks, and amphibians,
insects, mammals, and juvenile birds comprise their most common prey, with
birds taken during breeding season being predominantly nestlings or fledglings.
Raiding a nest is certainly an easier endeavor than catching a bird on the
wing.
5/9:
The Randolph’s also reported that a northern mockingbird
twice alighted on their hanging suet feeder. While northern mockingbirds have
the word “northern” in their name, there’s nothing northern about them.
Wisconsin is the northernmost edge of their range, and even then, they’re
considered rare to uncommon. In the last atlas of breeding birds of Wisconsin,
only seven confirmed nests were recorded in the state. So, when one appears up
here, it’s a big deal.
 |
| photo by John Randolph |
If
you’re not familiar with the mockingbird’s song, it’s considered one of the
most accomplished vocal mimics in the bird world. John Eastman, author of Birds of Forest, Yard, and Thicket writes
that its song “consists large of multiple plagerisms, bits and pieces lifted
from the repertoires of almost any other bird it has heard, plus frog croaks,
dog barks, cat meows, gate squeaks, and tire squeals.”
Not
only are mockingbirds singularly inventive, they’re long-winded – a single song
can last for ten minutes. And that medley will be very different from the last
one as well as the next one. The vocal repertoires of individual males have
been estimated to be as high as 203 song types.
Let’s
hope this mockingbird chooses to hang around and a mate appears – John and
Karin would be in for a musical feast!
5/9: Bob Kovar in Manitowish Waters
reported his FOY Baltimore orioles.
5/9: Cherie Smith in Lake Tomahawk sent
photos of her FOY rufous-sided towee. She also noted that a robin that she has
fed mealworms to for several years has returned. She knows it’s the same bird
because he flies right at the door to alert her is she hasn’t provided the
mealworms in a timely fashion.
Loon News
Walter Piper studies loons in our
area and produces an exceptionally interesting blog (loonproject.org). In his
latest posting, he describes “the missing, the new, and the unexpected.” What I
found particularly remarkable was his story of two old loons. One is a male is
known to be 27 years of age or older and was evicted by another male from
Muskellunge Lake in 2014. He reappeared in 2015 on Swanson Lake and is there
now in 2016.
The other is a female that produced
chicks on Buck Lake from 1998 to 2009, but was evicted by another female in
2010. She eventually took over a territory on Hildebrand Lake in 2012, produced
a chick in 2013, but was driven off in 2015. But this spring she reappeared on
Hildebrand and reclaimed that territory.
It’s all about resiliency. There are
no old-age homes for loons. They stay in the breeding game until they can no
longer defend a territory, and then . . . well, I don’t know. Perhaps they
become a “floater,” tagging along with the young loons who have yet to win a
territory. What is clear is the intense competition for territories that occurs
every year on most of our lakes, with violent disputes and evictions of one of
the breeding pair being commonplace.
Egg Dumping – Foster Ducklings
If you peek into a wood duck nesting box, you might find 10 to 11 eggs,
which is the bird’s normal clutch size. But you might also stumble upon a box
overflowing with as many as 30 eggs.
These huge piles of eggs result from intraspecific brood parasitism, a
fancy term for egg dumping, which occurs when a bird of the same species lays
eggs in a nest that does not belong to her. Waterfowl often engage in this
behavior as a means of getting a few more of their own young to survive,
Remarkably, it often works – females appear to readily take care of the
foster eggs and raise the ducklings as their own.
Egg dumping occurs most often when nests are close to one another, which
can make nesting boxes good candidates for egg dumping. But in one study of
wood ducks, egg dumping also occurred in 85 percent of nests in natural
cavities, compared to about 44 percent of nest boxes.
It appears that the ducks don’t know which eggs are their own and which
belong to others. Other cavity-nesting ducks like hooded mergansers are known
to dump their eggs into the nests of wood ducks, and the hens will raise these
young as their own, too.
There are, however, physical limits to being a foster mother duck. A
single female wood duck can incubate at least 20 eggs at a time, but beyond
that, the clutch may become too much for one bird to manage, and she may
abandon her nest.
Celestial Events
Our days are still growing longer by
two minutes every day. On 5/16, we’ll be receiving 15 hours of sunlight!
On the evening of 5/15, look for
Jupiter about two degrees above the waxing gibbous moon. The full moon will
occur on 5/21. Called the “Flower” or the “Planting” moon by different Native American
tribes, it may appear that planting time is here, but only for those plants
that can tolerate frost. We always hold off planting hot weather vegetables
like tomatoes and green peppers until June 12, which is usually safe for where
we are in Manitowish.
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