A
Northwoods Almanac for April 28 – May 11, 2017
First-of-the-Year
(FOY) Sightings
4/6: Mary Rodman photographed a merlin that
had just captured a mourning dove by the old rearing ponds in Presque Isle. She
noted, “As you can see, it’s not much bigger than the mourning dove it killed;
it had a heck of a time getting it off the ground!” This is a FOY for
merlins in our area.
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| merlin photo by Mary Rodman |
4/8: Joan Hill sent this note: “A small group of the WOW
(Women on Water) kayak group paddled from Alder Lake to Manitowish Lake on the
Trout River this afternoon. When we got to Manitowish Lake we were greeted
by a couple loons! We had to deal with a bit of ice to wade through when
we got back to Alder Lake, but it was the earliest we had ever paddled, and the
loon sightings were worth the cold feet!”
4/11: Tag alder, willows, silver maples, aspens,
hazelnuts all came into flower. We returned this evening from a week in redwood
forests out West, and we opened our car doors to hear our first woodcock
peenting and sky dancing in Manitowish.
4/12: Joan Galloway heard and saw her FOY loon on Clear
Lake on the Manitowish Chain. She wrote, “Earliest for me since I’ve kept
records.”
4/12: FOY northern flickers, yellow-bellied sapsuckers,
yellow-rumped warblers, wood ducks, wood frogs, and spring peepers in
Manitowish.
4/13: FOY chipping sparrows in Manitowish. Also FOY birds
at Powell Marsh included tree swallows, redhead ducks, savannah sparrows,
rough-legged hawk, pied-billed grebe, ring-neck ducks, greater yellowlegs,
common loons, blue-winged teals, and northern harrier.
4/15: FOY phoebe near Manitowish Waters.
4/16: On Day Lake, our first paddle of the year, we saw
FOY turkey vultures.
4/17: Debbie and Randy Augustinak in Land O Lakes emailed
saying they thought that they'd been burning through an inordinate amount of
bird seed lately, despite their 12-foot-high bear/deer-proof feeders. The email
then showed a photo of a wild turkey sitting on the feeder and chowing down on
the sunflower seeds. Debbie said, “This explains a lot!”
 |
| wild turkey in feeder photo by Deb Augustinak |
4/18: FOY trailing arbutus in bloom in the Frog Lake
State Natural Area.
4/21: FOY broad-winged hawk, red admiral butterfly,
scarlet cup mushrooms on the Van Vliet Nature Trail.
 |
| red admiral photo by Mary Burns |
 |
| scarlet cup photo by Mary Burns |
4/23: Today marked Mary’s and my 38th
anniversary. While eating breakfast, we watched birds in our yard and those
flying over the Manitowish River. In quick succession, we had an adult eagle
sailing out of its nest, two trumpeter swans cruising downriver, and a sandhill
crane flying upriver. Shortly thereafter, a male and female northern cardinal
appeared in our lilac bush. We’ve had a female around for the last two years,
but no male. Today that changed, and hopefully their presence together means
cardinal chicks may be in our future.
4/23: Sarah Krembs observed a FOY pine warbler eating
suet in her yard in Manitowish Waters. Most warblers are insect eaters, but
both pine and yellow-rumped warblers are known for their adaptable diets – they
commonly eat seeds, fruits, and suet, as well as insects. We had yellow-rumped
warblers coming to our sunflower seed feeders during this week.
 |
| yellow-rumped warbler photo by John Bates |
4/23: FOY Wilson’s snipe were winnowing overhead in
Manitowish.
4/24: Bob Kovar and I paddled Plunkett Lake in 31°
temperatures, but despite the cold, numerous winter wrens were singing in the
cedars lining the shore. I counted at least eight individuals. We also saw our
FOY leatherleaf flowers in bloom.
4/24: Mary, Callie, and I saw our FOY hepaticas on a hike
in the Manitowish Waters area.
Wisconsin
Conservation Hall of Fame
I serve on the Board of the
Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame, and on 4/22, we held a public ceremony in
Stevens Pont to induct three new members: Christine Thomas, Hugh Iltis, and
Milly Zantow. Dr. Thomas is known nationally as the founder of BOW – Becoming
an Outdoor Woman – a program which has taught skills in outdoor recreation,
hunting and fishing to over 20,000 women.
Dr. Iltis was an
internationally known botanist, and cofounder of the Wisconsin Chapter of the
Nature Conservancy in 1960. In 1968, he helped make
Wisconsin the first state in the nation to ban the pesticide DDT. He is
well known for his 1978 discovery of a perennial corn species in remote mountains of Mexico. The species resisted a series of viruses
that afflict corn, and it could crossbreed with the commercial corn crop. Iltis
was also botany professor at UW Madison and finished each lecture by
admonishing students ‘to be a good ancestor’ and leave a better world for
future generations.
Milly
Zantow was the most unlikely of the inductees, but equally deserving. Milly
embodied the citizen advocate. She was instrumental in showing how plastics
could be recycled, and helped invent the “Recycling Triangle” that is used
globally to identify different plastics. She didn’t have a college degree, but
she had remarkable tenacity and a deep sense of doing what was right. Born on
an Oklahoma farm during the depression, she understood early on that nothing
was to be wasted. Through her kindness and common sense – she was described as
“everyone’s grandmother” – she became an unstoppable force in recycling. She’s
considered today to be the model for what is needed in environmental citizen
advocacy.
Science
March
Because of the overlap of the Hall of Fame
induction on 4/22, I missed the
science marches that took place statewide, nationally, and internationally, but
I was there in spirit.
Here’s what I want to say about science.
Science isn’t perfect. It doesn’t provide THE TRUTH. It’s a seeker of truths.
It’s a continual search for evidence to support deeper understandings of how
this planet, and all its life forms, function.
Scientific inquiry is based on information
that will always be limited, always imperfect, just as we humans are imperfect,
we who act in the roles of analyzers, synthesizers, communicators, moralizers,
and enactors.
Given then that there is no such thing as
absolute truth, it’s essential that we all accept change and imperfection as
the way science proceeds, just as we accept that we all will make decisions
throughout our lives based on imperfect, ever-changing information. Should I
take this job? Should I trust this mechanic? Should I vote for this person?
Should I hire this babysitter? Should I believe my friend? Should I accept this
doctor’s diagnosis? On and on we live our life making decisions based on the
best information we can find from the people we trust the most. There’s always
uncertainty, but we still move forward.
Chet Raymo, a physicist and writer who
recently passed away, wrote this: “Two things are required to truly see:
knowledge and love. Without love, we don’t look. Without knowledge, we don’t
know what it is we are seeing.”
He writes further: “Science works by breaking
connections, fracturing the world into myriad parts, and then discovering the
hidden patterns with which to weave the pieces back again into wholeness . . .
The trick is to see how the world exists for all species. To get outside of
ourselves. And then make our best decisions . . . There are more than 10
million species of life on this planet, and we are the only one insatiably
curious about all the rest.”
The
world is astonishingly complex. In fact, it’s more complex than we are capable
of thinking. Thus, science will never sort it all out perfectly so that
everything will be known. Scientists sometimes get it wrong, sometimes slip in
their personal ethics, but that’s the exception, not the rule. Nevertheless,
it’s the best way we have of understanding this world.
Raymo sums it up: “Science is exclusionary.
If every idea has equal currency in the marketplace of ideas, then truth
becomes a matter of whim, politics, expediency, or the tyranny of the strong.
Science has evolved an elaborate system of social organization, communication,
and peer review to ensure a high degree of conformity within an institutionally
supported orthodoxy. This conservative approach to change allows for orderly
and exhaustive examination of fruitful ideas. It provides a measure of
insulation from fads, political upheavals, religious conflicts, and
international strife . . . Science is conservative, but of all truth systems
that purport to explain the world, it is also the most progressive.”
For the
Earth and Water Walk
Mary and
I participated on the first day of the “For the Earth and Water Walk 2017”
which began in Duluth on 4/20 and which will continue until the fall when the
walkers reach the Atlantic Ocean in far eastern Quebec.
Water Walks are based in Anishinaabe
ceremonial water teachings. Women make offerings for the water, sing water
songs, and make petitions for our water to be pure and clean and continuously
flow down to us. They carry a pail of water dipped from Lake Superior all the
way to the Atlantic where they will then combine the waters in prayer.
According to their website, “the women walk
to honor all Nibi (water) and to speak to the water spirits so that there will
be healthy rivers, lakes and oceans for our ancestors and the generations to
come. When we are walking for the water, we are in an Anishinaabe ceremony from
the beginning of the day until day’s end. We move like water, continuously all
day long, every day until we reach our destination. We carry asemaa/tobacco
with us to offer to any flowing streams or rivers we cross, and to honor any
animals we may cross over along the roads or trails. When we walk, this is a
time for prayer or songs for the water.”
They make a point that a water walk is not a protest,
activist action, or social event. It’s a continuous ceremony to honor the gift
of water.
Anyone
can join them at any point for any length of time in their walk. See www.motherearthwaterwalk.com for the
schedule of where they will be every day. More locally, you can join the Lac du
Flambeau water walk which takes place on May 13.
Celestial
Events
Before
dawn on 5/4, look for the Eta Aquarid meteor shower, which averages about 20
meteors per hour. 5/5 marks the mid-point between spring equinox and summer
solstice. On this day in 1962, Alan Shepherd became the first American in
space.
On 5/7,
look for Jupiter about two degrees south of the waxing gibbous moon. The full
moon (the Flower or Planting Moon) occurs on 5/10.
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