A Northwoods Almanac for 4/27/18

A Northwoods Almanac for April 27 – May 10, 2018

Loons and Late Ice-Out

Ice-out on most lakes certainly appears like it won’t occur until early May, so how will that impact loons which are stacked up in southern Wisconsin waiting for the ice to go off? From long-time loon researcher Walter Piper: “When the ice goes out early, loons dawdle and wait weeks before nesting. But when the ice goes out late, as it will this year, pairs get down to business quickly, nesting within a week or so of territory return. So, loon pairs are somehow able to catch up in years of late ice-out so that their breeding schedule does not differ greatly from other years.” 

He adds, “Some of our best years for loon breeding (2013, for example), have occurred when the ice goes out late. So, those many of you shivering in northern Wisconsin and other frigid regions can relax about one thing; the loons are no worse off in years when spring comes late than when it arrives early.”

See Walter’s full post at https://loonproject.org/2018/04/16/no-progress-on-ice-out-but-no-need-to-panic/

Water Boatmen

A friend in Springstead called me on 4/21 to say he had some very odd creatures swimming in the snow-melt puddles of his driveway. He thought initially they might be tadpoles, which sent me over their quickly to check it out. They turned out to be “water boatmen” (family Corixidae), so named for their flat, boat-shaped bodies and long, fringed, oar-like hindlegs. Water boatmen trap a thin bubble of air against the underside of their body which allows them to stay underwater for long periods. When they “row” their legs, they further ventilate the bubble of air, making them less reliant on atmospheric oxygen than other water bugs.

Over 100 species of water boatmen occur in North America, and they’re very common in our lakes and rivers. They’re sometimes confused with “backswimmers” (family Notonectidae), but backswimmers swim on their backs while water boatmen swim right side up.

Why literally hundreds were swimming in this gentleman’s small driveway puddles is beyond me. After all, we’d just had a major blizzard a week earlier on 4/14, and there was still lots of snow everywhere. Where did they come from?

By the way, water boatmen are an important source of food for many fish and don’t bite, so they’re not harmful in any way. Most feed on aquatic algae and plants.

Sightings

The most impressive sighting over the last two-week period was the bona fide blizzard we had on 4/14 which left most of us with 16 to 20 inches of snow, a legacy that is still slowly melting in the woods. Temperatures in the last week (4/16-23) have been in the 50s and 60s, but what we need most to melt the snow is a long warm rain.

woodcock under one of our feeders on 4/14

On 4/10, we had our first-of-the-year (FOY) merlin right in our driveway. As we stepped out of our car, it flew from a pine next to the car carrying something almost the same size as it was. It seemed to be struggling to carry it, but eventually crossed the road and landed on a large branch of another pine. I got out my scope, zoomed in on it, and watched as it ripped feathers from a mourning dove and then proceeded to eat it. Wow!

I saw our FOY marsh hawk (northern harrier) on 4/11 swooping along Hwy. 51 in hopes of finding a wayward rodent where the snow had been cleared. A male cardinal was singing in our yard on 4/18. On 4/20, I took my first walk on Powell Marsh and had a grand total of three species – wood ducks, trumpeter swans, and red-winged blackbirds. Subsequent walks on Powell yielded numerous pairs of sandhill cranes, a northern flicker on 4/22, and song and savannah sparrows on 4/23. That 65° day on 4/23 also yield my FOY winter wren, tree sparrow, and a singing brown creeper. Oh, and on 4/21, our FOY brown-headed cowbird appeared to no applause whatsoever.

Other reports I received include:

4/12: John and Karin Randolph reported their FOY osprey along Hwy. 47 near McNaughton.

4/13: Sarah Krembs reported her FOY turkey vulture

4/16: Judith Bloom sent me a photo of a pair of wood ducks that flew in to a spot in her yard near a feeder that she had cleared for her dog.

photo by Judith Bloom

4/19: Mary Madsen in Presque Isle had her FOY great blue heron, and on 4/20, her FOY brown-headed cowbird.

4/21: Sarah Krembs sent a photo of two adult bald eagles fighting in mid-air, and noted her FOY belted kingfisher and fox sparrow.

photo by Sarah Krembs

4/23: Dan Carney had a FOY white-throated sparrow in his Hazelhurst yard. Dan has also been watching hairy woodpeckers, red-breasted and white-breasted nuthatches, black-capped chickadees, and squirrels drink sap from a wound in a maple tree in his yard. If they’d just let the sap drip on the trunk and wait until the water evaporated, they could be eating maple sugar!

Dan also noted that he still had at least 100 common redpolls at his feeders. We have perhaps 30, and I know of many other folks with a small army of redpolls still eating them out of house and home. Despite their gluttony, these far northern nesting birds will soon be leaving, so we should enjoy them while we can.

4/24: Every morning now, there are birds singing in our yard - what a blessing.

First Paddle on the Manitowish

            Bob Kovar and I paddled a section of the Manitowish River on 4/20. This was our first paddle of the year, and while we had to wade through some deep snow to get to the boat landing, the paddling was easy once we were launched. We were hoping to kick up a lot of species of waterfowl given that ice was still covering all the marshes and lakes in our area and migrating waterfowl have been relegated to the open rivers and creeks. And we did – good numbers in particular of trumpeter swans and hooded mergansers, as well as our FOY belted kingfisher.

photo by Bob Kovar

            Perhaps most interesting, however, were the wings of ice cantilevered over the river. I don’t know the physics of how this works, but some of the wings were many feet across and provided ample shelter for anything that might want cover from predators, rain, or sun.

photo by Bob Kovar

The Old-Growth Forest Network

Joan Maloof, professor emeritus of botany from Salisbury University in Maryland, founded the Old-Growth Forest Network in 2012 to preserve and promote the country’s few remaining stands of old-growth forest (see www.oldgrowthforest.net). Joan’s goal is to have set aside one forest in every county in the U.S. where visitors will be able to experience a native forest in its mature diversity and complexity. Of the 3,140 counties in the U.S., the Old-Growth Forest Network is targeting the 2,370 counties where forests naturally grow. In many counties, these forests will be already protected land, such as National Forest, Fish and Wildlife land, State and County Forests, or Municipal Forests.

            Joan recently visited Wisconsin to dedicate the first site in our state to be placed in her network – the Cathedral Pines near Lakewood in Oconto County. Cathedral Pines is within the Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest, and is also designated as a state natural area by the WDNR. Here the oldest white pines have been aged at 368 years old, and a few stand 155 feet tall with diameters of four feet, perhaps the largest white pines on public land left in the state.

            Joan has dedicated 72 sites now – only another 2,300 counties or so to go! Thus, the task in front of her is enormous, but this is where other folks can help. If you have an interest, check out how you can help on her website.

Corrections Appreciated!

A long-time reader of this column recently wrote that I had a mistake in an Almanac column for February, 2017. I had written that ice-out had occurred in mid-February that year on the Manitowish River, which was very early, with the earliest date in my records being in February, 1997. He noted that there was record-setting cold in February, 1997, and that the river couldn’t have gone out that early. And he was right! I had meant to write 1998, but for whatever reason, I wrote 1997. 

            I wanted to put his correction in this column for two reasons. One, to set the record straight. And two, to encourage readers to email or call me if you think I’ve got something wrong. I try very hard to be accurate and fair-minded in what I write, because if I exaggerate or cherry-pick statistics, it’s very easy to lose your trust as readers. And trust, once lost, is exceedingly difficult to regain – there’s always that niggling doubt based on the past wrong.

            So, please, feel free to contact me – I’d appreciate it! I do make mistakes – just ask my wife and daughters. So, point them out as they come up, and I’ll gladly write a correction. And be civil – I’m not your enemy if you don’t think climate change exists, and I do. It helps us reach agreement, or at least understanding of the other’s position, if there’s no name-calling or a lot of unfounded accusations.

Upcoming Events

            Nicolet College is hosting Bob Simeone for an evening talk on Friday, May 4. Bob has worked both locally and internationally on sustainable forest initiatives, and will be speaking on “Fifty Years of Forest Management: Striving Toward Sustainable Natural Forest Management Worldwide.” Bob will then lead us the next morning, May 5, on a visit to Rainbo Lodge where he will discuss their sustainable forest management plan. Sign up via phone at 715-365-4615 or see their website - www.nicoletcollege.edu/continuing-education/community-education/outdoor-adventure-series

The North Lakeland Discovery Center’s 14^th annual Birding Festival takes place on May 11 and 12, and is a fun event to attend whatever your level of birding skill may be.

Celestial Events

            The full moon (the “Grass Appearing” or “Maple Sugar” moon) occurs on 4/29. On 4/30, look for Jupiter four degrees south of the moon. On 5/4, look before dawn for Saturn nearly two degrees south of the waning gibbous moon. And 5/5 marks the mid-season between spring equinox and summer solstice – hard to believe we’re already half-way to summer solstice!

A Northwoods Almanac 4/13/18

A Northwoods Almanac for April 13-26, 2018   by John Bates

Sightings – Northern Saw-whet Owl

On 4/2, Martha Pierpont in Mercer sent a photo of a tiny owl she saw in her yard, wondering if it was a barred owl chick. It turns out that she had taken a picture of a northern saw-whet owl, an owl that stands 8 inches tall and weighs only as much as a robin, and thus could be mistaken as a chick of a larger owl.

photo by Martha Pierpont

To this day, I’ve never seen a saw-whet, so Martha is one-up on me. However, I’ve heard them sing many, many times. Their distinctive advertising call is a monotone bell-like “singing” on one constant pitch (the “toot” call). It’s utterly distinctive, and this is the time of year when the males are vocalizing. One Wisconsin study found that males gave their advertising call from 2/10 – 4/27. I suspect most of us don’t hear them in February and March because we’re not out listening on those cold nights. 

Saw-whets sing from within a half hour after sunset until sunrise, with their calling peaking at two hours after sunset. Some studies have correlated more frequent calling by saw-whets with years of higher prey abundance, perhaps because they are more likely to successfully raise young in a year with ample resources to feed them. 

Saw-whets are very difficult to study because they’re secretive, nocturnal, and have irregular movement patterns, so the exact limits of their breeding and winter ranges are not well known. I’ve never heard a saw-whet singing during the winter in our area, but the range maps clearly show that some remain the winter while others migrate. When individuals do migrate, they do so during the night, and in the spring, may still be migrating as late as the end of May.  

Northern Saw-whet Owl Range Map

Saw-whet owls appear to be nomadic, settling to breed in areas where prey are most abundant and where nest cavities are available. Generally, they seem to breed in forests with both dense conifers for roosting and deciduous trees for nesting and foraging. 

Sightings – FOY (First-Of-Year) Woodcock, Lots of Waterfowl, Grackles

            We saw our first American woodcock on 4/8 foraging beneath one of our feeders. Last year, we heard our first one on 4/11, and in 2016, we saw our first one on 4/8, though Bruce Bacon had banded one in Mercer a few weeks earlier on 3/24.

            Woodcocks return awfully early for a bird that feeds on invertebrates by probing with its long beak into soft ground. It seems too early, but woodcocks have been on the planet for many thousands of years and have done just fine without my judging their lack of caution regarding April snowstorms.

            Waterfowl are appearing on whatever open water we have, which right now is solely rivers and creeks. With a foot or two of ice on our lakes, ice-out will be a long-time coming. So, this constrains waterfowl to rivers and creeks. We have numerous hooded mergansers right now on the Manitowish River near our house, along with many geese and trumpeter swans.

The bald eagle pair across the river from our house are incubating eggs now. The nest is too high for us to look down into, so all we can do is watch for incubation exchanges between the male and female.

Our FOY common grackles appeared on 3/29 in Manitowish. I never celebrate their return, a value judgement that I need to work on given that they are a native bird and quite beautiful with their striking iridescent plumage and bright yellow eyes. My problem with grackles is that they have earned a reputation for eating other birds' eggs and nestlings, and they occasionally kill and consume adult birds. They’re also semi-colonial, preferring coniferous trees like the big white pines in our yard, and they’re one of the first species to begin nesting in the spring. So, we have a lot of them in our yard, and they’re quite aggressive at our feeders.

photo by Bev Engstrom

Their “song” also doesn’t endear them to me. It’s a sharp, harsh call, often described as sounding like a rusty gate and written phonetically as readle-eak or kh-sheee. Melodious is not a word anyone would use to describe it.

As with most animals, grackles kill but are also killed. Fox squirrels, gray squirrels, and raccoons eat their eggs and nestlings; eastern chipmunks and domestic cats eat their young; and remains have been found in stomachs of northern harriers, Cooper's hawks, red-tailed hawks, short-eared owls and in the nests of great horned owls. 

Grackles are harbingers of the return of songbirds, which should start pouring in when the weather warms. Reports of phoebes, winter wrens, yellow-rumped and pine warblers, song sparrows, and a host of others are now common in Madison and Milwaukee. These early migrants usually winter in the southern U.S, and hop their way north as the weather permits. Unlike many of the neotropical migrants that are hard-wired to arrive in mid-May based on the amount of light, they’re not hard-wired, instead considered “plastic,” meaning they conform most of their movements to the vagaries of local weather.

Marching into Spring? Weather is Local, Climate is National and Global

While it sure has been snowy and cold in northern Wisconsin (Mary, Callie, and I have been skiing every day on the WinMan trails), March weather was a mixed bag nationally. NOAA reports show that relatively cold weather dominated the eastern U.S. – in many cases, the weather was colder than February – but conversely, the Southwest and Southern Plains were unusually warm.

Nationwide, according to NOAA, the month ended up as the 55th warmest and 55th wettest March out of the last 124 years of recordkeeping for the contiguous U.S. Despite all the nor’easters that New England experienced, it was relatively mild there for the month as the weather systems pulled warmer marine air across the region. In the Northwest and Northern Plains, March ended up near average for temperatures.

The year thus far, January to March, is the 24th warmest on record for the U.S., and the 10th warmest for Arizona, New Mexico, and Maine. After its 6th-driest October-to-February period on record, California finally got some moisture with its 23rd-wettest March. Several strong storms increased the Sierra Nevada’s snowpack, but only up to around half of its average by April 1.

Extreme to exceptional drought continued over much of the Southern High Plains in March. As an example, Amarillo, Texas, got a quarter inch of rain on March 27, but during the preceding 163 days, Amarillo saw just 0.01” of moisture.

Several of the prolonged bouts of March cold have been associated with late-winter weakenings of the stratospheric polar vortex that typically keeps colder air locked up at higher latitudes. Some research suggests that these weakenings are becoming more common because of a warming Arctic. Check out the following article: www.wunderground.com/cat6/models-coming-agreement-widespread-effects-arctic-sea-ice-loss

Celestial Events

The Manitowish River opened below our house on 3/27, 11 days later than our 28-year average of 3/16. Last year, the river opened below our house on 2/21, 24 days earlier than the average.

air photo of the Manitowish River on 4/11 by Dean Gustafson

I’m still trying to get used to how late the sun stays up now! As of 4/14, we’ll be receiving 13 ½ hours of sunlight, and as of 4/24, 14 hours.

            The new moon occurs on 4/15.

            According to 42 years of records kept by Woody Hagge, the average ice-out date on Foster Lake in Hazelhurst is 4/16. What do you think the odds are of that happening this year? The latest date from his records for ice-out on Foster Lake was May 7, 1996. We’re all hoping the record remains intact and our ice leaves a lot earlier.

            On 4/17, look after dusk for Venus about 5 degrees above the waxing crescent moon.

            From 4/20 to 4/22, the average low temperature for Minocqua reaches 32° for the first time since 10/25/2017. Minocqua averages 182 days with low temperatures above freezing, almost exactly one-half of the year.

The peak Lyrid meteor shower occurs on the night of 4/21 and continues until dawn on 4/22 – they average 10 to 20 per hour.

           

Thought for the Week

            “Our lives are touched by those who lived centuries ago, and we hope that our lives will mean something to people who won’t be alive until centuries from now. It’s a great ‘chain of being,’ someone once told me, and I think our job is to do the best we can to hold up our small segment of the chain.”  – Dorothy Day

           

Please share your outdoor sightings and thoughts: call 715-476-2828, e-mail at manitowish@centurytel.net, snail-mail at 4245N State Highway 47, Mercer, WI, or see my blog at www.manitowishriver.blogspot.com.