A Northwoods Almanac for 1/18/19

A Northwoods Almanac for 1/18 – 1/31/19  

Winter Severity Index to Date? Very Mild

            As of 1/15, the 2018-19 winter severity index is “2” for our region. The index helps gauge the effects of winter weather on deer survival. It’s calculated by adding the number of days with 18 inches or more of snow on the ground to the number of days when the minimum temperatures were 0°F or below. Days when both occur are scored as a “2”. The severity of the winter is then based on the total points accumulated over the time period. A winter index less than 50 is considered mild, 51 to 79 is moderate, 80 to 99 is severe, and over 100 is very severe.

In very severe winters, up to 30% of the deer herd may be lost, dramatically affecting the overall populations. Most of us recall the winter of 2013-14 when the state hit a record 149, sharply impacting the deer herd. Conversely, in very mild winters, deer survival is excellent and reproductive success is typically high.

For the moment then, deer are doing very well, though things may, of course, change.

Historically, severe to very severe winter conditions were commonly reported across the northern forest region from the early 1960s through the late 1980s. Moderate to mild winter conditions have prevailed across the region since 1997 with the exception of the winter of 2013-14. 

To see this chart covering 1959 to 2017, see https://dnr.wi.gov/wideermetrics/DeerStats.aspx?R=WSI#background

White Pines!

            Last week I led a group of tree-lovers into a tiny remnant stand of old-growth white pines near Mercer. The site is an “island” of mostly old-growth white pines surrounded by alder swamp. Some very limited logging within it, but left behind were a number of pines with diameters at breast height over 40”, including the largest at 50”.

50" dbh white pine photo by John Bates

            The best statistics I can find for white pines in Wisconsin says that we have just over 1,000 acres of white pines left that are 150 years and older. Since white pines can live to be 400 years old, 150 years is only their middle age. Remember also that 640 acres is one square mile. So, we have less than two square miles of older white pine left in our entire state, which puts those few that are left in the category of truly rare.

            Why did we cut them so thoroughly? For farmers, the forests were a formidable obstacle to remove from the land before their crops could be sown. For settlers, the wood meant jobs in the bush camps, sawmills, and finishing factories. I’ll let a few quotes tell more of the story:

 “It is much to be regretted that the very superabundance of trees in our state should destroy, in some degree, our veneration for them. They are looked upon as cucumbers of the land; and the question is not how they shall be preserved, but how they shall be destroyed.” (Increase Lapham, The Antiquities of Wisconsin, 1855)

 “Logs less than three feet in diameter are counted ‘under size’ by many lumbermen.” (C.H. Brigham, The Lumber Region of Michigan, 1868)

            “Every new settler upon the fertile prairies means one more added to the vast army of lumber consumers, one more new house to be built, one more barn, one more 40 acres of land to be fenced, one more or perhaps a dozen corn crib needs.” (The Northwestern Lumberman, 1880)         
            “An 1888 log jam on the Menominee River is said to have backed up 500 million board feet.” (William Cronen, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West)

note the people standing on this logjam in the left of the photo

            “The longest log jam in the world took place in 1894 in Little Falls, Minnesota. 7 miles long, half a mile wide, and 60 feet high . . . It was estimated to contain over four billion board feet of lumber.” (Wisconsin Historical Society) 

 “No wood [white pine] has found greater favor or entered more fully into supplying all those wants of man.” (George Hotchkiss,History of the Lumber and Forest Industry of the Northwest, 1898)

            “The desolation of much of the pine area in the 1920’s and early 1930’s is difficult to describe to anyone who did not see it. In many places the entire landscape as far as the eye could see supported not a single tree more than a few inches in diameter. Only the gaunt stumps of the former pines, frequently with their root systems fully exposed as a result of the consumption of the topsoil by fire, remained to indicate that the area was once a forest rather than a perpetual barren.” (John Curtis, Vegetation of Wisconsin, 1959)

photo from Wisconsin Historical Society, in Our Living Ancestors by John Bates

             What we didn’t cut, we burned, often purposely: “Some 42% of the historic wildfires in the Northeast and the Midwest are estimated to have been due to land-clearing operations of settlers.” (C.S. Sargent, 1880, quoted in From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain, Gordon Whitney).

            “Perhaps more good pine timber was burned than ever reached the sawmills.” (Robert Fries, Empire of Pine, 1951)

            So, white pines were felled as fast as they could be found, and the history is remarkable to read – recommended resources include: White Pine: American History and the Tree That Made a Nationby Andrew Vietze; Empire in Pine: The Story of Lumbering in Wisconsinby Robert Fries; Caulked Boots and Cant Hooks: One Man’s Story of Logging the Northby George Corrigan; The White Pine Industry in Minnesota: A History by Agnes Larson; Deep Woods Frontier: A History of Logging in Northern Michigan by Theodore Karamanski; The Great Lakes Forest: An Environmental and Social Historyby Susan Flador, editor; and The Vegetation of Wisconsinby John Curtis.

            Standing among remnant white pines has a certain magic to it. Thoreau wrote that the sound of white pines was “like great harps on which the wind makes music” (from 1/16/1857).

Sigurd Olson wrote in his book Listening Point, “As I stood there, I could hear the soft moaning of the wind in the high dark tops and feel the permanence and agelessness of the primeval. In among those tall swaying trees was more than beauty, more than great boles reaching toward the sky. Silence was there and a sense of finality and benediction that comes only when nature has completed a cycle and reached the crowning achievement of a climax, when all of the inter-relationships of the centuries have come at last to a final glory.”

John Eastman said of the wind in pines, “Pine is the larynx of the wind. No other trees unravel, comb, and disperse moving air so thoroughly. Yet they also seem to concentrate the winds, wringing mosaics of sound from gale weather – voice echoes, cries, sobs, conversations, maniacal calls.  With the help of only slight imagination, they are the receiving stations to which all winds check in, filtering out their loads of B-flats, and F minors, processing auditory debris swept from all corners of the sound-bearing world.”

            Finally, John Curtis noted in his seminal book Vegetation of Wisconsin, “Most of the big pines cut in the heyday of lumbering business were about 400 years old . . . The occasional giants were 7 to 10 feet d.b.h. reported by the surveyors must have been still older. Results from modern studies, therefore, cannot give a true picture of the actual magnitude and majesty of a mature pine forest at its optimum.”

            True enough. My hope is that someday, long from now certainly, we will again have forests with trees of this size and age.

DNR Secretary Preston Cole

            Along with virtually everyone I know, I am excited that Preston Cole has been named as the new Secretary of the DNR. As a member of the Natural Resources Board since 2007 and as a professional forester, he’s bringing much needed long-term experience to an exceedingly challenging job. His pledge to return science-based management to the DNR, as well as a return to far greater transparency, is profoundly welcome. Hopefully we’ll return as much as possible to objective, apolitical decision-making by people trained in the sciences following the mission statement of the DNR: “To protect and enhance our natural resources: our air, land, and water; our wildlife, fish and forests and the ecosystems that sustain all life. To provide a healthy, sustainable environment and a full range of outdoor opportunities.”

Sightings

            Bev Engstrom photographed a partial albino, or possibly leucistic, black-capped chickadee in Rhinelander. 

photo by Bev Engstrom

            Bruce Bacon in Mercer wondered why his bird seed was going down so much every night and suspected flying squirrels. He set up his trail cam at the feeders and his suspicions were quickly confirmed. We, too, feed flying squirrels every night, and they’re fun to watch.

photo by Bruce Bacon

Lunar Eclipse!

            A total lunar eclipse will occur on 1/20 and last into the early morning of 1/21. The potentially copper-colored moon – a “blood moon” – will be visible throughout North America (a little sunlight gets bent around the edges of the Earth causing the reddish tint).

Since this full moon will appear to be one of the largest of 2019, the eclipse's full moon is called a “super” moon. And given that the January full moon is sometimes referred to as the “wolf moon,” we’ll be having a “super blood wolf moon eclipse.” Say that fast five times.

The moon won’t disappear, but becomes 10,000 or so times dimmer than usual.

The eclipse begins at 9:33 p.m.in Minocqua and reaches total eclipse at 10:41, which then lasts for 62 minutes until it begins to fade. Look for stars during the eclipse that ordinarily would be washed out by the bright light of the full moon!

Celestial Events

            On 1/22, look before dawn for Venus about 2 degrees above the waning gibbous moon. By 1/27 we’ll be up to 9 ½ hours of daylight – our days will soon be growing longer by 3 minutes per day. On 1/29, look before dawn for Jupiter 3 degrees below the crescent moon. 

Thought for the Week

            “I’ve often thought of the forest as a living cathedral, but this might diminish what it truly is.” – Richard Nelson

A Northwoods Almanac for 1/4/19

A Northwoods Almanac for 1/4 – 1/17/19  

Sightings: Varied Thrush, Red-winged Blackbird, Minocqua Christmas Bird Count

Gayle Derwinski and Dave Osborn in Boulder Junction have a rare varied thrush visiting their bird feeders. Varied thrushes breed from Alaska to California in forests "where spruce trees and alders and crowding ferns contend for a footing, and where a dank mist drenches the whole with a fructifying moisture," so wrote W. L. Dawson in 1923 in The Birds of California. I’m not sure what “fructifying moisture” is, but when Mary and I did an artist-in-residence in the Andrews Forest in Oregon, perhaps the most common bird we saw there was the varied thrush, and Andrews Forest gets 84 inches of rain annually and as much as 14 feet of snow in winter. It’s a very wet place – perhaps even fructifying!  

photo  by Gayle Derwinski

They breed most commonly in mature and old-growth forests, and that’s where we’ve seen them – from coastal redwoods to western hemlocks. Most varied thrushes winter along the Pacific Coast from Alaska to southern California, but during irruption years, which occur every 2 to 5 years, they may be seen across the United States and Canada in winter. 

We’ve got a much more mundane bird, but still unusual, under our feeders – a red-winged blackbird. It appeared on 12/26 and continues as of 1/1. Red-wings are perhaps the most abundant bird in North America, but typically winter only as far north as the southern counties of our state, and then continue as far south as Central America. What this fellow is doing under our feeders is perplexing, since red-wings are primarily ground feeders and ordinarily the Northwoods has too much snow for such behavior. But he seems to be doing fine on a diet of sunflower seeds, so we’ll see what transpires.

            The Minocqua Christmas Bird Count took place on 12/20 and tallied 24 species, a good number given the foggy and misty conditions we encountered that morning. Just to illustrate the wintering bird difference between northern Wisconsin counties like ours that experience a true winter and southern counties that may see snow but only briefly, the Madison Christmas Count tallied 94 species and 38,933 individual birds – they had more cardinals (665) than we had total birds (595) on our Manitowish Waters Count. On the other hand, they also had more starlings (2,369) and house sparrows (2,509) than we had total birds, so their diversity comes with some costs. 

We’re doing a birding trip to southeastern Arizona in March, and our guide there said they counted 140 species on their Christmas Count! Of course, it was 65° there, while we had 13° here, and the birds very well know the difference.

            Finally, Joe Heitz photographed bear tracks on 12/19 while walking along the edge of Irving Lake. November was colder than average, but December has proven to be much warmer than average. While the bear could simply have been disturbed from his/her den, it may also have been feeling the warmth.

photo by Joe Heitz

Proof of Wolves Fishing

Researchers in Minnesota’s Voyageurs National Park have documented for the first time wolves hunting freshwater fish as a seasonal food source, and there’s video to prove it! 

In April of 2017, one of the researchers quietly followed the signal from a collared wolf to a creek, and then hid in some shrubs to watch the wolf’s behaviors. For the next 15 minutes or so, he watched the wolf meander back and forth around the creek, periodically running into the creek, splashing around, and looking like it was eating something. After the wolf departed, he found fish scales and blood and guts all over the edges of the creek, as well as wolf scats full of fish scales and fish remains.The wolf had been hunting fish — spawning suckers — in the creek.

A year later, the researchers set up trail cameras at the creek and caught footage of the wolves fishing at night.Even more interesting, the video also captured wolves catching fish and not eating them right away, instead, storing them on the bank of the creek while they fished some more.

Wolves in coastal habitats in British Columbia and Alaska eat spawning salmon, but this is the first time wolves hunting freshwater fish have been directly observed.

The researchers have also learned a variety of other things about wolves, one of which is that wolves eat a lot of beavers. In fact, they found that beavers can constitute up to 42 percent of a pack's diet from April until October. Their preliminary data shows that, on average, one wolf in Voyageurs Park kills about six to eight beavers per year. But since individual wolves opportunistically vary their diet depending on what’s available, they found that one wolf didn’t eat any beavers at all, but one other wolf had eaten 28 beavers in one year. 

Read more at:

https://www.npr.org/2018/12/22/678668772/the-secret-fishing-habits-of-northwoods-wolves

Moose Study 

A multi-year New Hampshire study begun in 2014 is ongoing to learn more about threats facing the moose population there. Moose aren’t on the verge of disappearing from New Hampshire, but they are declining, and they want to know why. 

            Researchers from the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department partnered with the University of New Hampshire to collar 45 moose cows and calves each year from 2014-2017, and 50 in 2018 (230 total). They then compared mortality and productivity from a New Hampshire study conducted in 2001-2006, versus the work done from 2014-2018. What they found was that winter ticks are causing increasingly negative impacts to adult cow productivity. Moose attempt to remove ticks by scratching, licking, and rubbing, often removing their hair at the same time, which can lead to secondary infections and hypothermia. Individual moose can carry 10,000 to 120,000 ticks. The moose that they found dead had an average of 47,000 on them.

photo by Dan Bergeron

They further noted, “In addition, as our winters become consistently shorter, more ticks are surviving and calf mortality is remaining high. We are also seeing clear evidence that tick loads are directly correlated with both moose density and shorter winters.” Today, winter in most portions of New Hampshire is three weeks shorter than it was 30 years ago. Shorter winters are allowing parasites to thrive that were formerly killed by longer periods of winter weather.

Interestingly, they also found that “as our winters continue to shorten, it may be best for moose if they are held at much lower densities. Based on our own work, we know that ticks have far less impact when moose densities are 0.25/square mile or less.”  

The researchers remind us that “the most important thing to remember is that moose are a northern species. They evolved in ways that allow them to live in cold climates, climates that normally kill ticks. As our weather changes and our winters continue to shorten, there is a whole host of parasites and diseases normally associated with southern climates that will be able to survive here. Our changing climate is fundamentally changing the environment’s ability to support many of our northern species, be they flora or fauna. If we want our northern species to remain here we must act now to halt and reverse the impacts of climate change.”

Snowy Owl Study

In a study just published in the International Journal of Avian Scienceentitled “Age composition of winter irruptive Snowy Owls in North America(Santonja et al. 2019),” the researchers found that “large winter irruptions at temperate latitudes are not the result of adults massively leaving the Arctic in search of food after a breeding failure but are more likely to be a consequence of good reproductive conditions in the Arctic that create a large pool of winter migrants.”

For many years, the accepted explanation for why snowy owls would appear in large numbers during a given winter was that starvation was driving them south. It turns out to be quite the opposite – an excellent breeding year sends the numerous juvenile snowy owls well south in search of wintering territory. There apparently isn’t enough wintering territory further north to support both adult owls and the juveniles.

Celestial Events

            The new moon occurs on 1/5. The sun rises one minute earlier on 1/8, the first time since 6/11/18. Our day length is growing two minutes longer as of 1/9.

            The year’s coldest days, on average, occur between 1/6 and 1/26, with a high of 21°F. 

The year’s average coldest low temperatures occur between 1/6 and 1/29 at 3°F. 

            After dusk on 1/12, look for Mars 5 degrees north of the waxing crescent moon.

            And hey, things are looking brighter – we receive over 9 hours of daylight on 1/13!

             

Thought for the Week

“We think of wind as the voice of winter, the wind and the moan of the trees and the swish of sleet and snow. But the ultimate voice, the timeless voice of winter, is the boom of the ice, and is one of the coldest voices there is . . . Ice, which split the mountains, carved the valleys, leveled the hills, must proclaim its strength. The ice rends itself in a primalconvulsion. The ice booms.”   Hal Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year