A Northwoods Almanac for 9/20 – 10/3/2019
Sightings: Acorns, Reds, Trumpeters, Nighthawks, Flickers, Monarchs, Cooper’s Hawk, Dagger Moth
It appears to be a great acorn year. Wherever we’ve been walking or bike riding under northern red oaks, we’ve been squashing innumerable acorns. This, of course, is good news for all the species of wildlife that can eat and digest these tannin-rich morsels. Acorns grow oak trees, but they also grow deer, gray and red squirrels, chipmunks, wild turkeys, crows, flying squirrels, rabbits, blue jays, grouse, raccoons, wood ducks, and more than 100 U.S. vertebrate species.
Northern flickers are now being seen commonly along roadsides, foraging for ants in the gravel. While other woodpeckers are up hammering trees to extract insects, flickers generally work the ground, searching for ants and beetle larvae, their main food, though they occasionally pound on trees to get their insect dinners.
Flickers seek out ants and other insects by probing and hammering in soil with their powerful bills, then store them in a crop to carry food to hatchlings. They do, however, shift their diet to fruits in late fall and winter when insects are far harder to come by.
Flickers migrate south and are typically last seen here in late September to early October.
Brilliant fall colors are appearing, particularly near wet areas where trees are stressed by too much water. Scarlet colors are being seen in abundance: five of my favorites include red maple, blackberry, sumac, woodbine, and poison ivy.
Bob Von Holdt sent me an update on a pair of trumpeter swans he’s been watching in the Presque Isle area. They hatched six cygnets in June and there are five left as of 9/11.
Ted Rulseh observed hundreds of nighthawks over Birch Lake on 9/6, and noted that “midges were hatching. It was quite a spectacle . . . They were everywhere, with all those wings beating and absolutely not a sound to be heard. They weren’t even making their calls.”
On 9/6, Judith Bloom sent photos of a monarch butterfly that had just emerged from its chrysalis.
A Cooper’s hawk is eating songbirds around our feeders in Manitowish. We’ve had merlins and sharp-shinned hawks utilizing our feeder birds over the years, but this is the first time we’ve ever had a Cooper’s.
And finally, a “Fingered Dagger Moth” (Acronicta dactylina) crossed in front of us on one of the dikes in Powell Marsh. We’re still learning our caterpillar identification, so it’s always fun to figure one out, though I needed the assistance of Linda Williams, the DNR’s forest health specialist for northeastern Wisconsin, to finally ID this one.
Honey Mushrooms
It’s possible that honey mushrooms (Armillaria mellea and Armillaria galica) are trying to take over the world, or at least a portion of the Northwoods. With all our rain, these mushrooms have proliferated in woodlands as well as on people’s lawns where there is buried decaying wood. We’ve had colonies of them sprout up through our grass, an emergence we’ve never seen in the 35 years we’ve lived here.
Also called cinnamon tops or stumpies, these are gilled mushrooms typically found in clusters on stumps or trunks of living hardwoods like northern red oak, but also on birches, aspens, and maples.
They’re a sought-after edible, though there are some toxic look-alikes. So, remember, all mushrooms are edible once.
We’ve also seen large numbers of late flowering Indian pipe (Monotropa uniflora) blooming in profusion, which in our experience is very late for this plant. But with all the rain and the high water levels we have, a lot of plants are behaving out of their “normal” zone.
The reason I bring up Indian pipe is because Indian pipes parasitize the honey mushrooms, which in turn are parasitizing hardwood trees, often causing a root rot that ultimately leads to an earlier mortality.
If you find Armillaria galica, you’ve found the species responsible for the “Humungous Fungus” that was discovered near Crystal Falls, MI, and which was found to be a single mushroom covering 30 acres of forest and estimated to be 1,500 years old.
Powell Marsh Prairie
A portion of Powell Marsh was planted with a variety of prairie seeds after a prescribed burn in May, 2015, and the result has been a truly lovely display of prairie wildflowers, including bee balm, yellow coneflower, and black-eyed Susan. The flowers have been absolutely loaded with pollinating bees whenever we’ve been there, so it’s been a very buzzy place.
My hope is that after future prescribed burns on other areas of the marsh, the DNR will scatter prairie seeds again and alter the flora from an array of mostly non-native species to native grassland species. Kudos to the DNR for this practice.
Loon Population Declining
This from Walter Piper, long-time loon researcher in Oneida County, posting on his blog on 9/11/19 (https://loonproject.org/2019/09/11/the-loon-population-is-declining-in-wisconsin/): “If you have been following the blog, you might recall that the number of chicks per pair has fallen sharply since I began studying loons in 1993. Although I had not reported it yet, loss of chicks after hatching has also increased significantly since I began my work. That is, many pairs hatch two young but lose one or both of them nowadays. Furthermore, even chicks that survive to five weeks of age are now in poorer condition (as measured by body mass) than in 1998 or 2006 or 2013. In short, breeding pairs in northern Wisconsin now raise fewer and less robust chicks than they did 25 years ago.
“ . . . I followed a simple line of reasoning. If loon pairs are producing fewer and weaker chicks, then fewer chicks must be able to migrate to the wintering ground. And if fewer juveniles make it to Florida, then fewer should survive long enough to return to northern Wisconsin (which happens at 2 to 4 years of age) and look for a breeding territory of their own. So, declining chick production should result in a reduced population of nonbreeders (or floaters) in our study area, which are young adults looking to settle on their first territory with a mate. Since we mark chicks and obsessively re-observe them as young adults, we can test the idea that lower chick production has resulted in fewer floaters. The results are stark. After one adjusts for number of observer-hours spent looking for floaters each year, a dramatic pattern emerges. The population of floaters has plummeted . . . we have seen roughly 1/3 as many floaters from the 2015-year class (which are 4 years old now) as we saw from the 1998-year class. In terms of percentages, we re-observed about 45% of all chicks banded in 1998 and 1999 much later as adults; we see only about 14% of banded chicks as adults these days.”
Dr. Piper goes on to discuss the implications of this decline: “Without floaters, a breeding population cannot sustain itself, because, inevitably, breeders die and must be replaced.”
This is exceptionally important research for our area. Column size doesn’t permit me to do justice to all of his analysis - I highly recommend reading his entire blog to learn more.
Hawk Ridge Count Numbers To Date
Overall migrating hawk numbers at Hawk Ridge in Duluth remain low as of this writing (9/16/19), though on 9/15, 1,164 sharp-shinned hawks passed over the ridge, escalating the total number of sharpies counted this fall to 3,477.
However, only 511 broad-winged hawks have been noted thus far, so the big push is yet to come. Typically, broad-wingeds migrate through our area during a short window of time in September, often being done by 9/25. So, if the winds are right, this weekend could be a big flight. The record seasonal high for broad-wingeds was in 2003 when 160,703 were counted.
I recommend visiting Hawk Ridge today or through the weekend for the Hawk Weekend Festival (9/20-22), which draws many hundreds of hawk watchers, as well as offering numerous guided hikes and programs for visitors. See their web page at www.hawkridge.org.
Though hawk numbers have been small so far, other species have been passing over the ridge in good numbers. A total of 7,211 nighthawks were counted, with the peak day occurring on Aug. 29 when 6,468 flew by, while 2,050 cliff swallows also zoomed over the ridge the same day.
Ballooning
On 9/15, Mary, Callie, Katlyn Koester, and I walked one of the dikes on Powell Marsh, and fortunately for Mary and me, Callie and Katlyn were walking ahead of us. I say fortunately, because they were continually meeting, close-up and personal, spider threads strung across the dike. I say threads because these weren’t webs, but individual strands of silk just hanging in the air – not attached between two shrubs or trees.
The only explanation is that spiderlings, tiny baby spiders, had been “ballooning” just before we got there. To balloon, a spiderling, or sometimes an adult, climbs up a branch or a tall herbaceous plant, and then releases silk from its spinnerets. As the silk thread gets longer and longer, the wind catches the silk and carries the little spider away, most of the time only a few feet, but sometimes for miles, much like a child being carried away by a kite. It’s how spiders disperse themselves to new territories. It’s ingenious, but certainly annoying when you walk into the threads.
Celestial Events
Autumn equinox occurs on 9/23 at 1:50 a.m. Since the Earth is tilted on its axis by 23.5 degrees and doesn’t orbit perfectly upright, the Earth’s Northern and Southern Hemispheres trade places gradually throughout the year. We have equinoxes twice a year when our axis is inclined neither away from nor toward the sun.
On this day, the sun rises due east and sets due west for all of us, making it a good day for finding due east and due west from your yard. Just go outside around sunset or sunrise and notice the location of the sun on the horizon with respect to familiar landmarks.
The new moon occurs on 9/28. On 10/3, look after dusk for Jupiter about 2 degrees below the waxing crescent moon.
Thought for the Week
Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things. – Thomas Merton
