A Northwoods Almanac for 11/29 – 12/12/2019 by John Bates
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As we approach Christmas, let’s not forget how important it is that Christmas giving occurs within a home: “A home is not simply a building; it is the shelter around the intimacy of a life. Coming in from the outside world and its rasp of force and usage, you relax and allow yourself to be who you are. The inner walls of a home are threaded with the textures of one's soul, a subtle weave of presences. If you could see your home through the lens of the soul, you would be surprised at the beauty concealed in the memory your home holds. When you enter some homes, you sense how the memories have seeped to the surface, infusing the aura of the place and deepening the tone of its presence. Where love has lived, a house still holds the warmth. Even the poorest home feels like a nest if love and tenderness dwell there.”
John O’Donohue, “Where Love Has Lived,” excerpted from Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
Sightings – Blue Jays, Snowy Owl, Red Fox
For those of us who watch our bird feeders, perhaps most notable this winter is the lack of sightings – it’s very slow for birds so far! Blue jays are the dominant bird in Manitowish, and if it wasn’t for them, we’d hardly have to fill our feeders at all. Jays both eat a lot and store a lot of seeds for the winter, as evidenced by how they fill their crops and then fly off somewhere to cache the seeds. In Manitowish, our record for how many seeds one blue jay will “swallow” before flying away is 52. But Bruce Bacon in Mercer has us beat – he counted 81 seeds taken by one jay before it flew away to its cache.
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| blue jay photo by Bev Engstrom |
Blue jays love nuts of many kinds, but in our area that means mostly acorns, though jays appear to like red oak acorns much less due to their high concentration of tannins than pin oak acorns. In one study over 3 days, jays made 1270 and 1959 visits to two pin oak trees and removed 3175 and 4897 acorns, respectively.
In another study in Virginia, a community of 50 blue jays moved and cached about 150,000 acorns harvested from 11 pin oak trees during one season. Each bird cached a total of 3,000 acorns by selecting and hiding an average of 107 acorns per day. At the same location, nearly all acorns that were not harvested were either consumed by the blue jays or destroyed by weevils.
So, where do the jays go? And how do they cache the seeds? Well, they cache their seeds in a wide range of habitats, but prefer to bury them in relatively open areas like plowed or mowed field, in areas that have had controlled-burns, along forest edges, or in young forests.
Upon arrival at a cache site, an individual blue jay places all acorns in a pile, then buries them singly within a radius of a few yards. Typically, each nut is placed in the ground by pushing it into soft soil or moss, tucking it under leaf litter, or placing it on top of hard soil and covering it with debris like leaf litter or pebbles.
Their cache sites may be less than 150 yards away or up to 2 ½ miles from their original source. In a study of tagged jays, individuals chose a different portion of the study area each time they were seen returning with nuts to cache, with consecutive sites sometimes over 100 yards apart. Several thousand separate spots may ultimately be utilized, and how in the world they find them is hard to fathom.
Of course, they don’t find them all, and their seed dispersal has often been implicated in the rapid movement of trees northward following the last glaciation of North America. Blue jays typically bury seeds so that the seed is protected from drying and can germinate and become rooted. Thus, when blue jays make choices about which tree nuts are harvested, and which and how many nuts are gathered, they’re making choices in determining what our future forest structures will look like.
Regarding sightings of a rarer note, Mark and Kim Dumask sent me a photo of a snowy owl perched on a pole along Cty. M in Boulder Junction on 11/20. Bob Shroeder had called me the day earlier to say he had seen it on a telephone pole along Cty. M. I heard then on 11/21 that the owl was still present along Cty. M. Snowies don’t typically stay in our area for long given that our woodlands don’t look one bit like the tundra habitat they occupy during nesting season and need to hunt in during the winter. So, I bet this snowy will be moving on, but folks in that area should keep their eyes open for it.
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| snowy owl photo by Kim Dumask |
Fritz Behr sent me several photos of a red fox photographed from trail cameras he has set up on his Presque Isle driveway. He noted that he’s had the cameras set up for eight years and he’s “caught images of most animals that are in the area. Most of them are at night, and I never would have known they stopped by for a visit if not for the cameras. We must have a fox with a den nearby because it shows up on a regular basis. A video of it stalking a raccoon always puts a smile on my face.”
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| red fox photo by Fritz Behr |
Ice-On or Ice-Off or Just Slush?
After quite a cold start to November that began the ice-up of many of our smaller lakes, the weather moderated, and now (11/25) most large lakes are still ice-free, while many of those smaller lakes that iced-over are slush monsters. Still, I’ve also heard of some lakes with 5 inches of good ice. So, it’s a potpourri out there – be safe.
High Water Consequences
High water levels throughout many areas of Wisconsin have created problems for waterfowl. Tom Erdman, a long-time bird bander in the Green Bay area, noted that at the Oconto harbor, “Tundra Swans didn't stop here this fall!! We normally have several hundred until freeze up . . . There is almost no waterfowl to be found. Typical rafts of divers are not present. The high water levels and repeated storm surges has apparently washed out most of the submergent and emergent aquatic vegetation along with mussels along west shore of the bay [Green Bay] used for forage.”
Christmas Presents
Some gift ideas for folks with a love of nature: Any book from the “North Woods Naturalist Series” published by Kollath-Stensass Publishing in Duluth. Examples include Dragonflies of the North Woods, Lichens of the North Woods, Insects of the North Woods, et al. For fiction, consider giving The Overstory: A Novel by Richard Powers and Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. For equipment, give a quality pair of waterproof binoculars with a lifetime guarantee – see Vortex binoculars among other manufacturers. If you want to get carried away, give a spotting scope, which is fabulous for viewing birds out on your lake or for smaller birds in your yard. For ID’ing birds, I’m still sold on the Sibley guides. Give a subscription to Orion magazine and/or Northern Woodlands magazine.
And if possible, buy locally, even if it costs a few bucks more than from Amazon or some other massive retailer. That money stays in our communities. Or donate money locally in another person’s name to one of the many excellent environmental organizations in our area.
Dry Firewood!
Mary and I are burning great firewood so far this winter because all of it has dried for at least a year. The difference between burning green (wet) wood and dry wood is big – there’s a lot of water stored in trees! How much? According to an article in Northern Woodlands magazine, “one cord of red oak weighs 4,888 pounds when it’s green and 3,528 pounds when it’s dry. Divide the difference by 8.3 pounds – the weight of a gallon of water – and we learn that 164 gallons disappears, per cord, in the evaporation process.”
The effectiveness of drying your wood depends on three things: temperature, turbulence, and time. Stacking wood in the full sun in a row rather than in a heap with good air flow all around it makes a world of difference. A tarp on top to keep the rain off helps, but doesn’t help when draped down the sides. If you’re building a woodshed, keep gaps between each plank in the side walls so air can flow through.
And if you can, give your wood a full year to season. Most years we burn wood that has been cut and stacked that same summer, and while that’s worked pretty good for us, we’re definitely noticing a higher quality fire this winter.
Celestial Events
Tonight, 11/29, look after dusk for Saturn just one degree above the waxing crescent moon. And as of tonight, we’re down to 9 hours of daylight. We’re heading quickly for winter solstice where we will end this march toward darkness at 8 hours and 39 minutes of daylight and the sun will start climbing higher again in the sky.
The year’s earliest sunsets occur for 10 days straight from 12/5-12/15, all commencing at 4:14 in the afternoon. Just for the record, that’s 3 hours and 39 minutes earlier than our latest sunsets around the summer solstice in June.
On 12/10, look low in the southwest after dusk for Venus about 2 degrees below Saturn.
The full moon occurs on 12/11. Called the “Popping Trees Moon” or the “Long Night Moon,” it will be the year’s highest in the sky moon at 65 degrees.
It’s dark when most of us get up in the morning, so why not take the time to look low in the southeast for Mars – it’s our only planet visible before dawn in December.
Thought for the Week
There are two healings: nature’s
and ours and nature’s. Nature’s
will come in spite of us, after us,
over the graves of its waters, as it comes
to the broken field. The healing
that is ours and nature’s will come
if we are willing, if we are patient,
if we know the way, if we will do the work.
- Wendell Berry, from This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems
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
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