A Northwoods Almanac for 12/25/20

A Northwoods Almanac for 12/25/20 - 1/7/21  

 

Christmas Bird Count - Manitowish Waters Area

            The Manitowish Waters Christmas Bird Count took place on 12/18, a frosty and rather windy morning, but one with very little snow on the ground which made it easy to walk into some sites. This was the 28^th annual count that we have conducted for this area, and it was a real mixed bag. For those of us who drove one of the four quadrants within the 15-mile-wide count circle, it was one of the quietest counts ever. Mary and I drive the southwestern quad, an area mostly around Powell Marsh and just into Lac du Flambeau, and in over four hours of searching, we were able to only find nine species of birds, two of which had little business still being here (a wood duck and a black duck). And of the species we found, we had very low numbers - it was truly QUIET! 

            Conversely, at our home feeders in Manitowish where we’ve fed birds now for 36 years running, we had 17 species of birds and in reasonably good numbers. We had 20 evening grosbeaks, a species we haven’t seen in any good numbers for over two decades, and six pine grosbeaks, a species that we often get but which have been absent the last two years. Common redpolls showed up last week, and we had at least 20 of those as well.

male evening grosbeak, photo by Bob Kovar

            What it tells us, which isn’t news but another confirmation of what we’ve observed over all these years, is that the birds will be where the most abundant food is. That’s such an obvious statement, but you’d still think there would be abundant food in the many wilder habitats of the Northwoods. Such is not the case every year. We look for cones on conifers, and seeds on hardwoods, and this year is poor for nearly all species other than white spruce and eastern hemlock. We had trouble finding any white pines, balsam firs, or tamaracks with cones, and the birches had no seeds to speak of. The wild cupboards are generally rather bare, so the birds that are here seem to be focusing on feeders where the menu is reliable.

            We ended up with 30 species of birds on our Manitowish Waters Count, well above our average of 24, but only because we had oddities like the wood duck and black duck, plus a common merganser and a belted kingfisher. We also have a couple grackles and a red-winged blackbird that continue coming to our feeders despite the fact they, too, should have migrated by now (if you’re interested in seeing the complete count list, go to my blog at www.manitowishriver.blogspot.com). 

            It’s fun scouring the area for birds, but if we could somehow organize all the people to do the count who feed birds in their backyards, we’d really have some good numbers and a better picture of the birds spending the winter with us.

 

common redpoll, photo by Bev Engstrom

Bee Happy

As newbie beekeepers, we’re constantly learning things about our bees. To state the obvious, winter is a time of profound stress for honey bees, and the risk of starvation or freezing, and thus a total die-off of the hive, is very real. To survive, the bees swarm together to maintain a hive temperature in the center of the cluster at around 59°F regardless of the outside temperature. The honey bee workers, which are all females, huddle, heads pointed inward, around the queen and her brood to keep them warm. Worker bees on the outer layer insulate their sisters. It’s cold - around 40°F - on the outer edge of the cluster, and as temperatures fall, the cluster tightens, and the outer workers pull together.

It’s a true democracy in the hive. When the workers on the outer edge of the cluster get cold, they push to the center of the group, and the inner bees move out to take a turn shielding the group from the winter weather.

There have to be enough bees in the hive, too, to generate all that heat. To give you an idea of the number of bees necessary in a single hive to sustain the constant heat, one study found that a colony of 18,000 bees lost 35% of its population, while a colony of 4,500 lost fully 85% of the adults. So, generally speaking, the larger the population, the better, as long as they’re not overcrowded.

            It should be noted that early in the winter the worker bees force the useless drone bees, the males, from the hive, letting them starve. Work or don’t eat is the first commandment, and since the drones don’t work and they would eat too much of the precious winter honey stores, they are booted out.

The worker bees actively generate heat within the hive by feeding on honey for energy, and then shivering, vibrating their flight muscles but keeping their wings still, to raise their body temperatures. With thousands of bees constantly shivering, the temperature at the center of the cluster can warm up to as much as 93°F. 

All these thousands of bees have to have enough stored honey to support themselves throughout the six months of a northern Wisconsin winter. So, we’ve left around 70 pounds of honey in the hive, which, as we’ve been told, should be enough to tide them over. We also made a hardened block of sugar the width and length of the hive and two inches thick, and placed it on top of the hive frames for additional nutrition should the honey run out.

So, what do they do in there the whole winter besides clustering together and shivering to generate heat? We just read that within the darkness of the hive, the queen is somehow able to detect the winter solstice, and starting soon after, she will begin laying more and more eggs. She knows it’s time to start the process of getting the hive ready for spring even if it’s many months away, and she will continue to lay more eggs all the way through spring.

Humidity can be a major killer in the hive, too. So, we have to make sure moisture can escape. We do this via a hole we make in the hive, and we also place an absorbent board on top of the hive to take-up excess moisture.

We’ll see how it all turns out come later April when the warming sun and the first flowers will beckon the bees to emerge. We’ll be amazed if they’ve survived, but they know what they’re doing - all we’re now asked to do is to be patient. 

At the last meeting of the Royal Geographical Society of London, the EarthWatch Institute came to a startling conclusion. They declared that bees are the most important living being on the planet, and for good reason -70% of the world’s agriculture is dependent on pollination that happens exclusively by bees. 

 

Ice-up Data

            Woody Hagge has kept ice-up and ice-out data on Foster Lake in Hazelhurst for 45 years running (I wish it was 100 years of data, but then Woody would have to be a pretty old guy). Foster Lake iced-up this winter on 12/2. The average date in the previous 44 years was 11/27. So, although our October was quite cold and it appeared our lakes would ice-up early, our warm November temperatures held ice formation off for most of our area lakes until into December.

 

Snowy Owls Arriving in Wisconsin

One of the largest irruptions of snowy owls in recent history was the winter of 2017-2018, when 280 snowy owls were documented in the state. This year, however is very similar to totals from the past two years, but well below that of significant irruption years. As of 12/10, approximately 47 snowy owls have been reported, with most being seen in eastern WI. 

Snowies like to hang out in terrain similar to their northern tundra home, which translates in Wisconsin into open areas along bodies of water, in agricultural fields and even urban settings like airports. In those habitats, they will perch on anything they can find — telephone poles, fence posts, breakwaters, etc. 

Inland in Northern Wisconsin, our nearly contiguous forests rarely offer the open habitat snowies like. Thus, they fly over us for the better hunting grounds in central and southern Wisconsin. If we do see them in our area, it’s almost always at airports, in large open wetlands, or even in cemeteries. 

Unlike other owls, snowy owls are active during the day, and in particular around dawn or dusk. Note that they do feed on waterfowl, so some of the most common sightings take place along breakwaters on Lake Michigan, Chequamegon Bay, and the Bay of Green Bay.

 

Celestial Events

            It’s been a mild December, and as of this writing (12/20), the Manitowish River below our house has yet to ice-up, though I’m betting it will by Christmas Day. The full moon (the “Popping Trees” or “Long Night” Moon), occurs on 12/29. On New Year’s Day, we’ll be up to a whopping 8 hours and 44 minutes of daylight, five minutes more than we received on Winter Solstice, 12/21. That may not seem like much, but for all of Earth’s flora and fauna, nothing is so fundamental as the length of daylight - they’re all tuned in.

The Earth will be at perihelion, its closest passage near the sun, on 1/2, a mere 91.4 million miles away, or about 3.1 million miles closer than during aphelion on July 5.

The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in the early morning of 1/3, but the light of the nearly full moon will pretty much wash them out. They average 40 meteors per hour. The meteors will radiate from just below the Big Dipper, but they appear in all parts of the sky.

The sun will rise one minute earlier beginning on 1/5, the first time since June 10.

 

November Temperatures                                                                                                                 The combined global average temperature over the land and ocean surfaces for November 2020 was 1.75°F above the 20th century average of 55.2°F. This was the second warmest November in the 141-year global record, behind the record warm November set in 2015 which was +1.82°F. The 10 warmest Novembers have all occurred since 2004, and the top five warmest Novembers have all occurred since 2013. 

Australia had its hottest November, which featured multiple severe heat waves, while persistently above-average temperatures were measured in Siberia and the Arctic. Norway, Sweden and England also set national records for their hottest November.

 

Thought for the Week

“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.” - Walt Whitman

 

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 12/11-24, 2020

 A Northwoods Almanac for 12/11-24, 2020 

 

Crabapples - A Winter Treat for Birds

Bohemian waxwing photo by Bev Engstrom

A flock of seven pine grosbeaks have been feasting on crabapples in our yard since mid-November, and the male’s lovely song frequently greets us when we walk outside. We planted five crabapple trees several decades ago specifically to attract winter birds, and when ravenous migrating robins don’t eat all of the crabapples in October, we are often treated to both pine grosbeaks and bohemian waxwings enjoying the fruits.

Pine grosbeak male, photo by John Bates

Near the same time, we planted six apple trees as well, but they aren’t useful whatsoever in attracting wintering birds, because the apples all fall onto the ground by November. We are able to can many quarts of great applesauce, however, so that’s a trade-off we are happy to make. 

I thought for years that apples were native to the U.S., but crab apples are really the only apples native to North America. The apples we all enjoy today originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor Malus sieversii, is still found. 

As with so much of our U.S. diet, apples were brought over and cultivated as early as 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia, because that was what Europeans knew how to grow. Settlers came with seeds, cuttings and small plants from the best European stock and by the end of the 19^th century, a rather mind-boggling 14,000 apple varieties were being grown.  Many fell out of favor and are lost, so that today “only” around 2,500 varieties of apples are grown in the U.S.

 

Celestial Events - The Geminid Meteor Shower 

The Geminid meteor shower is considered one of the best of the year and is expected to peak on the night of Dec.13 into the early morning of the 14^th (Sunday evening until dawn Monday. During its peak, 120 Geminid meteors may be seen per hour under perfect conditions. These are bright, fast (79,000 mph) meteors, famous for producing colorful fireballs brighter than magnitude -4.

This year will be particularly good for watching the Geminids as it peaks on a moonless night, starting as early as 9 p.m, but peaking around 2 a.m.

The Geminids are named for the constellation Gemini, the point from which the meteors seem to radiate, but they can appear all across the sky. For best results, look slightly away from Gemini so that you can see meteors with longer "tails" as they streak by.

The meteors occur when Earth passes through a massive trail of dusty debris shed by a rocky object named 3200 Phaethon. Interestingly, Phaethon’s nature is debated - it may be a asteroid or an extinct comet.

 

More Celestial Events - Jupiter and Saturn Conjunction

December 21 not only marks the winter solstice, but that same evening Jupiter and Saturn, the two largest planets in our solar system, will come so close to each other that they will appear to overlap, creating a kind of “double planet” that has not been visible since March, 1226.

This once-in-a-lifetime sight is the product of an astronomical event known as a “conjunction,” where two objects line up with each other in the sky. And while the two planets will be 0.1 degrees apart, less than a third of the moon’s width, they will nonetheless be separated by about 450 million miles in space.

If you think about planetary orbits like a racing track with the sun in the middle, Jupiter is running on an inside lane while Saturn is walking at a slower pace on an outside lane, and during the conjunction, Jupiter will be lapping Saturn.

Jupiter takes about 12 Earth years to circle the sun compared to Saturn’s 30 years, and while the two actually align in their paths roughly every two decades, given that each track has a slightly different tilt, very close conjunctions like this one are rare. 

So, after dusk, look for two dots low in the southwestern sky that, unlike stars, do not twinkle.

 

And More Celestial Events

Look before dawn on 12/12 for Venus just below the waning crescent moon. 

The waxing crescent moon passes close by Jupiter and Saturn on the evenings of 12/16 and 17 - look after dusk low in the southwest.

On 12/23, the first quarter moon will appear to swing by Mars - look after dusk in the southeast.

And perhaps most important of all celestial events, the winter solstice occurs on 12/21, providing us with the year’s shortest days (8 hours and 39 minutes) and longest nights. It also marks the slow return northward of the sun. On 12/23, our days begin to grow longer for the first time since 6/20, and by 12/30, our days will be growing longer by a minute per day.

 

Three Success Stories: Peregrine Falcons, Piping Plovers, Trumpeter Swans

The WDNR, along with many partners, has worked hard over the years to re-establish populations of a number of endangered birds. Here are three success stories culled from the most recent “Badger Birder,” a publication of the Wisconsin Society of Ornithology.

 Peregrine Falcons: “This year there was a known total of 116 young produced at 38 successful nest sites. Thirteen nests were located along the Lake Michigan shoreline, 5 along the Fox River system, 2 along the Wisconsin River system, 3 on the shores of Lake Superior,12 along the Mississippi River (9 on cliffs), 1 on the Door Peninsula and 2 inland at Madison and Jefferson. 

“Overall total production was up 5% over last year (110 young in 2019 vs. 116 young in 2020). Average production per successful nest was also up this year from 2.97 per successful nest in 2019 to 3.05 in 2020. These numbers once again reflect known/verified production, but the actual numbers may be higher . . . There were also at least three nests that were known to have failed this year due to various reasons.” 

Beginning in the late 1940s, organochlorine pesticide poisoning largely from DDT decimated the eastern population of peregrines. The eyries along the Wisconsin River were abandoned by 1957, those along Niagara Escarpment in Door County by 1958, and the 14 eyries along the Mississippi River by 1964. The Peregrine Falcon was listed as a federally endangered species in 1970 and a Wisconsin endangered species in 1975. Wisconsin banned the use of DDT in 1971, followed by the federal government ban in 1972, and consequently, reproductive rates began to improve. A recovery program was instituted to reestablish peregrines by releasing offspring from parents, with the first release in 1987 in Wisconsin of 14 captive-produced young peregrines in Milwaukee followed by releases in Madison, La Crosse, Racine, and Pleasant Prairie.

Peregrine falcon range map

Piping Plovers: “Piping plovers experienced mixed nesting success in 2020. Nine breeding pairs occurred in the state, five at the Cat Island restoration chain in lower Green Bay and four in the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior. Taken together, nine Piping Plover pairs fledged 16 chicks (1.8 young per pair) in Wisconsin —a fairly productive year despite the different lake outcomes.” 

Piping plovers used to nest on the shores of all of the Great Lakes, but by 1948, only one pair of piping plovers was known to still nest in Wisconsin. Piping plovers require large, sparsely vegetated, isolated, cobble beach and dunes to nest. In Wisconsin, human disturbance compromised many of the beaches historically used by nesting Piping Plovers, including Sheboygan, Kenosha, Oconto, and Sturgeon bays along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Piping Plovers have not successfully nested at these historic locations since the 1940s, and today nest only at Long Island in Chequamegon Bay and on Outer Island in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Once nesting habitat was restored near Green Bay on Cat Island, the piping plovers also re-appeared on their own in 2016 after a 75-year absence. 

            Since a1991 census, the Great Lakes population of piping plovers has doubled in size and now includes 110 individuals, but the Great Lakes population remains critically endangered. In Wisconsin, only 12 nests have successfully fledged young since 1982. The Great Lakes recovery goal is 300 individuals maintained for 5 years, so there’s a long way yet to go.

Piping plover photo by Joe Bodensteiner at Whitefish Point, MI

Trumpeter Swans: Wisconsin’s population was estimated at 5,000 Trumpeter Swans in 2015 and is now upwards of 6,000 birds, excluding cygnets (young-of-the-year), a far cry from the late 1980s, when DNRs Natural Heritage Conservation program began its recovery efforts by taking eggs from Alaskan nest sites, incubating the eggs in Milwaukee, and then releasing the chicks up north at one week of age. 

Trumpeter swans are a phenomenal success story, at zero in the Midwest for over a century, and now with the most recent population estimates at over 30,000 adults across Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, Ohio and Ontario.

Given that “our” trumpeters were brought here from an Alaskan population, their DNA was wired to migrate there and not from Wisconsin lakes. Thus, they scatter hither and yon in the winter, some remaining on their breeding areas, but others sometimes dispersing long distances. Thus, this summer WDNR, along with partners in other western Great Lakes states and the Canadian province of Ontario, corralled trumpeters and outfitted dozens of them with GPS transmitters that record the birds’ locations every 15 minutes. The ensuing data should show where they stop to rest during their migration, the duration of their daily flights, and where they spend the winter. 

Trumpeter swans photo by John Bates

 

Audubon’s 121st Christmas Bird Count 

Audubon’s Annual Christmas Bird Count, the longest-running citizen science project in our nation, has provided bird researchers with vast amounts of data that has been used to analyze population trends and changing distribution information. Some 110 sites in Wisconsin are now included in the Christmas Bird Count, including the Three Lakes count on 12/15, the Minocqua count on 12/17, the Manitowish Waters count on 12/18, the Fifield count on 12/19, the Rhinelander count on 12/19, and the Phelps count on 12/20. 

Anyone can contribute as an individual, as a part of a field party, or by counting the birds at your feeders providing you live within one of the count circles. The important thing is to find out where CBC count circles are located near you, and then get in contact with the compiler for that area to let them know of your interest in participating. 

The Audubon CBC website can be found at: https://www.audubon.org/conservation/join-christmas-bird-count.  

 

Thought For The Week

“Love is a powerful tool, and maybe, just maybe, before the last little town is corrupted and the last of the unroaded and undeveloped wildness is given over to dreams of profit, maybe it will be love, finally, love for the land for its own sake and for what it holds of beauty and joy and spiritual redemption, that will make [wildness] not a battlefield, but a revelation.” - T.H. Watkins

 

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 11/13/20

 A Northwoods Almanac for 11/13 - 26, 2020  

 

Sightings - Spotted Towhee, Pine and Evening Grosbeaks, Snow Buntings 

11/3: At our feeders in Manitowish, we’ve had continuous visits since early November from evening grosbeaks as well as a few pine grosbeaks, with evening grosbeaks concentrating on our sunflower seeds and the pine grosbeaks taking seeds and feeding on our crabapples. Numerous people have observed evening grosbeaks in the last week, so be on the lookout at your feeders. Ryan Brady, avian conservation biologist for the WDNR in Ashland, writes that “east of Wisconsin they're seeing a full-blown irruption [of evening grosbeaks], with birds down into North Carolina and Tennessee already and big numbers in the northeast U.S. Here in the western Great Lakes, birds are moving, yielding sightings already south to Iowa, Illinois, and southern WI, but numbers are substantially lower, especially here in the north.”

11/4: Gale and Dave Fisher observed a single bat catching insects, which is quite unusual in November! Along those same lines, Mary, Callie and I saw a garter snake on 11/8, which is equally unusual. Bats should have migrated or hibernated by now, and snakes should be also hibernating. I suspect our very warm weather in early November brought a few hardy souls of various species out to explore, but that was an anomaly. By the time you read this, we will likely be back to full-blown snow-cover, and all hibernators should be tucked in where they belong for the winter.

11/7: Bob Kovar photographed a spotted towhee underneath one of his feeders in Manitowish Waters on 11/7. This is a rare sighting in the Northwoods! The only other spotted towhee ever confirmed north of Hwy. 29 was in 2007. Mary and I have seen these birds in scrubby habitats in Arizona where they nest, but they are a true western bird and are well out of their range here in northern Wisconsin.

photo by Bob Kovar

Spotted towhee range map 

11/7: Snow buntings are currently migrating through and are often being seen along roadsides. The males are entirely black and white, while the females are more brownish with much less contrasting black and white plumage. No other songbird is so extensively white, so that’s the feature to key in on.

 

Wilderness Walking

            Our remarkably warm early November weather made for excellent hiking conditions, and Mary, Callie and I tried to take full advantage of the heat. Our two most interesting hikes took place in designated federal wilderness areas, the first in the 4,446-acre Porcupine Lake Wilderness Area in Bayfield County, and the second in the 18,327-acre Sylvania Wilderness Area in the Upper Peninsula. 

Both areas are part of the National Wilderness Preservation System, a network of over 109 million acres of public land comprised of more than 760 wilderness areas. These areas were designated through the efforts of people like Howard Zahniser who wrote the first draft of the Wilderness Act in 1956. Nine years, 65 rewrites, and 18 public hearings later in August 1964, and after the Senate had passed it for the second time, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Wilderness Act of 1964 with only one dissenting vote. It was signed shortly thereafter by President Lyndon Johnson.

In Wisconsin, five wilderness areas have been designated, comprising a total acreage within the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest of 42,415 acres, or about 3% of the entire 1.5 million-acre forest (the Chequamegon side of the National Forest comprises in total about 858,400 acres in Ashland, Bayfield, Sawyer, Price, Taylor and Vilas counties, while the Nicolet side includes nearly 661,400 acres in Florence, Forest, Langlade, Oconto, Oneida and Vilas counties). 

Designated in 1984, the Porcupine Lake Wilderness was mostly cut over beginning in the 1880s, with cutting continuing sporadically up to 1977. Windstorms have also left their mark with fallen trees common throughout the wilderness. The North Country National Scenic Trail runs the length of the area with posts marking the trail location at some intersections, but otherwise the trail is unmarked. 

We hiked a four-mile long section of the NCT that touches the north end of 75-acre Porcupine Lake, a long, sinuous, spring-fed lake. Nothing remarkable happened on our hike, but we hiked in a completely silent place where nature again is primary and humans secondary, and that alone meets my definition of “remarkable”. 

Two days later, we hiked a 9.8 mile-long trail in Sylvania, which is within the one-million-acre Ottawa National Forest. Here you can also paddle or simply rest next to 34 named wild lakes. And here, for the most part, remains an old-growth hemlock-hardwood forest, the second largest in the Upper Midwest. We didn’t see another person throughout our five hours on the trail, nor again did we have anything “remarkable” happen, that is if you don’t consider solitude, pristine lakes, and old-growth hemlocks, yellow birches, sugar maples, and white pines  particularly remarkable. We, of course, do, and that’s why of all the places we could have chosen to go to that last day of foreseeable warm weather, we chose to go there. With sore feet, and nearing sunset, we drove home in quiet gratitude. 

on the trail in Sylvania

These places, these wildernesses, are now sanctuaries for species adapted to the North Country where they can live out their full lives without the incursions of modern development and resource-driven pressures. As the federal website for wilderness states, “They are places where law mandates above all else that wildness be retained for our current generation, and those who will follow.”   

 

Loon Decline: Article by Walter Piper

            Since 1993, Walter Piper has coordinated research on common loons on over 100 breeding-lake territories in Oneida County. I write about his work frequently in my columns, but now the results from his investigation of loon survival during the chick and early floater stages has been published by the American Ornithological Society. His study sample is large - according to estimates by LoonWatch, the loons he’s studied comprised 9.8%, 7.1%, and 8.6% of the statewide loon population in 2005, 2010, and 2015 respectively.

            His work reveals two major results. One, “compared to the late 1990s, 31% more chicks now perish before they reach five weeks, and 82% more chicks die after reaching five weeks of age.”

            Two, and more shocking by his own words, was his discovery that “the population of young adult floaters had plummeted to less than half of its size in the 1990s.” Floaters are young adults loons, future breeders, that either replace or evict older loons from their territories. Piper’s population model “projects a decrease of 6% annually in the northern Wisconsin loon population” and a “loss of roughly one-third of all loon breeding territories in northern Wisconsin by 2031.” 

            This is a startling projection and thus worthy of your time to read more in-depth. For the summary, see https://americanornithology.org/the-cryptic-decline-of-an-iconic-northern-species/. To read the entire paper, see https://academic.oup.com/condor/advance-article/doi/10.1093/condor/duaa044/5897435.

            A study in Ontario appears to be finding much the same results. See https://tla-temagami.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Drivers-of-Decline-in-Common-Loon-Productivity-in-Ontario-Science-of-the-Total-Environment-2020.pdf

 

High Waters

The paddling season has come to a close, and the overriding takeaway for me this year has been the crazy high water on so many lakes. We’ve had five years now of historically wet weather, and the impact on shoreline vegetation has been dramatic. On lake after lake, I saw what were shoreline trees like white pines, white cedars, and white birches in three feet or more of water. Many were dying or had died from the stress of their roots being underwater for several consecutive years or from the stress weakening the trees enough that insects and diseases were able to get the upper hand. Shoreline shrubs like leatherleaf, sweet gale, and tag alder were all inundated, and emergent aquatic plants like pickerelweed and bullrushes appeared to me to be far less abundant. High water levels also increased the amount of nutrient runoff, and the result was reduced water clarity.

Limnologists tell me that in our area we’re typically on a 13-year cycle of high water to low water. Our current higher water period began in 2013, so if we’re on that cycle, we’re still in for more years of high water. And with the one of the impacts of climate change being more intense rain events, deluges where runoff into our lakes happens more rapidly than during gentle rains, then we’re in for even more water well into our future. 

 

Celestial Events

            New moon occurs on 11/14. The peak Leonid meteor shower takes place before dawn on 11/17 - look for an average of 15 meteors per hour. On 11/19, look after dusk for Jupiter two degrees above the waxing crescent moon, and Saturn three degrees above the moon. As of 11/26, the average high temperature in Minocqua now drops to 32° for the first time since March 5. Minocqua averages 100 days, or about 27% of the year, with high temperatures at or below 32°.

 

Thought for the Week

“Things mysteriously change, leaving me wondering with no clues.” - Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center, in a blog posting on 10/19/20.

 

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 11/27/20

A Northwoods Almanac for 11/27 - 12/10 /20  

 

Sightings: Townsend’s Solitaire!

On 11/16, we had a first in our yard in Manitowish - a Townsend’s solitaire appeared at one of our crabapple trees and remained for two days. This was a first because Townend’s solitaires are a western North American bird closely associated with high mountain country, and thus a rarity in Wisconsin. 

I noticed it in the morning while watching pine grosbeaks feeding on the fruits of a different crabapple tree, and I wasn’t sure what it was. Mary and I have seen a Townsend’s solitaire only once, and that was several years ago in Arizona. The bird is all gray with a very noticeable white eye-ring, set off only by subtle, partially concealed buffy markings on the wings. On a gray morning in November’s somber gray and brown colors, it hardly stood out.

photo by Bob Kovar 

The bird wasn’t known to western scientists until it was first collected by John Kirk Townsend along the lower Willamette River, Oregon, in 1835. Townsend shot only a single individual, although this specimen proved sufficient for John James Audubon to honor Townsend in naming and describing the species in 1838. 

Townsend's solitaires nest in the mountains on the ground beneath rocks, logs, or other sheltering overhangs, butthey spend their winter at lower elevations in juniper woodlands or other habitats that provide abundant fruit. 

They characteristically perch on exposed treetops, which allows the holder of the feeding territory to announce his ownership and to scan for intruders, which he will then engage in a violent fight to defend his territory. For us, this habit of perching on outer branches made for perfect viewing of the solitaire - it wasn’t shy about sitting on open branches and allowing us to get good photographs.

Their diet out west in winter is well documented as almost entirely juniper berries. But during fall migration and for birds wintering in habitats other than juniper woodlands, their diet includes fruits like American mountain-ash, crabapple, winterberry holly, buckthorn, currant, serviceberry, hawthorn, chokecherry, bearberry, rose hips, sumac, poison ivy, honeysuckle, and elderberry, all of which are fruiting species we have in northern Wisconsin.

photo by Bob Kovar

Why the bird visited us is a mystery, and where it has now gone is also unknown. We’re simply honored it somehow found a crabapple tree in tiny Manitowish, well over a thousand miles from its normal wintering range on the other side of the Rocky Mountains.

 

John Kirk Townsend - American Naturalist 

The sighting of the Townsend’s solitaire inevitably led us to question why this species was named after Townsend. A Google search gave the answer. In 1833, at the age of 24, John Kirk Townsend was invited by the botanist Thomas Nuttall to join him on Nathanial Wyeth’s second expedition across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Along the way, Townsend collected a number of animals new to science including birds such as the mountain plover, Vaux’s swift, chestnut-collared longspur, black-throated grey warble, Townsend’s warbler, and the sage thrasher, as well as a number of heretofore unknown mammals (unknown, that is, to Euro-American scientists). Townsend, the “bird chief” on the expedition, also collected small rodents as excitedly as he did birds. One of the many species named after him is Townsend’s big-eared bat, a species that he found protected the men of the Hudson’s Bay Company by eating the dermestes beetles, also known as “hide” or “skin” beetles, which abounded in fur posts and often destroyed the fur pelts. 

            Townsend “collected” a few stories as well along the way. On one of his solo collecting excursions, he was chased across the Idaho landscape by an enraged grizzly bear. 

On the Willamette River in Oregon, he spotted a California condor on the opposite shore, shot at it in order to collect it, but only wounded it. So, he stripped down naked, swam across the river and chased after it trying to club it into submission, apparently all to the enjoyment of onlooking Native American villagers.

After collecting a number of reptile specimens and placing them in jars of alcohol, he returned to the camp to find one of his companions had drank all of the alcohol from the jars, ruining months’ worth of work. 

Yet another time, Townsend returned to his camp to find fellow naturalist Thomas Nuttall had eaten an owl Townsend had intended to preserve as a scientific specimen.

Apparently alcohol and food were in short supply.

On his return to Philadelphia four years later in 1837, he sold 93 birds he’d collected to John James Audubon who described them in his book Birds of America. Townsend ultimately supplied 74 of the 508 species Audubon discussed. 

In 1839, Townsend published his own book, The Narrative of a Journey across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River and a Visit to the Sandwich Islands. 

A little over a decade later, at age 41, Townsend died of arsenic poisoning. He had developed a formula used in taxidermy preparations, and arsenic was his “secret” ingredient. Today his name is best preserved in a few of the species he first described to the scientific world.

 

White-breasted Nuthatches

Mary recently noticed that white-breasted nuthatches coming to our feeders were more active at dusk than during the day. It turns out that in cold months, white-breasted nuthatches are especially gluttonous, caching seeds under bark and in other hiding places for later retrieval, a process called scatterhoarding. The pairs disperse their stores throughout their territory, remarkably only using each storage site once. The food is stored in bark crevices on the furrowed trunks of large trees and on the underside of branches, and is often covered with either a piece of bark or rotten wood, lichens, snow, or moss. 

The nuthatches don’t necessarily go a long ways to cache their food. In one study, males and females both cached their food at a relatively similar distance, an average of 13 meters from a feeder and nearly six meters above the ground.

The literature says that the white-breasted nuthatch’s caching is most intensive early in the day and decreases later. So, if Mary’s observation is correct that the white-breasted nuthatches are more active near dusk, either the nuthatches haven’t read the literature or they’re eating the seeds immediately at the feeders to help them get through our lengthening nights.

 

Black Knot Fungus

November’s bare branches readily expose any irregularities on a tree. We have numerous black and choke cherries that now are showing signs of black knot (Apiosporina morbosa), a common but only occasionally fatal fungal parasite of cherry and plum trees. The fungus has a two-year life cycle in which it encircles the branch, cutting off transmission of nutrients, and ultimately killing the branch. As the fungus grows, it releases chemicals that make the tree grow extra large plant cells that result in swollen, woody galls. The galls are a velvety green the first year but after two years of infection the galls turn black and hard. The fungus releases its spores in the spring of its second year, starting the process all over again on other parts of the tree. 

 

Black Bear Hibernation

Black bears should all be in hibernation by late November. The bears spent much of the early autumn eating excessively to fatten for hibernation, a process called hyperphagia, consuming 15,000 to 20,000 kcal per day. They also were drinking several gallons of water daily to process their large food intake and rid their bodies of nitrogen wastes. 

As the fall transition period progressed, black bears became increasingly lethargic, resting 22 or more hours per day. Their heart rates fell from 80-100 beats per minute to 50-60 per minute, and sleeping heart rates fell from 66-80 per minute to less than 22 per minute.

            Once into hibernation, studies of bears (from bear biologist Lynn Rogers) show that they live in a continuous dormant state but still use up to 4,000 kcal per day, mainly body fat. They don’t eat, drink, urinate, or defecate (warning: do not try this in your own home), and reduce their oxygen consumption and metabolic rate to a little as 25% of summer rates. Their breathing rate slows to once per 15-45 seconds, and their heart rate drops periodically to 8-21 beats per minute.

 

Sightings

            Ice-up has occurred on many smaller lakes, including Echo Lake in Mercer on 11/18 as reported by Carne Andrews.  

            On 11/10, Kay and John Suffron reported seeing a flock of 30 or more evening grosbeaks at their feeders on Annabelle Lake in Presque Isle. She noted that this is the first time they’ve seen evening grosbeaks in the eight years they’ve lived there.

On 11/12, Rod Sharka reported a pair of cardinals appeared at his feeders on Palmer Lake near Land O’ Lakes. Now if they will only stay and raise some chicks next spring!

On 11/13, Linda Johnson in Woodruff spotted a gray catbird at her feeders. We had one visit our feeders, too, on 11/17. Both dates are quite late for a catbird, though given that they are fruit eaters, they do have the ability to stay later than many other birds.

In Manitowish, we continue to have a small flock of pine grosbeaks (6 individuals) and evening grosbeaks (up to 15) at our feeders, with the pine grosbeaks also focusing on our remaining crabapples. We haven’t seen this number of evening grosbeaks for decades, so we are thrilled to have them.

female pine grosbeak photo by Bob Kovar

 

Celestial Events

            As of 11/28, we’re down to nine hours of daylight. The full moon (the “Ice is Forming Moon”) rises at 100% illumination on both 11/29 and 11/30. A penumbral lunar eclipse occurs at 3:43 a.m. on 11/30, but I wouldn’t bother to get up to see it. A subtle dusky shading will occur on much of the moon for 30 minutes on either side of the maximum eclipse, but that’s it.

            For planet-watching in December, look after dusk in the southeast for Mars, and in the southwest for Jupiter and Saturn. Before sunrise, look for Venus brilliant and very low in the southeast.

 

Thanksgiving

            I’m thankful for a million things on Thanksgiving, but near the top of the list is the view out my window onto the wetlands and pines surrounding the Manitowish River. Barbara Kingsolver relates this feeling perfectly: “It’s a grand distraction, this window of mine . . . This window is the world opening on to me. I find I don’t look out so much as itpours in.

            “What I mean to say is, I have come to depend on these places where I live and work. I’ve grown accustomed to looking up from the page and letting my eyes relax on a landscape upon which no human artifact intrudes . . . I consider myself lucky beyond words to be able to go to work every morning with something like a wilderness at my elbow.”

 

Thought for the Week

“The best way to know God is to love many things.” - Vincent Van Gogh

 

  

 A Northwoods Almanac for 10/30 - 11/12/20   by John Bates

 

Winter Finch Forecast

Each year, the online post “Winter Finch Forecast” offers detailed forecasts for eight far northern-nesting “irruptive” finch species: pine grosbeaks, purple finches, red crossbills, white-winged crossbills, common redpolls, hoary redpolls, pine siskins, and evening grosbeaks, as well as three irruptive non-finch passerines: blue jays, red-breasted nuthatches, and bohemian waxwings.

These winter finches irrupt depending on the scarcity of cone and berry crops in the boreal forest in Canada. The sudden appearances of these birds were a mystery for most birders until Ron Pittaway, a researcher in Ontario, came along and sent a survey in the late summer to his contacts in the field - an average of 45 volunteers per forecast - asking them to rate in their area the seed crops of trees like pines, spruces, hemlocks, and mountain ashes as poor, fair, good, excellent, or bumper. From these reports, Pittaway determined the likelihood of the winter finches remaining on their breeding grounds or moving south to find more ample food resources. Thus the Winter Finch Forecast is as much an art as a science, but it has been remarkably accurate since its inception in 1999. 

For this year's Winter Finch Forecast, Tyler Hoar has taken over the reins, and he notes in general that cone crops “average poor to fair from Lake Superior eastward with eastern white pine being the exception.” He then breaks this down into specific trees and what their lack of seeds might mean for various bird species. So, for pine grosbeaks he reports that there’s a good but erratic crop of mountain ash berries across the boreal forest, so we may see small movements of pine grosbeaks moving south into the U.S..

As for other species, he says purple finches are already moving out of Canada and into the U.S., and he predicts most will migrate south out of Canada.

Common and hoary redpolls should have a moderate to good flight south out of the boreal forest due to a poor to fair crop of white and yellow birch seeds.

Pine siskins apparently are doing great in western Canada due to excellent spruce crops, but in the eastern boreal forest spruce crops aren’t so prolific, so he predicts a small number moving southward. (This prediction has already been eclipsed by large numbers of pine siskins coming south.)

            As for evening grosbeaks, they had an excellent breeding season in eastern Canada due to an outbreak of spruce budworm, a favorite insect food, so as the insects decline in number, we may see some of the best flights of evening grosbeaks in decades.  

            And for bohemian waxwings, one of the most beautiful of all songbirds, the prediction is that most will stay north because the mountain ash crop has been so good. He notes that they often come south to forage on buckthorn, which is not good news for the folks continually working to eradicate the invasive buckthorn. 

 

Pine Siskin Invasion

Birds do exercise free will, however, and don’t always listen to things like the finch forecast. So, if you've never seen a pine siskin, this should be your year, because in the past month, the birds have inundated backyard feeders across the country. It's apparently one of the biggest irruption years in recorded history for pine siskins.

They’re certainly not the flashiest of birds. Brown and heavily striped with a flash of bright yellow on their wings and tails, they’re rather demure and modest. I suspect if you feed birds, you’ll be seeing droves of these.

 

Sightings - Bell-ringing Woodpeckers, Robins, Fox Sparrows, Carolina Wren, Gray Jays

Sarah Krembs sent me a note regarding a downy woodpecker’s polite interest in perhaps having lunch with them: “Mum and I both heard it so I know I'm not crazy. We were sitting in the living room when the doorbell rang . . . Then there were a few knock, knock, knocks in rapid succession. I didn't see him, but it had to be the little downy who's been lately tapping little holes in our siding. I googled it, and apparently we aren't the only ones with doorbell-ringing woodpeckers. One was even caught on camera.”

In Manitowish, a bevy of robins have eaten every last crabapple off two of our crabapple trees, while leaving another adjacent tree completely untouched. This happens every year with this particular tree, and it’s a mystery to me. I planted these crabapple trees, all from the same batch I received from the DNR, over two decades ago, and yet the crabapples on this tree are often left uneaten until the spring, or eaten as a last resort late in the winter.  

Fox sparrows arrived beneath our feeders on 10/22, and a male red-bellied woodpecker appeared on 10/18, while several white-crowned sparrows showed up on 10/16 and spent a day or two with us and were then gone. We continue to have good numbers of pine siskins, dark-eyed juncos, fox sparrows, white-throated sparrows, blue jays, grackles, mourning doves, and red-winged blackbirds.

            

foxsparrow photo by Bev Engstrom

    

            Carne Andrews sent these observations from Echo Lake in Mercer: “This morning, 10/20, we observed a juvenile merlin harassing an adult pileated woodpecker. The merlin would perch about 4 to 6 feet above the foraging woodpecker then fly directly at the woodpecker flushing it to a new perch in a nearby pine tree. We observed this pattern four times across the lakeshore until they flew out of sight. 

“Also have you had any sightings of Carolina wren in our area? On Oct. 19, I noticed an unusual bird on our sunflower seed platform feeder and got very good looks at it for almost a minute. I’ve not seen a Carolina wren this far north but am familiar with them where I winter in Texas. It was a large chunky wren, brown backed, dark buffy breasted with a prominent bold white supercilium and downward curved bill. The long tail was cocked to almost straight at least an inch above the head.”

As Carne noted, Carolina wrens don’t nest this far north, and so are a rare sighting for us. However, as a function of climate change, Carolina wrens have been moving further north over many decades, and now nest in southern Wisconsin, so perhaps this was a northern explorer, a Shackleton among birds. 

Bob Kovar had a hermit thrush eating from his suet feeder in Manitowish Waters on 10/22. Hermit thrushes are seed and insect eaters, not suet, so this is an anomaly.

hermit thrush photo by Bob Kovar

Denise Fauntleroy sent me a photo of gray jays that are coming to her feeders in Watersmeet, MI. This is the third year in a row that the gray jays have frequented her feeders, and in the spring, they bring their chicks to feed as well. Of course this is because, as Denise wrote me: “They love white bread soaked in bacon grease, plain bread, peanut butter, and any meat scraps (cut up very small). They often hang on the suet feeders too!” Well, no wonder she has gray jays - she’s running a veritable restaurant! These gray jays probably need to be checked for heart disease. 

gray jay photo by Denixe Fauntlerory

Ah, I’m just teasing Denise. More power to her for caring so much for them. Gray jays are a disappearing act these days in northern Wisconsin, and anyone who has them coming to their feeders is very lucky indeed.

Keith Pilger sent me a photo of a black chipmunk that has been coming to his son’s feeder in Stevens Point. We see black squirrels regularly, but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen, or heard of, a black chipmunk.

Mitch Myers reported a flock of 30 evening grosbeaks that came to his feeders in Mercer on 10/18. Evening grosbeaks have been a very uncommon sighting over the last two decades, but this could be a breakthrough year.

Dan Carney in Hazelhurst sent me a message saying he had a flock of 25 or more eastern bluebirds visiting his feeders in late September and into the first week of October. Bluebirds winter as far north as Indiana and Illinois, so they often stay north longer.

Joan Galloway had a male cardinal appear under her feeders on 10/17, only the second one she’s ever seen here in the Northwoods.

Kent Dahlgren sent me the following note and a photo on 10/13: “My wife Maureen and I went for a walk in Pipke Park in Presque Isle, and there were nine swans feeding, preening and actually sleeping in the ponds. It looks like they put their head under their wing to sleep. It was windy and when the swans started sleeping, the wind would start to push them across the pond.”  

 

A Who’s Who of Juncos

Juncos are dominant at our feeders right now, but they often appear quite different from one another. In fact, dark-eyed juncos come in 15 described races, of which six are easily recognizable in the field, while five used to be considered separate species until the 1980s. Look at your field guide to see these differences, but in general there are two widespread forms of the dark-eyed junco: the “slate-colored” junco of the eastern United States and most of Canada,  which is smooth gray above and is the form we commonly see here in northern Wisconsin; and the “Oregon” junco, found across much of the western U.S., which has a dark hood, warm brown back and rufous flanks. 

The quickest identifier for slate-colored juncos at a distance is the flash of their white outer tail feathers when the bird takes flight, but up close, look for a gray or blackish hood, and a dark back that contrasts with its whitish breast and belly. 

dark-eyed junco - slate-colored - photo by Bev Engstrom

The various forms of dark-eyed juncos differ in plumage and bill color, migratory behavior, songs, and body size, which has made for a messy taxonomic history. On occasion, we’ve seen an Oregon version at our feeders, and we certainly see a great deal of variation in the darkness of hood and back feathers on the slate-colored juncos, but they’re still all the “same” bird, at least as of the current science.

            All juncos are ground feeders, so those breeding in northern parts of their range have no choice but to migrate. East of the Mississippi River, junco females tend to migrate farther south than males, with adult females going farther than hatching-year birds, a process referred to as differential migration. This results in partial segregation of sex and age classes. So, for instance, in Michigan, 20% of wintering juncos are females, while 72% are females in Alabama. The genders and ages also vary as to when they migrate in the fall - females move southward before males, and adult females move south before young females. 

Enjoy them while you can!

            

August 10 Derecho The Most Costly Thunderstorm Ever

The powerful derecho that swept through the Midwest on August 10 is officially the most costly thunderstorm event in recorded U.S. history, easily surmounting the top five list of most expensive weather events in the U.S. Only Hurricane Laura with a price tag of $14 billion caused more financial ruin.

According to figures released by NOAA, the sustained line of thunderstorms traveled 770 miles from South Dakota through Ohio in 14 hours, flattening millions of acres of corn and soybean crops, as well as numerous homes, businesses and vehicles, especially in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. An estimated 90% of structures in Cedar Rapids were damaged by the storm, and more than 1,000 homes were destroyed. All told, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 850,000 crop acres were lost - 50% more than originally estimated. 

 

Celestial Events

            Full moon, a blue moon, occurs on 10/31. This is the year’s smallest and most distant full moon, 30% dimmer than our brightest moon of the year in April.

            For planet watching in November, after dusk look for Mars bright in the southeast, Jupiter low in the south-southwest, and Saturn also low in the south-southwest. Before dawn, look for brilliant Venus very low in the east.

            The peak South Taurid meteor shower occurs before dawn on 11/5 - look for about 10 meteors per hour. 11/7 marks the midpoint between autumn equinox and winter solstice. The peak North Taurid meteor shower takes place before dawn on 11/11, again a modest meteor shower of perhaps 10 per hour.

 

Thoughts for the Week

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. - Henry David Thoreau

Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder. - Jalaluddin Rumi 

 

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