NWA for 4/17/20

A Northwoods Almanac for April 17 – 30, 2020  

First of Year (FOY) Sightings and More    

3/31: Den Hill took an exceptional photograph of a male spruce grouse while walking along Alder Lake Rd. in Manitowish Waters. Spruce grouse have been protected in Wisconsin since 1929, and sightings are rare. During the surveys done for the first Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas, breeding spruce grouse were only found in 15 locations, all in Vilas, Oneida, or Forest counties. They likely breed in other northern counties, but they nest most often on the ground in spruce/tamarack bogs and swamps which are seldom ventured into by your average birder. I’ve only seen one in my life, so I need to up my game and go out specifically to look for them.  

4/1: Joan Galloway in Manitowish Waters saw a varied thrush first on 3/27, but she saw it again early on 4/1, and then again on 4/4 and 4/7 with a small flock of juncos under her suet feeder. She noted, “When a blue jay flew down to eat dropped suet, the thrush went after it and chased it away!” Joan lives on Clear Lake, so if you live in that area, keep an eye out for this rare western bird.

4/1: We had our FOY song sparrows in Manitowish, and Bob Kovar in Manitowish Waters had the FOY eastern phoebe that I heard about.

4/2: We had our FOY fox sparrows in Manitowish.

fox sparrow photo by Bev Engstrom

4/3: The FOY northern flickers showed up in Manitowish, and we viewed an osprey on the edge of a nest along Hwy. 47 near McNaughton.

4/3: We watched eight male hooded mergansers surround and endlessly pester one poor female hoodie. Each male was displaying his hood fully and scooting around to cut off the female wherever she tried to go. It was sexual harassment by any definition. Cornell’s “Birds of the World” says that courtship displays include “crest-raising, head-shaking, head-throws with turn-the-back-of-the-head, head-pumping, upward-stretch, upward-stretch with wing-flap, and ritualized drinking. Multiply all that by 8, and you’ve got a show going on! We didn’t see all that, but my goodness, it would be unforgettable.

male hooded merganser photo by Bev Engstrom

            I had been hearing this low growly kind of sound numerous times this spring, a sound very much like the “song” of leopard frogs, but leopard frogs seldom are heard until late May or early June. So, I couldn’t figure this out until good friend Bob Kovar said he was watching a male hoodie and actually saw it vocalize this sound – Cornell describes it as a rolling frog-like craaa-crrrooooo.

4/4: FOY male and female belted kingfishers appeared in the flooded marsh below our house and our FOY tree sparrows visited the ground under our feeders.

4/5: We spotted our FOY northern harrier and turkey vultures.

4/11: Jane Lueneburg in Tomahawk heard some spring peepers before the big snows came, and noted, “To me that's even greater than seeing my first robin,” to which I agree.

4/11: Bob Kovar on Wild Rice Lake in Manitowish Waters reported the FOY common loon, and we saw one later that day on Powell Marsh as well as our FOY ring-necked ducks.

4/11: Mary and I paddled a portion of the Manitowish River, our first paddle of the year. The river was in flood, as it is every spring with the meltwaters from winter snow, and the flooded marshes made it easy for us to cut across the many meanders of the river, shortening the trip. 

photo by Mary Burns

4/12: Pat Schmidt reported seeing her first common loon on Silver Lake in Hazelhurst, as did Mary Jenks on Mann Lake in Boulder Junction.

4/13: We were excited to see our FOY white-throated sparrow in Manitowish and less excited to see our FOY cowbird.

4/13: A note from Ed Marshall in Lac du Flambeau: “My garage has some heat around the edges, so the snow melts and the ground is soft. My plow guy did a good job of clearing in front of the garage and turned over a bit of dirt. Wow! All of a sudden I had lots of birds. Beside the robins and juncos I had several fox sparrows, a couple song sparrows, a chipping sparrow, and at least one hermit thrush. Those guys really liked me getting rid of that snow for them!”

Other Sightings: Flowering Pussy Willows/Tag Alders/Silver Maples

            Our earliest flowering shrubs and trees are now coming into flower. We noticed flowers on pussy willows, tag alders, and silver maples, but I’ll bet hazelnuts are in flower by now as well. Pussy willows are dioecious, meaning each tree bears either male or female flowers, the male “catkins” releasing pollen and the female catkins bearing the wispy seeds. Tag alders are monoecious, meaning both male and female flowers occur on the same shrub or tree. The female flowers are born in tiny red clusters only a few millimeters long, while the male flowers hang in a long clustered catkin. Silver maples are a bit of everything: their male and female flowers can be on separate trees, or just on separate branches on the same tree, or, just to mix it up as much as possible, the flowers are occasionally bisexual, meaning each flower has male stamens and a female ovary. 

Storm Impacts on Nesting Bald Eagles?

            Bob Kovar on Wild Rice Lake wrote the following: “Our eagles started incubating on or about March 24. I’m a photographer and I sit and watch the nest for hours and take a lot of pictures. On Tuesday, April 7, we had a hard hailstorm here. It hailed for about a minute, about penny-sized hail and it quickly covered the ground. After the storm it cleared up and about an hour later I went out to see what was happening in the nest. I noticed both eagles out and about but not in the nest. I’ve been keeping an eye on the nest ever since and they have stopped sitting on eggs. The nest has been empty since the storm. But the adults are around.

from Pennsylvania, 2015

            “So, my question is, do you think the hailstorm drove them off the nest and exposed the eggs? I have no idea where eagles go when it hails but I’m guessing they must seek cover . . . My second question is do you think they will lay eggs again this year?”

            These questions were relayed to Ron Eckstein, retired DNR wildlife manager and long-time eagle bander, and this was his response: “From your description it does sound like the eagles decided not to continue incubation. Many reports through the years indicate that eagles will tenaciously stay on the nest with eggs through all kinds of weather (high wind, hail, snow, heavy rain). I just checked the MN DNR eagle cam, and an adult is brooding tiny eaglets during the present storm [4/12]. Your nest is right on top of the tree and really exposed, so it is possible that a severe wind gust combined with hail caused the adult to leave the nest . . . just speculation. Adults don’t seek shelter during heavy rain, wind, and brief hail (their feathers are good protection and they usually just hunker down in place). It is pretty late in the season to lay additional eggs if the first clutch was destroyed.”

            The snowstorm Ron referred to occurred on Easter Sunday and dropped up to a foot of now in our region, undoubtedly making for uncomfortable conditions for incubating eagles. Ron sent along a photo taken in Pennsylvania in 2015 of an eagle with little more than its head sticking above the snow in its nest, but nevertheless, still incubating.

Frogs Thawing Out or Resurfacing

            On 4/8, Bob Kovar watched as his dog nosed-up a leopard frog that was sitting on the ice in a roadside ditch. Leopard frogs, like mink frogs and bullfrogs overwinter on the bottom sediments of lakes and streams, while others like spring peepers, chorus frogs, eastern gray tree frogs, and wood frogs burrow down in the forest duff, fundamentally icing into frogcicles (about 65% of the water in their body freezes), and then literally thawing out in the spring.

            How do we know leopard frogs simply lay on the bottom of lakes and wait out the winter ice? Well, Canadian biologists in the 1970s dove in full SCUBA gear through a hole in the ice to search for rainbow trout and found to their surprise 15 northern leopard frogs resting on the pond bottom. In the 1980s, another fish biologist surveyed an unfrozen Ontario river using snorkel gear (the Canadians are tough!) and found leopard frogs resting under rocks in the stream bed. 

            A study using radio transmitters on overwintering bullfrogs in a couple Ohio ponds found that they didn’t stay put like leopard frogs, but moved around some, seeming to prefer the shallow areas where steams entered the ponds. The researchers speculated that they selected these sites because they were both warmer and higher in oxygen.

            Both species can overwinter under the water by absorbing oxygen through their skin, and though relatively dormant, they’re able to swim away if disturbed. 

            We’ll hear spring peepers and wood frogs first of all of our frogs, as soon as our woodland ephemeral ponds lose their ice and the water temperature reaches 40°. Researchers say that the frogs can thaw out in as little as four hours, which is just stunning to consider, and by the next day, they’ll be chorusing so loud in the ponds that sometimes you have to hold your ears.

Celestial Events

            Ice-out for many of our moderate-size lakes typically occurs right around now – April 17. As of this writing on 4/13, many lakes have ice pulling away from their shorelines, but given the cold forecast for this week, I doubt many lakes will be open by the 17^th.  However, the weekend forecast looks warm, and if we get some strong winds, the ice will start breaking up. It’s a great time of year – we take open water for granted in the summer, but those first few days in April when the lakes open up is pure magic.

            The peak Lyrid meteor shower occurs in the predawn of 4/22, along with the dark provided by a new moon – look for an average of 10 to 20 meteors per hour. 

            By 4/24, we’ll be receiving over 14 hours of daylight – summer solstice, believe it or not, is less than two months away.

Thought for the Week

            Solitude is one of the most precious things in the human spirit. It is different from loneliness. When you are lonely, you become acutely conscious of your own separation. Solitude can be a homecoming to your own deepest belonging. One of the lovely things about us as individuals is the incommensurable in us . . . The blessings for which we hunger are not to be found in other places or people. These gifts can only be given to you by yourself. They are at home at the hearth of your soul. – John O’Donohue