A Northwoods Almanac for July 24 - August 6, 2020 by John Bates
Comet NEOWISE
On July 15, Mary and I were able to get fine views of comet NEOWISE about 10:30 at night. Using our binoculars greatly enhance our view, so I recommend using a pair. Over the next few nights, look in the northwest after dusk about 25° above the horizon, or just below the Big Dipper. The comet is now a faint third magnitude object and is growing dimmer.
Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) was discovered on March 27, 2020 by the Near Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, aka NEOWISE, which was launched by NASA in 2009.
Comet NEOWISE won’t be visible again from Earth until around the year 8,786, so unless you expect to live another 6,700 years, you might want to take a look now.
Record High Temperatures in the Great Lakes
The waters in the Great Lakes are heating up with surface temperatures of all but Lake Superior rising to about 70° F and nearing or passing record highs. Lake Superior’s average water temperature reached 55.8 degrees on July 8, over 6° above normal. The other lakes also are 6° to 11° above their average water temperatures for this time of year.
The unusually warm water is a reflection of high temperatures over the Great Lakes region in recent weeks. While great for swimming, the excessively warm waters can trigger environmental problems like blooms of blue-green algae.
Solar Energy in the Northwoods
Mary and I began generating electricity from our 22 solar panels on 12/17/19, and while we were told we could expect to generate about $985 worth of electricity annually, we really didn’t know if that would be true. To see how we’re doing, I looked up our production so far. As of 7/20, we’ve generated 4.91 MWh (4,910 kWh), or at current rates, about $565 of electricity. In June, we generated 959 kWh, our best month so far, with our best day providing 46.5 kWh.
So, was the solar company accurate? Dividing their estimate of $985 by 12 months comes to $82 per month. In 7 months-time, therefore, we should have generated $574, which is just about what we’ve done.
We generated more electricity than we used on our last three months of bills, but we needed to buy electricity from 12/17 through 4/17. So, it looks like over a year we’ll be buying electricity four months out of the year, about break-even in our use and production for four months, and generate more than we need for four months.
The question we always get is, “What’s your payback?” Utilizing the present tax incentives and laws, we should pay the initial cost back in 7 years or so. Pretty darn good I think, but it all depends on how much electricity one uses every month - some folks will pay their investment back sooner, some later. After that, it’s clear sailing!
Ovenbird Nest
While hiking a trail on 7/8 in The Nature Conservancy’s Tenderfoot Preserve, a bird shot out from out from under my feet. I never saw it, but the friends I was with noticed it, and when we looked down, there was an ovenbird nest right next to where I’d stepped.
Now, ovenbirds are familiar to many folks who walk in our northern woods because of their very loud, insistent song that sounds like “Teacher, teacher, teacher, TEACHER,” or as I prefer, “Pizza, pizza, pizza, PIZZA.” But seeing this cryptically colored, olive-brown bird that blends so well with the forest understory is another matter altogether. Ovenbirds mostly forage on the ground for leaf-litter insects, so they’re particularly difficult to see on the forest floor despite their boisterous songs which one would think would signal their location.
An even more difficult task is finding one of their exceptionally well-concealed leaf nests. In all the years Mary and I have been birding, we’ve never found a nest, a reality shared by most birders. The nest resembles a dome-shaped oven with a roof made of leaves. So, unlike nearly all other bird nests which are shaped in a horizontal cup and open to the sky, the ovenbird nest has a roof and opens parallel to the ground. The nest is also placed in deep forest leaf litter and then covered with leaves, so it’s basically invisible when looking down on it.
I peered into the nest and found four eggs! This was surprising given that ovenbirds are a neotropical songbird, migrating to Central and South America in mid-to-late August. They arrive in northern Wisconsin in mid-May, quickly set up territories and breed. Research shows the female typically builds her nest within six days of arrival, then incubates eggs for ten days, with hatching occurring often by the end of May and into early-to-mid-June. So, a nest with four eggs on July 8th is quite late in the game.
But perhaps this female’s first nest failed, or possibly she was attempting to raise a second brood, but research shows that to be a rarity.
Who knows? There’s always far more mystery in the woods than there are answers, and anyone who tells you different doesn’t spend enough time in the woods to be talking.
Sightings
Bruce Spangenberg in Eagle River sent me photos from early July of a dragonfly feasting on a grasshopper it caught at the St Germain Flea Market. He noted, “It is sitting on a vendor table with musky lures and took about ten minutes to consume the grasshopper.” Grasshoppers are every bit as big and much heavier than most dragonflies, proving the dragonfly’s reputation as an amazing predator. Mary and I ran our DNR frog survey route in western Vilas County on July 15, and we heard the two expected frogs at this time of the year - green frogs and bullfrogs - and no others. But listening for frogs after dark at ten different sites presents other experiences that won’t show up in the frog data. One of our sites is on Little Crooked Lake, and in order to get to the boat landing where we park and listen, we have to drive Bear Lake Road. In recent years, the DNR did a clearcut along this road, and now in the cutover we always look and listen for three dusk and night-flying birds - whip-poor-wills, nighthawks, and woodcocks. We weren’t disappointed. In fact, at separate locations, we were able to watch one woodcock and two different nighthawks just sitting on the road, quite unphased by our bright lights illuminating them 20 feet away. We were so enthralled we forgot to take pictures! This was the third or fourth year we’ve had this experience, and I’m still perplexed as to what they’re doing sitting on the road. If it was a cold night, I could understand their soaking up heat from the blacktop, but it was 62°. If it was springtime when woodcocks strut on the ground before launching their remarkable courting flights, that would make sense. But it was mid-July and courting is kaput. So . . . we added this to our ever-increasing list of observations without a clear explanation. Sometimes all you can do is say thank-you.
Fireweed, Oswego tea, wild bergamot, butterfly weed, and marsh milkweed are all in flower, and all are loved by butterflies and bees. Jewelweed is just now coming into flower, and area hummingbirds will immediately be seeking nectar in every one of their orange, tubular flowers.
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| Fireweed photo by Mary Burns |
Aquatic flowers have come into their own - every lake and river is now, or soon will be, a painter’s palette of color. Water levels remain exceedingly high on many area lakes with shorelines and beaches inundated. The high water has impacted many aquatic plants including wild rice which struggles to do well in deeper waters. Some plants, however, appear to be thriving, like watershield. This is where long-term records are helpful, so we can understand what our lakes support - what is “normal” - during droughts, during average years, and during high water years, so we can manage our responses appropriately.
On 7/19, Mary, Callie, and I hiked the Hidden Rivers Trail at Fisherman’s Landing on the edge of the Turtle Flambeau Flowage. This two-mile-long trail has two loops, and a gorgeous spur trail onto a peninsula jutting into the Flowage. Much of the trail runs through relatively mature forest, and I think it ranks as one of the prettiest trails we have in our region. I mention it because it seems underutilized, and while I’d personally rather not share the trail with lots more people, it’s well-deserving of more appreciation than just ours.
Celestial Events
The peak Delta Aquarid Meteor Shower occurs before dawn on 7/28.
On 8/1, look for Jupiter 1.5° north of the waxing gibbous moon.
On 8/2, look for Saturn 2° above the moon.
The full moon occurs on 8/3.
And now, as of early August, our days are growing shorter by 3 minutes every day.
Thought for the Week
“Animals live in certain ways, and when you pay attention to their ways, what they like, what they are most comfortable with, that’s when you go down a few layers deeper . . . My job is to catch some of them, but the larger pleasure isn’t the money, it’s the literature of their lives, so to speak . . . You never get to the end of knowing about them. There’s always something new that the books and Websites and grizzled old veterans of the woods don’t know. That’s a good thing to remember. Whatever you know beyond the shadow of a doubt out here, you don’t . . . So we’ll just walk and talk quietly. You ask anything you want and tell me anything you see, and I’ll do the same. We’ll be quietly companionable. Two students in the biggest school there is.” - a conversation between an old trapper and a young boy in Martin Marten by Brian Doyle.
Please share your outdoor sightings and thoughts: e-mail 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.
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