A Northwoods Almanac for 9/4 - 17, 2020  by John Bates

 

A Poor Year for Wild Rice

The wild rice crop looks rather poor this fall, likely due to the high waters we’re experiencing on so many lakes in our area. Rice can be finicky, doing best with a water depth of 0.5 to 3 feet, with 1 to 2 feet being optimal. Rice also does best with a consistent water flow, clearer water, mucky sediments, and relatively stable water conditions. Still, wild rice likes/needs minor fluctuations in water levels over the years, so as an annual, it can outcompete perennial aquatic plants. Consistently high water over several years, however, doesn’t fluctuate up and down, and thus the rice suffers.

wild rice male flowers, photo by John Bates

Historically-important sites like Atkins Lake in Forest and Oneida counties are closed due to crop failure, as are Little Rice and Spur lakes in Oneida County, and Irving Lake in Vilas County. Other well-known ricing lakes like Devine and Aurora lakes are rated as “poor”. Nixon Lake is rated “fair”, as is Sevenmile Lake in Oneida County. Only a few lakes in all of northern Wisconsin are rated “very good” including the Manitowish River in Vilas County and Totagatic Lake in Bayfield County. 

Wild rice was and still is immensely important to Native Americans, particularly the Ojibwe and Menominee. The Menominee took their name from the word for wild rice, manomin, and were often referred to as the “Wild Rice People” by Europeans. 

Entire communities would move to the lakeshore in time for the fall wild rice harvest. Working in family groups, typically a man would pole a canoe out to the family's section of the lake, where a woman, armed with two sticks would bend the rice stalks over the canoe and knock off kernels until the canoe was full. On shore, the rice was sun-dried or parched over low fires, then danced or pounded to separate the grain from the husk, and finally winnowed in the wind. 

While wild rice was a valuable item for barter during the fur trade era, no food was more important to the tribes than wild rice. Native tribes, as well as traders, explorers, and missionaries, depended on the virtual imperishability of wild rice to stave off famine during the long winters. 

Access to the best stands of wild rice provoked inter-tribal warfare. The Sioux of northeastern Minnesota and the Great Lakes Ojibwe bands battled for more than a century over access to wild rice in northern Wisconsin. One such battle occurred at Mole Lake, in Forest County, between the Sokaogon band of Ojibwe and the Sioux in 1806. According to oral tradition, nearly 500 warriors from both tribes were killed and buried in a common mound as the Ojibwe defeated the Sioux. On Strawberry Island in Lac du Flambeau in 1745, the island was the last battle site between the Ojibwe and the Lakota Sioux over the wild rice in that area. 

Wild rice remains an essential staple food for Great Lakes Indian people, and many families continue to harvest rice where their families have for generations. 

 See http://data.glifwc.org/manoomin.harvest.info/ for more specific information on this year’s rice harvest.

 

Monarch Migration

Mary and I camped last week on the Garden Peninsula just east of Escanaba in the U.P., and there we noticed quite a few monarch butterflies nectaring in various flowers. The Garden Peninsula is known as a migration funnel for monarchs, but even better known is Peninsula Point, just to the west at the end of the Stonington Peninsula. It was too early for the migration to have begun, but had we been there in September, we would have also visited Peninsula Point for its connection to the monarch butterfly.

Monarchs don’t want to cross large bodies of water if they can help it, so they funnel down through Peninsula Point, and then begin hip-hopping across a series of islands leading to the tip of Door County. The islands are a geologically unique feature, being part of the Niagara Escarpment which extends from eastern Wisconsin through Canada and ending at Niagara Falls.

Thousands of monarchs can be seen here, waiting for a light north wind to help them  cross Lake Michigan to the first stepping stone of islands.

Researchers began counting and tagging monarchs on the peninsula in 1996, making it the oldest data set on monarchs in North America. As many as 21 monarchs tagged at Peninsula Point have been recovered in El Rosario, Mexico, almost 2,000 miles from the Stonington Peninsula.

As most of you know, monarchs are unique in that they are the only butterfly known to make a two-way migration. The eastern population of North America’s monarchs goes south to the same 11 to 12 mountain areas in Mexico where they roost for the winter in oyamel fir forests at an elevation of 7,800 to 11,800 feet, nearly 2 miles above sea level. The mountain hillsides of oyamel forest provide an ideal microclimate for the butterflies because the temperatures range from 0 to 15 degrees Celsius. Colder and the monarchs would be forced to use their fat reserves. Warmer and they’d become too active.

Surprisingly, a 2012 analysis of numbers of migrating monarchs from two fall monitoring stations in the United States (Cape May, NJ and Peninsula Point, MI), which span 15 and 19 years, respectively, found that “at both locations there was no significant linear trend in average monarch numbers counted over time.” This, of course, contrasts with the numerous studies of wintering numbers showing a decline in the monarch population.

How can this be? Can all the studies be correct? The author suggests that the population remains stable for now, “probably because of the high fecundity of the species and its ability to rebound from small winter numbers.” He goes on to write, “If one assumes that both the overwintering population estimates and the fall migration counts do in fact provide (fairly) accurate assessments of the population size each year, then perhaps the lack of a decline in the fall counts can be explained simply by the incredible resiliency of the monarch (i.e. its high reproductive potential). In other words, even though the cohort in Mexico may be shrinking, there still could be enough monarchs each year that survive to re‐colonize the breeding range in the United States and Canada. The population may be able to rebound during the summer even from very small wintering colonies. 

To read the entire article, see “Are migratory monarchs really declining in eastern North America? Examining evidence from two fall census programs,” Andrew K. Davis, Insect Conservation and Diversity, 2012.

 

Hawk Migration

            Sharp-shinned and broad-winged hawk migration begins in earnest in mid-September with the peak for broad-wings occurring in our area usually from 9/13 to 9/23. Every year I say this, but it’s always worth repeating - this is the time to visit Hawk Ridge in Duluth.            

Duluth is one of the best sites in North America to see the fall hawk migration because most raptors are reluctant to cross large bodies of water. Most hawks like to catch warm thermals rising from the ground and glide south, but there’s no such thing as a warm thermal over Lake Superior. So, when they encounter Lake Superior, the birds veer southwest along the lakeshore and can be seen in impressive numbers on the bluffs overlooking East Duluth and from the overlook at Hawk Ridge.

Knowing when to visit is the key. A good flight day usually occurs with the passage of northwest winds. Hundreds to thousands of birds can be seen migrating past the Ridge on those day. In fact, most winds with a westerly component will produce large numbers of migrating hawks. But southerly or easterly breezes seldom produce large flights of raptors, though the birds that are flying are often lower and easier to see. And if it’s raining, forget about it.

The best day to visit is typically after a number of rainy days when the birds have been grounded, stacked up like planes at an airport, and now the sun has come out creating thermals and a northwest wind is blowing. That’s the day to hightail it up to Duluth. 

See https://www.hawkridge.org for lots more information

 

broad-winged hawk range map

Water Smartweeds

            I’ve been paddling numerous wild lakes in the last month, and many of their shallow waters are currently clothed in the shocking pink of water smartweed (Persicaria amphibia). The species name, amphibia, aptly describes this plant’s ability to live both in the water and on land. It “smartly” adapts to rising or falling water levels, not requiring either, and thus lives on to see another year no matter the environmental circumstances.

water smartweed on Salsich Lake, photo by John Bates

            So, I always thought the name “smartweed” simply said the obvious - this plant is smart! But no, I found a very odd historical reference, at least according to the U.S. Forest Service: “The term smartweed is thought to be a more sanitized version of the original word ‘arsmart’ for the use of the plant in medieval times to relieve itching and swelling of the human posterior.”       I’ll bet you, like I, hadn’t known that itching and swelling of the human posterior was an actual medical condition, but now you are armed with the cure in case this condition arises.

 

Bur Marigold in Flower

            One of the last wetland flowers to bloom in late August is the lovely bur-marigold or nodding beggar ticks (Bidens cenua). The seeds of various Bidens species are notorious for their ability to cling to the fur of animals, the feathers of birds, or the clothing of humans, a clever adaptation to distributing one’s seeds far and wide. 

 

bur-marigold photo by John Bates 

Celestial Events

            Viewing planets in September: Look after dusk in the south for Jupiter and Saturn, with Jupiter 14 times brighter than Saturn. Both will set in the southwest long before dawn. And if you’re awake prior to sunrise, look for brilliant Venus in the east and Mars high in the southwest. Venus will be our “morning star” through the rest of 2020.

            On 9/4, look for Mars near the waning gibbous moon, and on 9/5, Mars will practically be riding on top of the moon. On the morning of 9/14, look for Venus south of the waning crescent moon.  

            And we’re losing daylight quickly - by 9/15, we’re down to 12 hours and 31 minutes of sunlight as we streak toward autumn equinox. 

 

Thought for the Week

            “Autumn sunlight is simply perfection of the day, glory of the season, the year’s high achievement, somehow. It summons one to the outdoors, where even the autumn leaves partake of it. The maples shimmer, the birches glow, and when they drop their leaves their splendor is sunlight at their feet.” - Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons                            

 

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.