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