A Northwoods Almanac for 12/24/21

 A Northwoods Almanac for 12/24/21 – 1/6/22   

Ice Sounds

            During our Christmas bird count, Mary and I stood by a lake and listened to the lake ice sort of gurgling or chortling – it’s hard to describe these sounds! – as it expanded and contracted. With dropping temperatures, lakes can make some very wild noises. But it can happen, too, on a sunny day, as things warm up fast and the ice cracks, generating some other crazy noises.

            John Downing, a limnologist and director of the University of Minnesota Sea Grant program, was recently quoted in the Duluth newspaper saying a 10-degree increase in air temperature can cause a mile of ice to expand by 2 feet. Conversely, a 10-degree drop can cause it to contract 2 feet. “That creates an enormous amount of pressure, then something gives way, and that’s what causes the noise,” Downing said.

            Downing compared ice on a lake to the skin on a drum, with noise amplifying all along the drum or lake. The noises can be low like a bass drum or higher like a snare drum, or to me, sometimes sound like a bunch of singing freshwater whales, the first of their kind. 

 

Manitowish Waters  Christmas Bird Count

            We conducted the 29^th annual Manitowish Waters Audubon Christmas Bird Count on 12/17, one day after the Minocqua count had to be cancelled due to the crazy winds and ice.  We got lucky with a relatively clear, but cold morning with only a modest wind. 

            I don’t have the final tally, but it was a relatively slow day with modest bird numbers. We observed 23 species with the only rarity being a lone American robin happily singing away. Notable also were two observations of dark-eyed juncos, a ground-feeding species that usually winters south of here where the snowpack is less substantial.

            Notable also, but not unusual, were the 18 trumpeter swans on a relatively small stretch of the Manitowish River. We usually have a good number of swans that winter here despite their ability to easily migrate. What always intrigues me is how they find enough to eat in the Manitowish River. Trumpeters are a very large bird – 20 to 30 pounds – and that takes a lot of aquatic plants, nearly all of which have died back in the fall, to keep them going over our five months of ice-up on most of the river.

            Another notable species we found during the count were the 23 cedar waxwings that were flocking around our house. We often get bohemian waxwings in the winter, but the cedars usually wander south of here. 

            And finally, notable for their lack of presence were purple finch, evening grosbeak, northern shrike, gray jay, and brown creeper.

            Over the years, we’ve tallied 69 species, many of which were one-time rarities, but our average for any given count is usually about 24 species. It’s a very hard and long winter life here for a bird, so those we that do stay have remarkable adaptations and perserverance. 

 

Kissing Under Mistletoe

            Why is it a tradition to kiss underneath mistletoe, a parasitic plant that attacks living trees and can even kill trees? Mistletoe sends its tiny roots into the bark’s cambium layer and siphons off water and nutrients, weakening the tree to the point where it can kill the tree one limb at a time. This doesn’t happen very often, and in fact an argument can be made that mistletoe does much more good than it does harm by providing a source of healthy berries for birds and a place for nesting within its dense foliage (mistletoe’s other name is “witch’s broom”). But still, couldn’t we have come up with a more appropriate plant to symbolize love?

            Well, the plant has actually been used as a symbol of fertility for centuries, because it grows even during the winter. “It's life in the midst of what seems to be death,” writes one author. The Romans even used it as a representation of peace and love, hanging it over doorways.

            So, somehow over the ages, the tradition has continued, and mistletoe is still hung up in homes at Christmas where young men and women have the privilege of kissing under it, plucking each time a berry from the bush. When the berries are all plucked, the privilege ceases, or so the tradition goes.

 

The Battle of Midway and the Worlds’ Oldest Known Banded Bird

            When I was a boy, I read everything I could about World War II, and I remember exulting in one of the most significant naval battles of the war, the Battle of Midway. Just six months after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy defeated an attacking fleet of the Japanese Navy, sinking four Japanese aircraft carriers and a cruiser in what was considered by historians as “the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare.” Nearly 3,400 soldiers from both sides were lost that day. 

            What I exult in today, however, is quite the opposite from all that death and destruction. The 2.4 square-mile Midway Atoll now serves as a national wildlife refuge administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as part of the larger Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. In total, over three million individual birds from 20 different species utilize the refuge for nesting and rearing their young, including 70% of the world’s population of Laysan albatrosses.

            Among that population is a Laysan albatross first identified and banded in 1956 after she had laid an egg. Female Laysan albatrosses aren’t known to breed before age 5, indicating that this bird could have hatched as late as 1951, but possibly earlier. Well, “Wisdom,” as she is known, returned once again to Midway this November. This makes her at least 70 years old in her life-journey, and thus she wears the crown as the world's oldest known wild, banded bird.  

Wisdom and her mate

            Albatrosses only lay one egg, and normally take a year off from parenting between chicks. So, it’s estimated that Wisdom has laid between 30 and 36 eggs in her lifetime. In 2018, her chick that fledged in 2001 was observed just a few feet away from her current nest, marking the first time a returning chick of hers has been documented. 

            No one knows how old can albatross can live, because Wisdom continues to live! For comparison sake, in our Northwoods area, the oldest known living birds that I’m aware of are a 35-year old common loon in the U.P.’s Seney National Wildlife Refuge, and a 33-year old bald eagle.

            A U.S. Geological Survey study found that the Midway Atoll and Pacific islands like them could become inundated and unfit to live on during the 21st century, due to increased storm waves and rising sea levels. If it comes to that, what an utterly sad and unnecessary end it could be to Wisdom’s life.        

 

Snowy Owl Update

            As of December 15, an impressive total of 114 snowy owls has been tallied in 45 Wisconsin counties. This count approximately doubles that of each of the past three winters but falls short of the 176 recorded by this date in 2017, keeping in line with the notion that irruptions (periodic influxes) tend to occur every 4 to 5 years. 

            

White Christmas?

            Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released white Christmas probabilities across the United States, basing them on the most recent 30 years of climate data. The projection revealed broad decreases compared to just a decade ago and “are consistent with the reality of long-term warming.” NOAA’s criterion for a white Christmas is one inch of snow on the ground on the morning of Dec. 25.

            An analysis of  NOAA’s white Christmas data in the 25 biggest U.S. cities found declines in most of them. A separate analysis found 64 percent of the 2,000 locations in NOAA’s database exhibited decreases in their white Christmas chances.

            In the 1980s, 47 percent of the country had snow on the ground on Dec. 25, with an average depth of 3.5 inches. But, by the 2010s, the snow cover extent was just 38 percent, with an average depth of 2.7 inches.

            Here in the Northwoods, we are blessed to have snow on the ground and a beautiful upcoming white Christmas.

 

Later Ice-Ups 

            With our crazy warm and wild storm day on 12/16, the Manitowish River opened up once again, and while not ice-free, it’s flowing quite fast. As you may know, there’s been a long-term decline in first-ice since the 1860s, and Lake Mendota in Madison, one of the most-studied lakes in the world, provides some of the best data to demonstrate this. It’s one of 514 lakes in the northern hemisphere with long-term data on ice cover. World-wide, northern lakes are icing up later in the year and becoming ice-free earlier in the year. In Mendota’s case, duration of average annual ice cover has declined by over a month since the 1860s.

Thought for the Week

            In thinking of Christmas trees and nature: “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man [person] of imagination, nature is imagination itself.”– William Blake

 

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays! 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

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 12/10/21

 A Northwoods Almanac for 12/10 – 23, 2021 

 

Ice-Up

            Woody Hagge notified me that Foster Lake, a 39-acre lake in Hazelhurst, froze-over on November 26. Woody has been keeping records of ice-on and ice-off on Foster Lake for 46 years, and this year’s ice-up was one day before the 46-year average of 11/27. 

            Woody noted that he thought the long, warm autumn would have pushed the ice-up date later, but November turned cold, as it should, and the ice formed slightly earlier than expected. Foster’s water level is down 7.5 inches from last year at ice-up, so perhaps a little less water volume helped the process along.

            Long-term ice-up and ice-out dates are easily seen and understood, and provide key indicators of climate change. Since the late 1990’s, average ice-up on Foster Lake has steadily moved nearly four days later in November. 

 

Snowy Owl Update

            As of November 22, 18 snowy owls had been found in 14 Wisconsin counties

But as of December 1, at least 72 of these unique birds had arrived in 30 counties across the state from Green Bay to downtown Madison. 

            Two snowies were tagged with tracking devices in Wisconsin during previous winters as part of Project SNOWstorm, and one of them, a fourth-year female caught in February 2020 near Waupun, WI, was recently heard from. Her data points show that she returned north in April 2020 to nest in arctic Canada. But that winter, rather than coming south, she migrated further north and spent the winter on sea ice, likely hunting waterbirds. She then nested last summer on Baffin Island, but now appears to be headed south for this winter, last “checking in” near James Bay in Quebec.

            I’ve written before that the forested Northwoods is poor habitat for snowies, because they live and hunt in open habitats like fields, grasslands, and beaches. If one does appear in our area, it’s almost always near an airport, in a wide-open wetland, or along a large lakeshore. One year, a snowy even spent some of the winter in a cemetery in Ironwood, MI.

 

Trumpeter Swans

            We were walking along the Manitowish River recently and observed a good number of trumpeter swans loafing on the river. This isn’t unusual at all – most winters a cadre of swans can be seen in the open water below the Rest Lake dam, or in the open river waters along Benson Lake Rd. 

            Trumpeter swans have burgeoned in numbers over the last 30 years. Trumpeter swans in Minnesota are an example of such increases, with an original reintroduction goal of only 15 breeding pairs in 1966. Those efforts failed, but future revised efforts succeeded, and a new interim goal of 500 individuals was set for 2001. Well, things really took off from there, and in the most recent North American survey in 2015, the Minnesota population was estimated at more than 17,000.  Estimates of their population growth rate is as high as 20 percent annually since 2000.

            Wisconsin’s trumpeter population was reintroduced in 1989, and was ultimately so successful that trumpeters were removed from the Wisconsin endangered species list in 2009. Numbers are now estimated to be over 6,000. 

Trumpeter swan and cygnets, photo by Bev Engstrom

            Restoration occurred in other states as well, and since those early efforts, the population of interior trumpeter swans has far exceeded original population objectives, numbering 27,055 in the latest (2015) North American Swan Survey.

            Interestingly, however, there’s not a great deal known about the ecology of these swans, given how new they are to the Upper Midwest. Remember, these swans were raised from eggs taken from trumpeter nests in Alaska – their DNA is not specific to our area. So, beginning in 2019, researchers equipped swans in Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Manitoba with GPS-GSM transmitters affixed to neck collars with 2-character alpha-numeric codes. The objectives of the study are to evaluate migration patterns, local movements, habitat use, genetics, and survival of trumpeter swans in the re-established interior population.

            I bring this up not only because so many of us enjoy seeing trumpeters these days, but because the location of a swan captured and tagged for this study on the Little Turtle Flowage on 7/22/21 – swan “5P” – is now near St. Louis, MO, likely enjoying a warm drink and an abundance of food.

            It’s fascinating to consider the confusion these swans must experience when it comes to migration. There’s no long-established migratory route that they all follow. It seems more like it’s a scattershot, every swan for him or herself. Why do some swans remain the winter on the Manitowish River, while the one that bred on the nearby Little Turtle Flowage, now migrates all the way to Missouri? When will the swans all gather in a confab and discuss the pros and cons of various routes and destinations, and vote on the best migratory path? How does this happen, or will it necessarily happen at all?

            Beats me, but their beauty is unexcelled, so anything to do with swans always captures my attention.

 

Snowshoe Hares

            Our 12” snowfall on 12/5 and 12/6 made a lot of snowshoe hares happy, because now they no longer stand out against what was a rather spotty brown and white landscape. Hares are only one of 21 species of birds and animals worldwide that molt from summer brown to winter white. The timing of their molt is essential to their survival, thus the impacts of climate change through the reduction of snow cover has consequences. When hares that switch from brown to white in autumn or white to brown in spring don’t match the actual color of the landscape, predators take note. 

snowshoe hare changing color, photo by John Bates

            So, research is taking place in numerous locations to try to quantify what this means now, and will mean in the future. A University of Wisconsin study comparing Wisconsin hare populations in 1980 to 2014 demonstrated an obvious northward shift in their distribution with the current decreased duration of snow cover identified as the principal contributing factor. Snow cover duration less than 110 days appears to be a threshold below which hares face local extinction.

            The far larger issue in this is that the annual duration of snowpack is projected to decrease by 29 to 35 days by midcentury and 40 to 69 days by the end of the century, leaving the fate of the population of snowshoe hares in northern Wisconsin up in the air.

            Continued changes in winter weather will continue to impact other northern species as well – hares are just one example. 

 

October Temperatures

            According to NOAA's October 2021 global climate summary, Earth's average surface temperature in October was 1.60 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the twentieth-century average of 57.2 degrees F. That makes it the fourth-warmest October in the 142-year record. 

            Unusually high October temperatures were present across much of northern Canada, parts of the northeastern contiguous U.S., north of the equator in South America and Africa, and south-central Asia. The unusually warm temperatures contributed to the warmest October on record for Northern Hemisphere land areas. Only a few scattered locations were cooler than average, most notably the tropical Pacific Ocean, where La Niña was underway.

            Octobers today are nearly two degrees F warmer on average than they used to be.

 

Celestial Events

            The year’s earliest sunset is occurring right now on 12/10 – 4:13 in the afternoon. The sun begins to set one minute later on 12/12, this for the first time since June 23^rd.

            The Comet Leonard, the brightest comet of the year, will be visible for a couple of weeks in December as it shoots past us some 21 million miles away on 12/12. Leonard will look like a round, hazy speck with its tail pointing straight up. The comet is seen in the early morning, so look high to the northeast around 5 a.m. Later in the month it will slowly sink in the eastern sky and appear a little after sunset in the southwest. 

            The peak Geminid meteor shower occurs on the night of 12/13 through the predawn of 12/14. They average from 50 to 100 per hour, so it might be worth the shivering to take a peek.

            Everyone knows the astronaut who first set foot on the moon – Neil Armstrong – but do you know the last astronaut to set foot on the moon? It was Eugene Cernan on 12/14, 1972.

            December’s full moon occurs on 12/18. Called the “Cold” or “Long Night” or “Popping Trees” moon, it will be our most distant and small full moon of the year.

            Between 12/19 and 12/22, the sun will reach the year’s lowest altitude above the horizon. At only 20.7° above the horizon, it will be 46.9° lower than its altitude during summer solstice. 

            Which brings us to Winter Solstice, and I say hooray to that! The solstice occurs on 12/21, giving us our shortest day of 8 hours and 39 minutes and longest night of 15 hours and 21 minutes. Our days begin to grow longer on 12/23, but only in seconds. It won’t be until 12/30 that we start to gain a minute more per day of daylight.

            And on a personal note, on 12/11, I turn 70 years old (a celestial event of sorts in my world), which as nearly everyone who has turned 70 knows, is impossible since my brain says I’m still 27. I first began writing this column in June of 1990, so you’ve all wasted a lot of time reading this stuff over the last 31 ½ years. But I sure appreciate it.

 

Thought for the Week

            We have often heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is usually taken to mean that the sense of beauty is utterly subjective; there is no accounting for taste because each person's taste is different. The statement has another, more subtle meaning: if our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine forth for us. We will be surprised to discover beauty in unexpected places where the ungraceful eye would never linger. The graced eye can glimpse beauty anywhere, for beauty does not reserve itself for special elite moments or instances; it does not wait for perfection but is present already secretly in everything. When we beautify our gaze, the grace of hidden beauty becomes our joy and our sanctuary. – John O’Donohue, from his book Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

 

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.

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 11/26/21

 A Northwoods Almanac for 11/26 – 12/9 /21   

Sightings – First Pine Grosbeaks and Common Redpolls

            November usually ushers in the first winter finch visitors from Canada, and this year has been no different. We saw our first pine grosbeaks feeding in one of our highbush cranberries on 11/18, and then saw our first common redpolls on 11/20 at our seed feeders.

female pine grosbeak feeding on crabapples, photo by John Bates

            For those of us who feed birds throughout the winter, these birds are eagerly awaited and deeply appreciated, because they are not a guaranteed thing every winter. A “Winter Finch Forecast” is put out annually by Tyler Hoar, from the Finch Research Network in Ontario, Canada, and his bottom line is that this should not be an irruption year though some southerly movement of most of the finches will occur. Along the southern edge of the boreal forest, a belt of good to bumper food crops are reported from Lake Superior eastward through Central Ontario, southern Quebec Atlantic Canada to Newfoundland, southward to Northern New England, and New York state.

            West of the Great Lakes, however, extreme drought and record-setting high temperatures this summer have played a significant part in their winter forecast. With over 2000 forest fires stretching from Northwestern Ontario to British Columbia, and severe droughts in wide areas westward from Lake Superior, food sources have been significantly impacted. 

             So, further west, many northern birds are going to have to move south to find food. But here in the Midwest and further east, most can stay put. For instance, with the excellent spruce, hemlock and eastern white cedar crop across southeastern Canada and Northeastern border states, most pine siskins in the east should remain in this area for the winter. Likewise, given that the seed crops on birches, alders and spruce are average to good,  most redpolls will likely stay north. 

common redpoll, photo by Bev Engstrom

And since there is a widespread good to excellent crop of mountain ash berries from Lake Superior eastward, most pine grosbeaks and bohemian waxwings will likely stay closer to home. 

bohemian waxwing, photo by Bev Engstrom

            Still, I bet we’ll get a smattering of all these species this winter, just not dozens at everyone’s feeders. When they do appear, their relative rarity will make their presence all the sweeter.

 

Snowy Owls – A Non-Irruption Year So Far

            Every few years, large numbers of snowy owls move into the state, an event known as an “irruption.” One of the largest irruptions in recent history was the winter of 2017-18, when 280 snowy owls were documented in Wisconsin. This winter the numbers look slimmer, according to Ryan Brady, Conservation Biologist for the WDNR’s Bureau of Natural Heritage Conservation: “As of November 15, only three snowy owls have been documented in Wisconsin this season, including the first in Burnett County on October 23, another in Sawyer on November 9, and the latest in Kewaunee on November 13. These low numbers are reflected elsewhere as eBird only shows three reports from Michigan, two in North Dakota, and none in Minnesota, as well as only a handful in New England and none in the western United States.

            “Such low totals by this date suggest an irruption is unlikely this year. For example, in the irruptions of 2014, 2015, and 2017, our statewide totals were already 28, 79, and 41, respectively. Meanwhile, in non-irruption years like 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2020, our totals were 2, 14, 3 and 2. The outlier, for those still hopeful of a big year, was 2013, which featured a huge irruption across Wisconsin and the eastern U.S., was also late to unfold and had only one owl in the state as of this date.”

             

snowy owl, photo by Bob Kovar

            If you want to see a snowy owl, you’ll almost certainly have to depart our forested lands for treeless places and wide-open landscapes that mimic the snowy owls’ nesting areas in the Arctic tundra. Airports, shorelines, and farm fields are typically the best areas. To track sightings around the state, visit the eBird website at ebird.org/wi and click on “Explore” to search a customizable map for sightings in Wisconsin.  

 

November Subtleties

            I wrote this 15 years ago, but I think it bears repeating:

            Appreciating the post-fall colors of November is for the most part an exercise in developing appreciation for the multiple shades of yellow and brown. The burgundy of red oak leaves and the deep greens of conifers offer some background contrast, but they play second fiddle during this brief snowless period to these yellow-browns that take on dozens of muted hues. 

            Sounds grow muted as well. The wind interprets what is left on the landscape, raspily singing in a brittle voice. It rushes through dry stems that no longer allow the summer wind to almost purr in its passage through green leaves.

            It’s easy to feel a deep melancholy in the threadbare skeleton that November presents. The decreasing daylight, the chill that comes through your coat, the heavy frosts, the gray skies—all of these carry some emotional weight for those of us who think about mortality. I think some of us run south for the winter not just to escape the cold, but to escape the feeling of loss that November exhales. 

But there’s cause for celebration, too—it’s just not as easy to find as it was in the overindulgence of summer. Buds have formed and are alive in every perennial plant, bristling from the tips of every branch, and embedded with all the life created in the biological storm of summer. Most mammals have put on fat, glossed up and thickened out their fur, while some, like male moose and deer, stumble exhaustedly into winter after a month-long hormonal rut that would make the writers of grocery store tabloids go faint. Arctic owls and songbirds glide in and take up residence in what to them must appear mild weather. Sunsets and sunrises seem more intense, the last blue on lakes more startling. Billions of seeds lie under leaves, awaiting the cycle of freezing and thawing to break open into new life. 

You can walk with regret or with gratitude in the brilliant leaves lining every trail; watch with sullenness or appreciation as the squirrels and chipmunks steal your bird food; hear the rattle of dry seeds as the death of the year or the promise of a new one; scowl at the cold or enjoy the warmth of the woodstove and the smell of oak fires.

Despite November’s somber tone, remember we’re alive, still part of it all, and hopefully, still wide open to the grace of every new day. 

 

Recommended Books for Christmas

            Here are my annual unsolicited, but at least free, thoughts on five great books to give for Christmas:

            Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. Suzanne Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence and has written a wonderful book on her path of discovering that trees actually communicate between one another.

            The Democracy of Species by Robin Wall Kimmerer. This slim 88-page book is part of the Penguin series “Green Ideas,” a collection of 20 short books on the environment. This series also includes similarly short books by Terry Tempest Williams, Wendell Berry, Jared Diamond, Edward O. Wilson, and others. I just learned about the series, so – full disclosure – I haven’t read any yet. But I’m betting the series is exceptional given the all-star team they’ve assembled.

            Earth’s Wild Music: Celebrating and Defending the Songs of the Natural World by Kathleen Dean Moore. One reviewer said this, “Every essay is a sortie into deep engagement with the natural world . . . Earth’s Wild Music is a lamentation, an exaltation, an impassioned indictment and most definitely a call to action.” I love the writing of Kathleen Dean Moore, so I recommend any of her earlier books as well.

            The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees by Douglas Tallamy. I’m always drawn to any writer who can tell the deep and complex stories of the lives of trees. Read Tallamy’s 2009 book Bringing Nature Home, too.  

            And Wisconsin’s Wild Lakes: A Guide to the Last Undeveloped Natural Lakes by John Bates. I rarely indulge in self-promotion in this column, but I’ve just released this book, today as a matter of fact, and I’m genuinely proud of both its quality and its exceptional color illustrations by Manitowoc artist Rebecca Jabs. If you enjoy paddling or sitting by a peaceful, wild lake, I think you’ll find this guide truly useful.   

 

Celestial Events

            We missed the lunar eclipse on the early morning of 11/19 due to complete cloud cover, which was unfortunate given the next two nights were crystal clear. Hopefully wherever you were the skies were clear and you got up to watch it.

            Marshes and lake shoreline edges are icing up now. According to Woody Hagge’s 45-year average ice-up date for Foster Lake in Hazelhurst, 11/27 should be the magic date. But lots depends on the size of the lake, wind speeds, the shape of the lake, and of course, the severity of our temperatures. Foster Lake now averages 140 days, or about 20 weeks, of ice-cover annually.

            We’re down to nine hours of daylight as of 11/29 as we continue our journey toward winter solstice on 12/21 when we will bottom-out at 8 hours and 39 minutes.

            The moon will be at perigee, its closest to the earth in 2021, on 12/4. If you live on an ocean coastline, this means bigger tides.

            Planet watching in December is mostly all about what’s visible after dusk. Look for Venus low in the southwest and setting after 7 p.m., Jupiter in the south-southwest and setting by 10p.m., and Saturn in the southwest and setting after 8 p.m.

            Mars can be seen before dawn very low in the southeast. Look for Mars just below the waning crescent moon on the morning of 12/2.

            The new moon occurs on 12/4. 

            Look for Venus nearly 2 degrees above the waxing crescent moon on 12/6.

 

Thought for the Week

            I love science and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it. – Robert M. Sapolsky

 

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.

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 11/12/21

A Northwoods Almanac for 11/12 – 25, 2021  by John Bates

 

Moose and Wolves on Isle Royale

            You may recall the controversy from 2015 regarding whether wolves should be reintroduced to Isle Royale National Park  in Lake Superior. After three years of evaluating various alternatives, wolves were finally reintroduced beginning in 2018. Recently, I was able to tune into a talk given by Dr. Rolf Peterson, who has studied Isle Royale’s wolves for 40 years, that summarized the current status of the reintroduction effort. If you want the official story from the NPS, check:

https://www.nps.gov/isro/learn/nature/upload/NPS-SUNY-ISRO_Web_Accessible_Isle-Royale-Wolf-Summary-Report-2018-2020_Compressed.pdf

            But here’s a much shorter synopsis. Wolves used to be able to cross the winter ice bridge from mainland Minnesota to populate Isle Royale. But an ice bridge now only occurs one year out of ten compared to eight years out of ten historically. The lack of mainland wolves to continually repopulate, and thus bring genetic variability, to the island led to genetic inbreeding, which led to the nearly complete demise of the wolf population on the island. The long-term average number of wolves was 22, and by 2015 there were just two, both related and unable to successfully breed new young. 

            The loss of the apex predator, the wolves, on the island led to an astronomical increase in moose. In 2005, moose numbered less than 500, but by 2015, their population had soared to over 2,000, or about 2 per square mile. The moose quickly began to overharvest balsam fir, their favorite browse, and decimated the fir, creating what was termed a “moose savannah” for its lack of fir trees. Ecologists estimate that the island can only support 500 moose before the island’s trees are negatively affected.

            Concurrently, beavers, another prey item of wolves, also began a population spurt, and increased fivefold between 2010 and 2020. The moose, meanwhile, proceeded to also decimate populations of watershield, a high protein aquatic plant, which created a host of problems in and around the ponds and lakes on the island by reducing shorelines to muddy pulps. By 2018, the ever-increasing beavers, who love watershield, too, began to run out of food, which resulted in a dramatic decline. Their numbers plummeted, causing the dams they usually maintain on ponds and lakes to fail, which led to water levels falling. The resultant mud pits left behind led to four moose getting stuck in the mud and dying. 

            All of this shows the need for an apex predator on the landscape to maintain population balances among prey species. Prey species need predators, just as predators need prey.

            So, what about the wolves? Nineteen wolves were eventually introduced: four from the Grand Portage Ojibwe Reservation in Minnesota, three from mainland Ontario, four from the U.P. of Michigan, and eight from Michipicoten Island in Lake Superior which had an overabundance of wolves (another fascinating story altogether). All the wolves were ear-tagged and radio-collared, and then released.

            The first female from Michipicoten had two pups in 2019, and in 2020, two other packs produced an unknown number of pups, because now Covid entered the picture, and research on the island ground to a halt. Likewise, Covid prevented adequate research to take place in 2021, but it’s believed another two or three litters were produced.

NPS photo

NPS photo

            And what of the 19 adults that were introduced to the island? Half have died – the average lifespan of an adult wolf is after all only four years.

            Fast forward to the present now that the wolves have arrived, and moose numbers are declining, and balsam fir is regrowing. How quickly the beaver population will rebound, however, is still unfolding.

            The primary lesson in all this, said Peterson, was that animal populations are self-regulating. The density of a population is regulated by its food supply, both for prey and predator species. It all comes down to an ever-fluctuating balance.

            Peterson also was asked about the wolf harvest in Wisconsin. He noted that wolf depredation on farm animals is real, but that the broad harvest of wolves doesn’t address the actual problems.

            

Camp Mercer CCC Interpretive Trail

            On 11/5, an event was held to celebrate the opening of the Camp Mercer CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp) Interpretive Trail, a collaborative project of the Northern Highlands American Legion (NHAL) State Forest, the Wisconsin Historical Society and state archaeologists, the Manitowish Waters Historical Society, and ICORE (Iron County Outdoor Recreation Enthusiasts). The new trail includes 23 interpretive signs along a 2.5 mile trail loop, which can be accessed from the Mercer Bike Trail near the Highway 51 wayside or from the west side of Manitowish River Access Road.

            Camp Mercer was established in 1933 along the banks of the Manitowish River as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) 660th Company. At its peak, the camp housed over 200 men, and over its nine years represented individuals from 190 different Wisconsin communities. The camp served as one of 14 Wisconsin forestry camps that fought forest fires, planted trees, worked on soil erosion and conservation, improved lake and stream habitats, built bridges and roads, and much more. 

            President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) launched the CCC in the New Deal’s famous “First 100 Days” where he proposed to recruit thousands of unemployed young men into a peacetime army and send them into battle against the destruction of our natural resources. At its peak in 1935, the CCC enrolled 500,000 men at 2,600 camps across the country. 

         By the time the CCC program ended at the start of World War II, Roosevelt’s “Tree Army” had planted more than 3.5 billion trees on land made barren from fires, natural erosion, intensive agriculture or lumbering. In fact, the CCC was responsible for over half the reforestation, public and private, done in the nation’s history. They also constructed trails and shelters in more than 800 parks nationwide, helping to shape the modern national and state park systems we enjoy today. In total, there were 194 CCC work camps in 94 national parks and 697 camps in 881 state and local parks across the US.

         They also fought fires. The total number of hours logged by CCC firefighters from 1933 to 1942 was the equivalent of 6.5 million days. During the nine years that the CCC was operational, the annual acreage of U.S. forest lost to fire sunk to its lowest point ever, because tens of thousands of young CCC enrollees were employed as either full-time or emergency firefighters. Plus, CCC workers constructed more than 3,000 fire towers, many of which are still in use today. 

         Their work not only improved the land and water, it helped the men become more employable once they finished their service. Many corpsmen received supplemental basic and vocational education, and it’s estimated that some 57,000 illiterate men learned to read and write in CCC camps.

            As for the Mercer Camp, only one intact structure remains on the site – a dynamite shack – but visitors to the trail will see remnants of Camp Mercer’s roads and foundations as well as evidence of earlier logging camps and other activity. The superb interpretive signage helps visitors learn about the history of the site with photos and narratives describing life at Camp Mercer and the people who lived and worked there. 

            ICORE has entered into a land use agreement with the NHAL, and with help of  the Mercer Cross Country Ski Association (MECCA), will maintain the new Camp Mercer trail.

            The closest CCC camp to Camp Mercer was the Lac Du Flambeau CCC Indian Division Camp on Pokegama Lake. Wisconsin had six Ojibwa and one Ho Chunk Indian Division CCC camps during the New Deal.

 

Black Bear Dens

            Most black bears are denned-up by mid-November with only a few males still occasionally wandering around. Black bears’ favorite denning sites are in standing hollow trees, but few trees are allowed to reach the mature stage at which the center rots and becomes hollow. Such trees can be found in portions of the Boundary Waters Wilderness Canoe Area in northeastern Minnesota, especially where they were fire-scarred a half century or more ago.

            Rock crevices and caves are also used as dens, and can remain useable for centuries. Interestingly, they’re usually not used again by the same bear and usually not in successive years by any bears. The den that researchers in one study found being used the most during four decades of research was used three times, each time by a different bear, and each time after an interval of six years.

            Dens are also dug into hillsides or under the root system of a tree. The problem with dug dens is that they often collapse after use and therefore are seldom reused.

            Bears also may den under the crown of downed trees or in brushy slash piles, while some bears just rake up a bed on the ground near a windbreak. And a few males occasionally just lay on top of the snow and get covered by new snows.

            Lynn Rogers, well-known bear researcher, says that bears often make insulating beds by raking leaves, grass, moss, and other ground vegetation into the dens and arranging it to their liking. When those materials are unavailable, they may bite small branches off trees, strip the bark off cedar trees, or chew rotten wood into chips.

 

Celestial Events

            The peak Leonid Meteor Shower occurs during the predawn of 11/17 – expect around 15 meteors per hour. 

            The full moon – the “Ice is Forming” moon – occurs on 11/19. That same morning, a nearly total lunar eclipse – 97% covered by the earth’s shadow – takes place, with only a sliver of the moon outside the Earth’s shadow. Most of the moon is expected to turn a ruddy color. The partial eclipse begins at 1:18 a.m., and achieves its greatest eclipse just after 3 a.m. The show will end at 4:47, and will be the longest of this century at 3 hours and 28 minutes.

 

Thought for the Week

Knowing what I do, there would be no future peace for me if I kept silent. To sin by silence, when we should protest, makes cowards out of men. –  Rachel Carson in a letter to her closest friend Dorothy Freeman ninety days before the release of her 1962 book Silent Spring. 

 

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.

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 10/15/21

 A Northwoods Almanac for 10/15 – 28, 2021  by John Bates

 

Sightings –Great Horned Owls and Blue Jays

            Carne Andrews sent me a note on 10/5 saying, “About 10 PM last night we heard two great horned owls exchanging their deep-throated hoots back and forth across Echo Lake for the first time since last January!” In Manitowish, we’ve been hearing a great horned owl as well. This fits what we should expect every fall, because the male typically begins what is called “advertisement hooting” in late September or early October. What’s most interesting to me about his advertising is that great horneds are believed to be monogamous. The literature says no polygamy has been observed: “Pairs may mate for at least five years and perhaps for life . . . monitoring by telemetry provided no evidence for extra-pair copulations,” which is the fancy way of saying neither the male or female is stepping-out on the other. 

            So, who’s he advertising for if he’s monogamous? 

            Beats me, though it may just be a way of shoring up the existing pair bond, sort of like a redo of your wedding vows, or maybe they’re just romantics.

            If you’re hearing them at night, you can tell the difference between the male and female calls. The male vocalizations are more prolonged and deeper, likened by one writer to the sound “of a distant foghorn, soft, somewhat tremulous, and subdued with little or no accent,” while the female vocalizations are higher in pitch. Despite the fact she is larger in size, she has a smaller syrinx.

            The paired couple often synchronize their songs, which is known as duetting, and the crooning can last over 60 minutes. The male begins calling during or within a few seconds after the female's song. In Wisconsin, territorial hooting ends in mid-February, in keeping with the laying of the first eggs, which typically occurs in late February and into March. 

            Great horneds don’t just make lovely mellow hootings. I hope you’ve had the chance to hear their various shrieks, hisses, soft cooing notes and tremulous cries, sounds that famed ornithologist Arthur Cleveland Bent described in 1938 as “weird, hollow-toned and idiotic laughter.”

            Well, that’s not all. Courting pairs are also known to indulge in high-pitched giggling, screaming, and bill-snapping, as well as much bowing and bobbing and posturing and bill-rubbing and preening, all leading finally to copulation, which usually lasts about seven seconds, thus concluding the courtship in little more than a few heartbeats. 

            As a last note, great horneds are adapted to survive in all climates, from deserts to grasslands to suburbs to forests, all that is except arctic-alpine regions. No other American owl has anywhere close to their extensive range and their variation in nesting sites – see the attached range map.

great-horned owl distribution map

            As for blue jays, on 10/3, a friend in Lac du Flambeau witnessed an interesting phenomenon. “It was around 7:30 on Friday a.m. and I looked up to see several blue jays fluttering around in the tops of oak trees, hopping from branch to branch, and shaking the leaves. I heard many acorns dropping to the ground as they did so, and it seemed they were intentionally shaking branches to make the acorns drop. It puzzled me as to why they would do this – do blue jays eat acorns? I didn't see any fly to the ground after dislodging so many acorns. Were they perhaps feeding the squirrels? I wondered if this is some kind of symbiotic relationship between blue jays and squirrels, with the birds feeding the squirrels – but to what purpose? Was it altruism, or do they depend on squirrels to help them somehow survive?”

            Well, I’d be surprised if blue jays had any altruistic feeling for squirrels, given that squirrels are known to raid bird nests, not to mention that both are very aggressive to other species when it comes to food.

photo by Bev Engstrom

            Rather, I think the blue jays inadvertently feed squirrels that are quicker to get to the acorns. Blue jays love acorns and cache thousands of them prior to winter. They prefer pin oak acorns over red oaks, apparently due to the red oak’s higher concentration of tannins. In one study in Virginia, a community of 50 blue jays moved and cached about 150,000 acorns harvested from 11 pin oak trees during one season. Each bird thus cached an average of 3,000 acorns by selecting and hiding an average of 107 acorns per day. 

            Blue jays typically bury seeds so that the seed is protected from drying. Of course, they don’t find them all, and their seed dispersal has often been discussed as a major force in the rapid movement of trees northward following the last glaciation of North America. Thus, when blue jays make choices about which tree nuts are harvested, they become the Johnny Appleseed’s of the bird world, often determining in part what our future forests look like.

 

Butterfly Strategies to Survive Winter 

            Winter is a true Armageddon for insects. I’ve often wondered how many insects die during the first hard frost of the fall – it must be millions/billions! But every insect species has had to evolve a strategy to make it through to spring, and dying, strange as this may sound, is actually one of the most commonly employed options! Think of mosquitoes, dragonflies, mayflies, and hundreds of other species that lay their eggs in or on the water, or on land in the leaf litter, in wood piles, or in cracks in tree bark and rocks. And then the adults die. The entire adult population dies, leaving the continuity of the species to their unborn young. Quite an act of faith!

            Let’s look at butterflies in particular. Most everyone knows that monarch butterflies are unique in utilizing a two-way migration to their overwintering sites in Mexico, many traveling 3,000 miles or more. 

            A few others, however, may make a partial migration south, species like common buckeye, American lady, red admiral, and question mark.

            A small number choose instead to overwinter in hibernation as an adult butterfly, like painted ladies, some questions marks, Compton tortoiseshell, and mourning cloaks, utilizing chemical compounds known as glycols to prevent ice crystals from forming in their body. 

            Others overwinter in hibernation in a chrysalis, like Canadian tiger swallowtails, American coppers, and spring azures.

            Still others overwinter in hibernation as caterpillars, like great spangled fritillary, Baltimore checkerspot, northern crescent, viceroys, and white admirals.

            Those that lay eggs that then must survive the winter include hairstreaks, bog coppers, and the European skipper.

            You can help overwintering butterflies in whatever form they take by not cutting down plants in your garden where they may already have formed their chrysalis, laid eggs, or are tucked in as a caterpillar or adult. Most folks want to “put their garden to bed” for the winter, but some butterflies, and other insects, may already be in bed in your garden. So, if you can withstand the need to tidy everything up, the insect world would be appreciative.

 

2020 Iowa Derecho – 7.2 Million Trees Damaged

            An update: The Iowa DNR released a new report last month on the August 10, 2020, hurricane-force derecho (da-ray-sho) that roared through cities in Iowa like Cedar Rapids, Des Moines and Davenport. Winds reached 140 mph in some counties, damaging thousands of homes, businesses and vehicles, along with millions of acres of cropland. The state cumulatively sustained $11.5 billion in damage, according to NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), which calls the derecho the “costliest thunderstorm in U.S. history.” Cedar Rapids alone lost 669,000 mature trees, roughly 70% of its urban canopy.

 

Frost?

            What frost? As of 10/12, we’ve yet to experience a frost in Manitowish. We’ve come close – we’ve had a couple nights where temperatures fell to 33° – but that’s the closest.

            So, we still have ripe tomatoes coming. Others tell me of still harvesting green peppers and other hot-weather plants.

            From a gardener’s point of view, this is pretty great. For a longer term perspective, however, we’ve lived in Manitowish for 37 years. For the first 15 years or so that we lived here, we always had a frost around August 20^th, and we were never able to plant hot weather vegetables until after June 12, which unfailingly seemed to be when we’d have our last frost of the spring. So, we had a 70-day growing season. That is, until the last decade. Now frosts hold off until mid-September, or in the case of this year, until at least mid-October. This isn’t just a local phenomenon – see the graph for the increase in the number of frost-free days nationally.   So, here’s climate change in motion – longer growing seasons. Of course, this benefit comes at a cost, and the balance sheet shows the negatives far outweighing the positives.

increase in number of frost-free days

 

Celestial Events

            The full moon (the “Hunter’s,” “Ice is Falling,” or “Falling Leaves” moon) occurs on 10/20. The moon will rise north of east for the first time since February.

            The peak Orionid meteor shower takes place in the predawn on 10/21, but the light of the full moon will make viewing difficult.

            Beginning 10/22, the average low temperature drops below 32° for the first time since April 22. Minocqua averages 183 days with low temperatures below freezing. 

            We’re down to 10 hours and 31 minutes of daylight as of 10/23.

 

Thought for the Week

            “The best and biggest benefits of water are all emotional . . . We love being in, on, under, around, or near it . . . Try as we might, no amount of scientific data, MRI scans, EEG readings, or carefully designed research projects can really show us exactly what we feel at those moments.” – Wallace J. Nichols, Blue Mind

 

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.