A Northwoods Almanac for June 11- 24, 2021

A Northwoods Almanac for June 11- 24, 2021  

 

Sightings – Black Bear Olympic Swimmer, Cedar Waxwings, Moths, Frogs

5/27: Doug Denning who lives near Lake Tomahawk sent me this amazing and perplexing email: “On Sunday May 16 around noon, from our cabin deck, we spotted a large animal swimming a couple of hundred yards in front of our cabin. A friend of ours looked through binoculars and confirmed it was a large black bear. The bear appeared to be headed to shore but stopped and turned in the opposite direction and started swimming in circles. Dozens of times the bear appeared to head to shore but each time would resume swimming in circles. He eventually moved to the center of the lake but would always resume swimming in circles. The bear was in 50-60 feet deep waters. My wife contacted several agencies asking for advice in how to help the bear. Eventually she contacted a wildlife rescue member in Rhinelander who told her that we should try to use our boat to prod the bear to shore. Our pontoon boat had engine problems and we had hesitated in using it until there was no other option. After the bear had been swimming for about three hours we did go out and, along with slapping oars and moving toward the bear, the bear finally made it back to shore. The bear was very large. It shook off water and waddled back into the woods, and it seemed fine. The bear was in the water swimming for at least three hours!”

            Doug, of course, was looking for an explanation for this, and I had none. So I emailed three friends who are retired DNR wildlife managers or technicians with a lot of experience with bears, and they had no explanation either! Jeff Wilson and Terry Daulton did share a story of a fellow scientist who encountered a bear off Saxon Harbor on Lake Superior. “He was fishing 5-8 miles off the harbor, and he circled the bear with his boat (at a safe distance) and then left.  He was bewildered as it was headed straight north towards Canada.  He doubts the bear survived unless it turned back towards shore . . . We have seen them swim across small lakes, and they can swim from island to island in the Apostles (documented by radio telemetry).”

            So, could it have been escaping bugs, or disoriented due to age or injury or being pepper sprayed, or just out for a swim, or . . .? Any thoughts?

5/29: Cedar waxwings returned to our property today. They were eating blossoms in one of our crabapple trees. Their return provides the annual sign for me that spring is over and summer has begun, because cedar waxwings are usually our last breeding bird species to return, and Memorial Day weekend is when they nearly always appear. They may initiate egg-laying in early June but peak in the third or fourth week of June, coinciding with the availability of summer-ripening fruits. Relatively unique to them, waxwings arrive in flocks and stay in flocks, exhibiting a lack of territoriality during the breeding season which is very uncommon among birds. Watching a pair share food beak-to-beak while sitting next to each other on a branch is one of the most endearing sights in the bird world – I hope you’ve all seen this.

photo by Bev Engstrom

6/1: We heard our first-of-the-year Eastern gray tree frogs. If you’re not familiar with their “song,” and calling it a song is a huge stretch, listen for a staccato, very short blast of sound coming not from the water but from low in a shrub or a tree near water. 

6/4: Rob Tobin in Lac du Flambeau sent me a beautiful photo of a luna moth that was hanging on his screen porch. Luna caterpillars favor paper birch, so planting birches is one way to try and lure luna moths to your property.

photo by Rob Tobin

6/4: Speaking of moths, we live next door to the Ding-A-Ling restaurant in greater downtown Manitowish, and this morning Guy Ullman came over to say he had a big moth that he found while starting to unfurl their American flag. It turned out to be a gorgeous cecropia moth! These guys are big, with a wingspan up to 6 inches. Their caterpillars feed on tamaracks, so consider planting a few if you want to have a chance of attracting one.

6/5: Mary and I did the second round of the frog survey we do every year for the DNR, and our best stop of the night was at Whitney Lake where we heard five species – spring peepers, American toads, Eastern gray treefrogs, green frogs, and bullfrogs. I have to admit, however, that the highlight of the survey had nothing to do with frogs, but rather with hearing at least three different whip-poor-wills on a road off County W. This site was clear-cut a number of years ago, and while now growing up, it still supports a consistent population of whip-poor-wills, nighthawks, and woodcocks, all of which do well in open habitats. Our only concern was that we didn’t hear any nighthawks this time, but a five-minute stop isn’t enough to conclusively say whether a given species is present or absent.

6/6: Snappers and painted turtles began digging nests and laying eggs. One painted turtle was in our yard, its face against a fence, apparently stymied as to how to get around it. So, I picked her up and moved her close to our gravel driveway which over the years has been the site for many turtle nests. Snappers will lay 10-96 (average 25) spherical eggs while painteds will lay 4-20 (average 8) elongated eggs. The statistic that always wows me is that 5% to 10% of turtle eggs survive to hatch, and then maybe 1% to 3% of those will live to become adults. Turtle eggs and turtle hatchlings feed a lot of other animals! 

snapper laying eggs below one of our windows

 

White Flowers!

            We’ve planted a lot of native woody shrubs and trees on our property, and every spring and early summer we’re treated to a succession of white flowers. It begins with Juneberry trees (Amelanchier) and from there we get pear flowers, plum, strawberry, apple, pin cherry, chokecherry, black cherry, crabapple, blueberry, highbush cranberry, nannyberry, mountain ash, pagoda dogwood, red-osier dogwood, and downy arrowwood. Our white roses will soon come into bloom, too, and though not native, we love them.

            

nannyberry flowers at our home

The flowers on nearly all of these species came and went quickly, I suspect due to our dry weather. 

highbush cranberry flowers below our home

            On the wildflower side of things, in the last few years, both nodding trilliums and large-flowered trilliums have popped up on our property. How and why they’ve appeared we don’t know, but we’re sure appreciative. 

 

Powell Marsh Viewing Platform

            We have walked the dikes and watched birds on Powell Marsh for over three decades now, and never get tired of the beauty and diversity of the place. In recent years, a duck blind and viewing platform was built along the shore of the main overlook pool. This is a memorial to Rene Jonas’ son, Ezekiel John Jonas (Zeke), who lost his life on August 1st of 2013. He had a strong passion for the outdoors and the Powell Marsh in particular, and he would hunt there regularly. 

            The family worked with Michele Woodford and Eric Kroening from the DNR to bring the project to completion over a few years, and they would like to thank everyone who contributed financially to the memorial fund, and also to family and friends who assisted in the construction.   

            The platform is handicap-accessible and open to the public, and the family’s hope is that the project will help many people to enjoy all of the beauty that the Powell Marsh has to offer. I agree - it’s a great blind to sit in and watch birds, or to simply enjoy the peace of Powell’s enormous wetland community of life.

            Rene wanted to honor her son’s life and not have him be forgotten. I can’t think of a better way to have done that. Her efforts, along with the efforts of everyone else who helped, should be gratefully applauded. 

            The blind is easily accessed from a small paved parking lot just to the east of the main overlook parking area.

Jonas family at the blind, photo by Rene Jonas

Redstarts!

            Mary and I led a bird hike in Iron River, MI, on 5/26, and the bird of the morning was the American redstart. This little dynamo sings and sings – one source says the male sings up to 6 times per minute, and thus 300 to 400 times an hour. That’s a lot of crooning, and what’s interesting, and maddening about it, is the number of song variations this conspicuous little orange and black warbler generates. Here’s how Cornell’s “Birds of the World” describes the song: “Song consists of repeated, evenly spaced notes or phrases, which vary both within most individuals over time, and among individuals within local population. Different songs may be transcribed as see see see see, tsit tsit tsit tsit, tsee tsee tsee tsee, tsee-bit tsee-bit tsee-bit tsee-bit, tsita tsita tsita tsita, wee-see wee-see wee-see wee-see, tsee tsee tsee tseeo, or tsee tsee tsee tsiee, etc. (given here arbitrarily as 4-note songs).” 

            Got that? Suffice it to say, this can be a very hard bird to learn by ear because it has so much to say.

            I think of the male as the “Halloween” bird because of its orange-on-black plumage, but the plumage of first-year males resembles that of the female (light gray on head, gray to olive green on back, and whitish below with pale yellow patches on tail, wings, and sides), which adds to the visual complexity of this species.

            Look for its brightly colored tail “flash patterns,” which the redstart displays while fanning its tail and drooping its wings, or while flushing prey from vegetation.

 

Forget-me-nots (Myosotis oblongata) – Forget About Them!

            Just a FYI - these lovely little flowers are endearing but highly invasive. They’re currently spreading throughout our property, and we’re not sure how to knock them back other than by pulling them, which is a lot of work. The plant reproduces through spreading stolons (runners) and abundant seed production.

            Forget-me-not is native to Africa and was introduced to American gardens for its beauty and simplicity, but it can out-compete native growth and disrupt a healthy biodiversity. Forget-me-not is on the invasive plant list in several states, including Wisconsin. There is a native forget-me-not (Myosotis laxa) that is somewhat rare in Wisconsin, so one should be aware of this. However, we’ve never seen one.

            If you have this plant in your yard, pull it out no matter how sad it is to harm such a pretty little thing. 

 

CO2 Highest in Over 4 Million Years

            With levels not seen in over 4 million years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2), the chief human-caused greenhouse gas, averaged 419 parts per million at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, for the month of May. That’s 1.82 parts per million higher than May 2020 and 50% higher than the stable pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million. 

 

Thought for the Week

            “Whether you actually do anything bad, like wreck a piece of land or throw garbage out the window, if you don’t understand where you are, and be in some active relationship to it, then that is neglect . . . [Your relationship to nature] has to be a love affair with real grace, a sense of quality between yourself and the community of plants, animals, the climate, rocks, everything.” – Greta Ehrlich

 

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.