A Northwoods Almanac for August 6 – 19, 2021 by John Bates
Storms and Blowdowns
Last week, some very strong thunderstorms knocked down a lot of trees throughout much of our area. These are always heartbreaking events, because we come to love “our” trees for all that they do for us, from offering shade to beauty to birdlife to even fruits and nuts that we can pick.
I’ve written in this column before about the ecological values of blowdowns, but here’s a reminder. We usually describe a major blowdown as a disaster, but portraying a blowdown this way fails to account for the long-term. Individual trees are always dying, and averaged over 100 years, the total mortality of trees in a forest that hasn’t been hit by a massive storm will be very nearly the same as the one that was hit by one. That’s the long view.
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| tip-up mound/blowdown photo by John Bates |
Still, a blowdown can take a lot of trees out of a forest. So, does a blowdown decrease the conservation value of a forest? If we narrowly see a forest as merely a collection of old trees, then “yes.” But the answer is “no” if we broadly see a forest as a functionally intact natural ecosystem, a place where all natural processes are at work. Death and life always intermingle dynamically in forests, with some trees perhaps dying young and “too soon” while others may withstand centuries of changes all around them. That’s simply the way of it.
This is a hard concept to wrap our arms and hearts around. Seeing huge old trees snapped off after a storm, or uprooted and scattered like straws, feels devastating. The heart hurts, and for a long time. But if we can divorce ourselves from the immediate visual impact, remembering that forests are a complex jumble of young and old and everything in between, and then envision a vibrant future, perhaps we can live more readily with the change.
But it will never be easy. The heart always holds sway over the intellect, and so we need to emotionally accept change as best we can, and then ask that our hearts deeply inform our rational thinking.
Here’s what my good friend Bob Kovar in Manitowish Waters had to say after the storm last week: “After surviving a thousand windstorms in its thick and leafy lifetime, a huge oak, the Ancient One, fell without a sound in the furious winds of the storm the other night. It is a sad realization when our elders, the most dignified beings among us, the ones stories are written about because even though they have never gone anywhere they somehow have seen IT ALL and survived to tell us and teach us about these things (if we ever take the time to listen), that even these majestic creatures are mortal. On the way down, it grabbed hold of its closest neighbor, the Great Pine, hugging it with such force as it took its last gigantic breaths in the wind and the lightening and the driving rain that the Great Pine came up by its roots trying to save its oldest friend with whom it had shared a million stories of eagles and squirrels and raccoons and full moons and snowstorms and this one family with all their little kids running circles around their feet. During the ceremonial autopsy yesterday morning, I noted the Ancient One had hollowed around the base over the decades, a decay in body that only spoke to the implausible strength of character it must have had to hold up a thousand tons of solid wood for so many decades, so magnificently, without ever uttering one word of complaint.”
Bryozoa
On 8/1, I paddled a wild lake by the name of “Dry Lake”, which thankfully remains quite wet because Mary and I are leading a paddle trip today, 8/5, for the North Lakeland Discovery Center. Dry Lake has more bryozoa than any other lake I've ever been on. These organisms look like an alien creature, or someone’s brain gone bad, but they indicate good water quality and are utterly harmless. I’ve written about them before, but if you don’t remember, each one is an extremely odd, but fascinating colony of “moss-animals”. The blobs resemble a stiff, clear-gray Jell-O that is actually 99 percent water, and is firm and slimy at the same time to the touch. The surface of the mass is divided into tiny rosettes, each containing 12 to 18 “zooids”, and if you could look through a microscope underwater, you’d see that the zooids have whorls of delicate feeding tentacles that sway slowly in the water and capture food.
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| bryozoa - Dry Lake - photo by John Bates |
Massive colonies can be as big as basketballs, although typical sizes are less than a foot. The colonies form on submerged logs, twigs, even wooden dock posts. They feed on small microorganisms, including diatoms and other unicellular algae, and amply demonstrate how amazing, and odd, this world can be.
Sightings – Pileateds, Monarchs, Red-headed Woodpeckers, Swimming Eagle
Gordy Moscinski sent me a photo of a log feeder that he hangs beneath his suet cage to make it easier for pileated woodpeckers to feed. He notes, “I even stuff the holes with suet. The log cut flat on top catches the crumbs or cleans the beak.”
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| photo by Gordy Moscinski |
Steve Sash on Pine Lake in the Town of Oma sent me photos of some folks in Oma who are raising monarch butterfly caterpillars. Steve says, “So far as of today, 7/26, they have released 306 adults with the ratio of males to females 54% to 46%. They raise them in a cage to increase survivability of the caterpillars and eggs. Ants seem to like the eggs, parasitic wasps inject eggs into them and kill caterpillars, stinkbugs suck body fluids out of them and who knows what else kill them. Probably 280 of the caterpillars were removed from the 4 foot by 4 foot raised bed patch in their back yard (pictured). That to me is a simply amazing concentration of butterflies. They have been raising them for 3 years.”
I asked him to describe how they do this, and here’s his response: “The 4'x4' raised bed box is where the milkweeds are growing from which they harvest the caterpillars. A cage that the caterpillars are raised in is from Petco.com. It is called a Zilla Fresh Air Screen habitat for Reptiles (large) ($80). Modifications to the cage have to be made to be successful. A wood lattice should be attached to the top inside of the cage for the caterpillars to hang from when they are making their cocoons. Caterpillars cannot attach to the screen material for some reason. The air holes on the left rear screen needs to be plugged to prevent small caterpillars from escaping. We put water bottles with milkweeds in them to feed them. Milkweed should be fresh and not wilted. Caterpillars removed from swamp milkweed do not do well if their diet is changed from swamp milkweed to the upland milkweed, and we don't recommend taking caterpillars from swamp milkweed.”
I’ve attached a couple photos to help everyone picture this.
I was curious about Dan’s reference to the parents “hiding” seeds in tree crevices. I wrote about red-headed woodpeckers doing this several months ago, but just as a reminder: Red-headed woodpeckers are “one of only 4 of 198 woodpecker species that commonly store food, and the only woodpecker known to cover stored food with pieces of wood or bark . . . Caches insects (particularly grasshoppers), acorns, and beechnuts, breaking them to fit natural cracks and crevices in posts, in cavities of partially decaying trees, or under patches of raised bark . . . Hammers acorns into crevices so tightly that other animals (e.g., blue jays) cannot remove them.” So, were the parents training the chicks to learn how to store food? Almost certainly.
Al Toussaint sent me this email on 7/22: “Our neighbor came running over yesterday, worried about the eagle he saw swimming far out from shore here on Lake Alva. The sight was something I have seen before while fishing in Alaska. The usual cause there was the bird sinking its talons into a fish that was too large for the eagle to get off the water. Unfortunately, here on Alva, it also could have been the result of far too many encounters between eagles and our loon family. However, the too big fish reason appeared to be the case. We motored out to watch the eagle, and it flew off onto a shoreline pine. When we approached the spot where the eagle flew from, we found a large, very white, very dead fish that had sunk to the bottom, its swim bladder likely punctured when bird grabbed it. The encounter ended with eagle spending a good amount of time perched in the tree drying its wings.”
And Mary Jo Oyer in Mercer sent me this: “I saw this yearling cub when I went out on our deck this evening. It looked like it was pretending to be a bear rug. A few minutes later I didn’t see it through my window, so I went back out, and it was smelling my flowers. I think it could smell the allium, as it smells like an onion. I went back inside and grabbed my camera. It walked by our Packers garden flag as it left. I chuckled and told my husband, “Normally I am a Packers fan, but tonight I love ‘da Bear!” Haha!”
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| photo by Mary Jo Oyer |
Celestial Events – The Perseids!
The Perseid meteor shower runs from August 8 – 14, but peaks on the late evening of the 11th with the best time from midnight to dawn of the 12th. They average 60 per hour, or one per minute. Dark skies align well with the meteor shower in 2021, with the new moon occurring on 8/8. The meteors emanate from bits and pieces streaming from Comet Swift-Tuttle, which slam into the Earth’s upper atmosphere at some 130,000 miles per hour.
So, grab a reclining lawn chair, some blankets, and give yourself an hour of observation, because meteors come in spurts with lots of lulls. Plus, it takes your eyes nearly 20 minutes to become fully adapted to darkness. Finally, give yourself a wide-open sky to observe if you can, because the meteors will be streaking across the sky from many locations.
Wake Boats – Ban Them
Wake boats scour bottom sediments harming plant life and spawning grounds, stir up sediments creating murkier water and reintroducing phosphorous and other nutrients into the water promoting algal blooms, the waves erode shorelines, impact anglers and kayakers and pontooners, and on and on. Rather than continue with all the reasons why wake boats should be banned from all but our very largest and deepest lakes, just go to https://lastwildernessalliance.org.
The science is robust on this issue. For two comprehensive resources, see: http://www.trpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2010-WI-Dept-of-Natural-Resources_UW-Boats-effects-on-ecosystems. Also see a lengthy report put out by citizens in Presque Isle: https://piwi.us/CMS/files/2021/Condition%20Report_%20Presque%20Isle%20Hazardous%20%20Wake%20Ordinance.pdf.
Due to space constraints, I’m going to jump to heart of the matter, which is the “what can be done” question. Towns can enact ordinances banning wake boats. Towns already ban motor boats from many undeveloped lakes in our area, and have enacted ordinances restricting water skiing, jet skis, hours of operation, and more. So, towns should be able to ban wake boats.
The lakes in our area are primarily small and shallow kettle lakes – 88% of Oneida County lakes are less than 25 feet deep, while 50% of Vilas and Oneida County lakes are less than 10 acres. We are also a globally important area for our concentration of lakes, which the Northern Highlands American Legion State Forest says draws 2 million visitors to our area every year.
Let’s cut to the chase. There’s limits on virtually everything allowed in this world, from speeds on our roads, to zoning laws saying where one can build and in what manner, to allowable air/water/noise pollution, to how much harmful additives can be placed in our food, etc. There’s a point where someone’s “rights” exceed that which the vast majority are willing to tolerate. When do our responsibilities for protecting these pristine lakes outweigh an individual’s right to do as one pleases? We’re there now.
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.
Wake boats ban them!
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