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.

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 10/1/21

 A Northwoods Almanac for 10/1 – 14, 2021  

Anniversary of the Great Peshtigo Fire 

            “Thus sped the days – fearful days – but they brought no relief. The sky was brass. The earth was ashes.” – Frank Tilton, 1871, Sketch of the Great Fires in Wisconsin. 

            America’s deadliest firestorm, the Peshtigo fire, occurred on October 8, 1871, 150 years ago next week. It was the first of many enormous fires that were to ensue over the next 50 years in northern Wisconsin and other areas of the Upper Midwest. Stephen Pyne, author of Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland Rural Fire (1982), wrote “Fires of unprecedented size and intensity rampaged over small villages and towns of moderate size and thereby earned names as historic events. Half a dozen holocausts achieved special notoriety because of damages to property and loss of life. Any one of them could qualify as perhaps the worst fire disaster in American experience. The fires were the product of a particular set of conditions: wholesale logging, which made the Lake States from 1880 to 1900 the chief source of timber and an unrivaled tinderbox of abandoned slash; farmers looking for cheap, easily cleared land and not adverse to using fire for landclearing, and railroads, whose transportation potential made both logging and farming economically feasible, and whose brakes and smokestacks were a frequent source of ignition.” 

These massive fires occurred throughout the Upper Midwest, and despite the variation in names, dates, and locations, they mimicked one another closely enough to offer a single blackened story. Only with the exhaustion of virgin timber, the abandonment of agricultural settlement, and the statewide commitment to fire control did the fires cease in the 1930s. Here’s a sampling of the fires of that era:

            1871: “The Black Year” (Pyne) saw fires burning simultaneously in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Minnesota, culminating in the Peshtigo Fire, which eclipsed all other fires of the era. Of Peshtigo’s 2,000 residents, over 1,800 died, though many sources estimate that the number throughout the region totaled 2,500.

            1886: “The forest fires which are now raging in Northern Wisconsin and Michigan promise a repetition of the calamity which happened 15 years ago . . . North of Wausau and Phillips the fires are reported as very fierce, and the cities are so enveloped in smoke that it is dark at midday. On the south between Wausau and Mosinee the woods are one sheet of flames. In the pine forest north, the fires have damaged the timber to a great extent . . . Reports from Colby say that the town will be burned tomorrow unless the wind changes. Marquette, MI, on the shore of Lake Superior is afire tonight.” (New York Times)

            1889: “Furious forest fires are raging in northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin, and an immense amount of damage has been done. For miles on three sides of Duluth the fire rages . . . On the Hermantown road, near Duluth, every dwelling for four miles has been destroyed . . . South of Ashland for 150 miles the forests are ablaze . . . Cumberland, WI, is almost wholly surrounded by fire . . . North of Grantsburg, WI, the fire has swept the country, destroying everything in its path.” (Bridgeport, Connecticut Morning News)

            1893: “The towns of Virginia and Iron Mountain in Michigan have been destroyed by forests fires . . . There are 2,000 people homeless in Virginia . . . Women and children are housed in box cars, but have nothing to eat and no engine to move them. Forest fires are raging all through northern Wisconsin and Michigan . . . It is likely to burn millions of feet of standing pine. Only a year ago Iron River was entirely destroyed by fire.” (The Columbian)

            1894: The Minnesota (Hinkley), Wisconsin (Phillips), and Michigan fires occurred this year. In the Hinckley fire, 126 people took refuge in a marsh, and then the fire converted the sedges into a crematorium. In the Phillips fire, the city of 2500 persons lay in ruins. More than 400 homes, the business district, a new tannery and the large sawmill were totally destroyed. Thirteen lives were lost, all in attempts to escape the flames by crossing the lake.

            1896: “Big Mills and Lumber Burn at Ashland. Estimated Property Loss Is Half a Million Dollars. Workingmen Driven by Heat Jump Into the Lake. One of the most destructive fires in the history of Northern Wisconsin . . .” (Chicago Tribune)

            1898: Filibert Roth in his report on “The Forestry Conditions of Northern Wisconsin” wrote, “During forty years of lumbering nearly the entire territory has been logged over . . . In addition to this, the fires, following all logging operations or starting on new clearings of the settler, have done much to change these woods. Nearly half of this territory has been burned over at least once, about three million acres are without any forest cover whatever, and several million more are but partly covered by the dead and dying remnants of the former forest.”

fire twisting a railroad track

            1906: “Serious fires are sweeping three sections of Wisconsin and upper Michigan. A track 30 miles square has been swept by forest fires near Escanaba, Mich. . . . The city of Stanley, a town of 5,000 in Chippewa county, is reported to be in flames. The village of Auburndale, Wood county was swept by fire . . . The forest fire is sweeping four counties in northern Wisconsin. The area embraces 200 square miles.” (The Middletown News)

            1908: “Only Ash Heaps Are Left . . . Forest fires which have been burning for three days closed on several towns and small settlement near Duluth this afternoon, wiping them out . . . Chisholm, MN, a town of 4,000 people on the Mesaba Iron Range ninety miles north of Duluth is completely wiped out. Hibbing, five miles from Chisholm is surrounded by forest fires tonight . . . The entire northern portion of Douglas county, WI, is on fire . . .” (The Telegraph-Herald)

            1910: Baudette, MN fire: There were apparently four main fires to start with, which then grew, merged and raced quickly towards the towns in the area. The settlements burned in less than two hours . . . By the end of the day the villages of Cedar Spur, Graceton, Pitt, Baudette and Spooner lay in ruins. Four hundred thousand acres were blackened. Homesteads across the county were destroyed and 43 lives were lost. 

            1911: The Au Sable, Michigan fire is considered the most devastating fire in the history of Michigan. The neighboring cities of Oscoda and Au Sable burned to the ground. A sudden fifty mile-per-hour wind swept the fire into Au Sable. Meanwhile, one mile west of Oscoda, a passing locomotive threw sparks which ignited, spread quickly, and swept across a river valley destroying over three-fourths of the city of Oscoda. 

            1918: “With a toll of probably 500 persons dead, thousands homeless and without clothing, and property damage amounting far into millions of dollars, whole sections of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota timber land tonight are smoldering, fire stricken wastes, with the charred ruins of abandoned towns to accentuate the general desolation.” In the Cloquet, MN, fire alone, 453 died. “The scene at the station was indescribable. There came a rush of wind and the entire town was in flames. The trains pulled out with the fires blazing closely behind them . . . The flames licked at the cars. Windows in the coaches were broken by the heat.” (New York Times)

            Remarkably, despite all their ruination, land-clearing fires furnished instant progress toward the pastoral dream. A homesteader had five years to “improve” his land in order to meet the conditions of the Homestead Law, and the forest was in his way. The eternal smoke riding on the wind conjured the smell of an advancing culture. One writer said, “Fire was the necessary investment required to pay a future interest.” 

Thus, on the whole, the fires were lauded, invoking what some referred to as the Holocaust Era, The Great Barbecue (Pyne), or The Dragon Devastation (Gifford Pinchot).

The fires were often spun by boosters as positive, even those that killed hundreds, because a constant influx of settlers was needed to feed the intended transformation from forest to farm. 

The Detroit Post saw the 1881 fires as: [a] “chance for new settlers . . . where the fires have raged, the forests have been killed, the underbrush burned and the ground pretty effectively cleared. There are square miles and whole townships where the earth is bare of everything except a light covering of ashes; and other square miles where all that is needed to complete the clearing is to gather up a few scattered chunks per acre and finish burning them.             

“These lands are now in such a condition that they are all ready for seeding to whet, merely requiring the harrow to be used upon them, in case there is not time to plow. The rich salts of the former vegetation are preserved in their ashes . . . The trees, the underbrush, and all the impediments to agriculture, it usually costs so much in toil for the pioneer to remove, have been swept away, and the rich land lies open and ready cleared for the settler . . . 

“There are other great advantages too. The insects and forest pests of the farmer are nearly all extinct. There will be no potato bugs, no weevils, or army worms, no curculio, very few birds or squirrels for several years to come on these lands . . . There can be no more fires, because there are no more brush or swamps to burn.”

The local chamber of commerce could not have spun the story into a better promotion. Devastation by fire became a highest good – a bright road to prosperity.

The holocaust fires had very different effects from those prehistorically since their intensity was heightened by the accumulation of so much fuel left on the ground. They radically changed the forest biological communities because of the removal of the conifer seed trees. After the fires, huge areas became covered with pin cherry, aspen and white birch rather than young pines.

With unintended but unmistakable irony, the lumber industry argued they had no choice but to cut as fast as possible because of the danger of fire: “Pine must be cut speedily to save it from being destroyed by forest fires. It is a question whether this valuable timber shall be saved to be used for the convenience of human beings, or be wasted by destructive forest fires. If it is to be saved, it must be cut as fast as possible.” (Detroit Post in 1881 discussing a piece in “The Lumberman’s Gazette”)

It was a positive feedback loop – the more the forest was cut, the more farmers came in, the more fires were set to clear the land, the greater the hazard then of holocaust fires, and thus the more the forests needed to be cut before they were burned.

The fires often devastated the topsoil. On sandy soils, the fires could completely consume the organic soil. “In some places many feet of organic matter were stripped off, leaving only barren stretches of sand or rock. Such fires did not benignly recycle nutrients; they irreversibly vaporized them.” (Pyne) 

Stumpland and soil erosion - Wisconsin Historical Society

The fires blazed well into the early 1900s. Hundreds of thousands of acres of forest continued to burn throughout the Upper Midwest, and smoke often closed the Great Lakes to navigation. In 1925, 1.4 million acres in WI, MI, and MN burned. The fires continued into the early 1930s during the drought years, but by 1936 with the coming of rains, the CCC, the acceptance of forestry on state and county lands, and a host of laws that were finally being enforced, the massive fires were over.

Botanist John Curtis wrote, “The desolation of much of the pine area in the 1920’s and early 1930’s is difficult to describe to anyone who did not see it. In many places the entire landscape as far as the eye could see supported not a single tree more than a few inches in diameter. Only the gaunt stumps of the former pines, frequently with their root systems fully exposed as a result of the consumption of the topsoil by fire, remained to indicate that the area was once a forest rather than a perpetual barrens.”

            

Sightings – Moose!

            On 9/18, Mary and Stu Guenther sent me this note along with several photographs of a young bull moose: “Driving to church this morning turned out to be anything but ordinary! My husband spotted this amazing animal in a farmer’s field on Blue Lake Rd. near the Tomahawk River. We couldn’t believe our eyes! It was thrilling to us!”

photo by Mary and Stu Guenther

            Young bull moose occasionally wander our way from northeastern Minnesota and the western U.P. of Michigan, going on “walk-abouts” that sometimes cover hundreds of miles.

            Minnesota’s moose has been relatively stable for nine years, but suffered a decade-long steep decline in the early 2000s. The state has the largest population with about 3,150 animals; however, that’s still down more than 50% since 2006.

            The most recent biennial survey conducted in the U.P.in early 2019 counted 509 moose. 

 

Celestial Events

            For planet watching in October, look after dusk for Venus low in the southwest, Jupiter in the south-southeast, and Saturn in the south. On 10/9, look for Venus 3° below the waxing crescent moon. On 10/13, Saturn will be 4° above the moon.

 

Thought for the Week          

            “If you quiet your mind, then you actually get to see what else there is around you besides yourself.” – Greta Ehrlich