A Northwoods Almanac for 1/7/22

 A Northwoods Almanac for 1/7 – 1/20/22   by John Bates

 

Bobcat vs Grey Squirrel, And the Winner Is . . . 

            Myrtle and Rod Sharka near Land O’Lakes watched the interactions between their local squirrels and a young bobcat over the course of several days at the end of 2021. Here’s Myrtle’s email from 12/29: “We have this young bobcat hunting just behind the house. He was watching a hole he chased a red squirrel into.  He has been watching the hole and I have been watching him.” Later that day, she updated me: “He did not get the squirrel. That squirrel has about ten snow exits. The bobcat dozed off and on, but it would not budge.” 

Bobcat watching squirrel hole, photo by Rod Sharka

            The next day Rod sent me this email: “‘Bobby’ was back this morning. At about 8:00 AM, I happened to look out the window. I noticed an agitated grey squirrel on an 8" dbh maple in the midst of the feeder area. Then I noticed the bobcat crouched under some balsam saplings about 7-8 feet back behind the same tree. The squirrel obviously knew the cat was there but apparently had little experience with these predators. The squirrel seemed to be teasing the cat like it was playing "catch-me-if-you-can". It would run down to the base of the tree . . . chattering and waving its tail at the cat. Then run up the tree a ways. Then back down to the ground, back up, etc. 

            “After about 5 minutes of this, when the squirrel was at the base of the tree and moved around to the front side away from the cat, the bobcat ran out, up the tree in a flash, and caught the squirrel about 20 feet up. Then shinnied down with the squirrel in its mouth and carried it off into the woods. 

            “I wish that I had been able to catch that on camera, but it happened so fast that I'm sure any pictures would have been a blur. I knew bobcats could climb trees, but never would have imagined that they could climb one as fast as a grey squirrel. Mother nature is amazing.”

            Just to add to the bobcat’s ability to climb, Mary Madsen in Presque Isle sent me a photo of a bobcat eating from her suet feeder that is well up a white birch tree.

Bobcat eating suet in a white birch tree, photo by Mary Madsen

 

The Quebec Maple Syrup Cartel – The OPEC of Maple Syrup

            As an unapologetic pure maple syrup addict, I follow the news relative to the sources of my drug. Recently I learned maple syrup producers in Quebec produce 73% of all maple syrup in the world, and its biggest customer by far is the United States, which accounts for around 60% of Canada's export volume. Quebec has 34 million sugar and red maple trees, and 11,300 producers of maple syrup!

            That was news enough, but then I learned that most global maple syrup output and prices are controlled by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers (QMSP). Farmers selling containers of 5 liters (1.3 gallons) or less to a grocery store or restaurant need to have a production quota from the government-sanctioned agency. All bulk sales above 5 liters are sold to the agency or authorized buyer, and again, farmers must have a quota. 

            The Federation even stockpiles unsold syrup in a strategic reserve in Laurierville, Quebec, which it can tap in lean harvest years. The “Global Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve” spans 267,000 square feet, the equivalent of five football fields, securing syrup in sterilized 45-gallon barrels stacked five-high – 100 million pounds worth. 

maple syrup barrels in Laurierville, Quebec

    So prized is the province's golden syrup that in 2012 thieves stole $20 million worth of it – 3,000 tons – secretly siphoning it off from the barrels in the reserve in a theft known as the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist (Google it! Or watch the Netflix documentary series “Dirty Money,” Season 1, Episode 5). 

            Was this considered a serious crime? In 2017, accused ringleader Richard Vallières was sentenced to eight years in prison and given a $9.4 million fine. A few days earlier, his accomplice, Avik Caron, was sentenced to five years in prison and a $1.2-million fine. For stealing maple syrup.

            The QMSP operates a cartel that rivals OPEC in effectiveness and aggression, and its price-fixing has managed to create rising prices for its producers over the past two decades by controlling syrup supplies. A barrel is worth about $1,200 or $2.88 per pound which is 10-18 times the value of U.S. crude oil.

            Climate change is, however, raising its ugly head. The unusually warm spring this year resulted in a shorter syrup harvest, cutting output by 24%, while demand has soared since the pandemic began and led to more people eating at home. Worldwide demand for maple syrup has increased by about 20 per cent each year for the past two years! The result? The QMSP is releasing more than half of the world's strategic reserve – 45 million pounds – to meet the market demand. The QMSP is also approving 7 million new taps during the next three years, a 14% increase, to bolster production despite the fact that here are already 50 million taps in the province.

            Well, who knew that maple syrup had such a back story! It just makes me further resolved to keep buying my syrup locally.

 

Pecking Order at Our Bird Feeders

            Those of us who feed birds are acutely aware of how competitive life can be at our feeders. Disney-like cooperation and sharing is a rarity, but does occur, in a manner of speaking, via a pecking order. A 2017 study in Behavioral Ecology examined about 100,000 bird feeder interactions and created a continent-wide power ranking of 136 feeder species. The hierarchy shows that while size matters in most cases, there are clearly exceptions. For instance, pileated woodpeckers, despite their massive bill and impressive build, are relatively docile, while the tiniest birds of all, hummingbirds, are pugnacious and can hold their own with much larger birds. And mourning doves, while larger than blue jays, fall much lower in the pecking order than the more dominant jays, earning their symbolism as birds of peace.

            So, here are the top ten most dominant summer feeder birds for our area (note that highly dominant birds like common ravens and wild turkeys that seldom come to tube feeders are not included in this list):

Common grackle

Red-bellied woodpecker

European starling 

Blue jay

American robin

Red-winged blackbird

Hairy woodpecker

Mourning dove

Brown-headed cowbird

Northern cardinal

            The birds that get pushed around the most? The five at the bottom of the pecking order, from the bottom up:

Black-capped chickadee

American goldfinch

Purple finch

Dard-eyed junco

Red-breasted nuthatch

            The pecking order seems well understood by the individuals around our feeders. While many of us, including me, rail at the bullies, blue jays in particular, the pecking order is a useful tool in avoiding unnecessary, and potentially, injurious interactions. Everybody knows their place, waits their turn to flit in to the feeders and knows how quickly they need to grab and go, or whether they can hang out and eat to their heart’s content, oblivious to the needs of others waiting in the surrounding trees.

            The way to mediate between the power trippers and the serfs is not to moralize with them – I’ve tried and it doesn’t work – but rather to have numerous feeding stations spread out around your house, including hanging tube feeders, platform feeders, and seed placed on the ground. Your restaurant simply has to have lots of tables and various scattered seating arrangements. The jays and grackles (and squirrels) can’t be everywhere, and you’ll have thinned out the competition. 

 

More on Snowshoe Hares and Color Change

            In my last column, I wrote about the mismatch of autumn and spring molts in snowshoe hares as climate change makes snow arrive later in the winter and melt away sooner in the spring. I was surprised, however, to learn that in the Pacific Northwest, there are populations of snowshoe hares that don’t molt into a white coat during winter – they remain brown year-round. And then there are regions in the Cascade Mountains where both winter-brown and winter-white color phases of hares occur, apparently due to a genetic interbreeding with black-tailed jack rabbits, a species that stays brown year-round.

            Some researchers believe that as climate change intensifies, the western populations of hares that contain a mix of winter-brown and winter-white individuals are the key to the long-term survival of hares. But those hares are out West. Here in the Northeast, it’s more likely that genetic mutations in current winter-white populations will have to occur to favor more winter-brown hares in populations like ours. 

            Or perhaps the range of snowshoe hares will simply have to move north where snow will be more consistent in its timing and duration, leaving us with only cottontail rabbits. Hard to know! We’re in no man’s land as these changes continue.

 

Celestial Events

            The next three weeks are when we experience our coldest average high temperatures – just 21°. 

            By 1/13, we’ll be up to 9 hours and 1 minute of daylight. By 1/18, our days will be growing longer by more than 2 minutes per day.

            The full moon occurs on 1/17, the year’s most distant and smallest full moon.

            From 1/20 to 2/5, we’ll experience our lowest average temperatures – minus 1degree.

            Planets to watch after dusk in January include Jupiter and Saturn, both in the southwest. Saturn, however, is lost by mid-month, so look just for Jupiter in the second half of January. 

            Before dawn, look for Mars low in the southeast.

 

Thought for the Week

            Edward O. Wilson, world-renowned biologist, author, and above all, a naturalist in the classic sense, died last week. Here are two quotes from his work: “We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important decisions wisely.”

            “Destroying rainforests for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.” 

 

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.