A Northwoods Almanac for 2/3 – 16, 2023
Saplings Bent Over by Snow
On many of our snowshoe and ski outings this winter, we’ve seen hundreds of young trees bent over by snow and ice, many with their tips bowed so far over that they’re anchored in the snowpack. We frequently stop and try to gently pull them out, shaking the snow and ice off them as best we can without breaking the branches or the trunk. Sometimes, I’ll even push the trunk up to try and straighten the tree out, which usually works to a limited degree.
The usual advice for handling branches bent under the weight of heavy snow or ice is to leave them alone. As the snow or ice melts, most branches are said to slowly straighten on their own.
But I think the timing matters. Young trees or branches bent over and anchored in the snow for several months are less likely to straighten than those straining under a snow load for only a few days. So, we like to free them from the weight in hopes they will straighten more readily. I honestly don’t know if this effort really makes a significant difference, but at least we’ve tried.
This situation is a bit different from summer hikes, when we often notice trees that are horizontally curved near their base, but which have then straightened out as they stretch up into the canopy. My belief is that these trees were likely bent over by another tree falling on them and holding them in that position, possibly for years, and once released, the leader stem has straightened out.
On other occasions, we see trees, usually pines, that look like goalposts, with two or three upright trunks curved upward from near the middle of the tree. This is the result of the apical stem, the leader stem, being broken off, and the horizontal branches competing to take over the journey upward into the canopy.
The leader stem can be broken by a bird landing on it or a porcupine nipping it off or by heavy snowload. Or in the case of pines growing in full sun, the leader stem is frequently killed by white pine weevils, a native insect, that kills terminal shoots of white pines. The weevils deposit their eggs in the terminal leaders, and the hatching larvae then girdle the leader and kill it. The pine’s lateral branches then compete to replace the dead leader, sweeping upwards to form a fork, or since we live in Packer country, a goalpost.
Chippies in Winter Torpor/Hibernation
I’m sure most of you have noticed chipmunks in the fall filling their cheeks with seeds from your bird feeders, and then hustling off to their underground dens, only to return shortly thereafter for some more cargo. I’ve wondered how many seeds they ultimately store before they decide they have enough – it must be a small mountain of seeds in some of their dens!
 |
I’ve always thought that the chippies spend the winter in their dens in a reduced state of activity called torpor, where they drop their body temperatures a bit to reduce heat loss, and occasionally eat from their mountain of stashed seeds.
I’ve learned, however, that when prolonged cold sets in, chippies curl into a ball and enter deep hibernation. Here, the chippie’s heartbeat will slow from around 350 beats per minute to fewer than 10. Its breathing will decrease from around 60 breaths per minute to under 20, and its body temperature will drop from around 100 degrees to the mid 40s or even lower.
Throughout the winter, however, the chippie goes through regular periods of arousal, during which it warms up and becomes active in its burrow, pumping warmed blood around its body. The chippie may also spend time shivering, which generates heat through muscle contractions.
Once warmed up, it moves around its burrow, eats some of its stored food, voids its bladder, and defecates. Then it re-enters hibernation, just one of numerous times it will go through this cycle of warming and cooling.
The more food it has stored for the winter, apparently the shorter the hibernation periods. The scarcer the food, the longer the hibernation.
In a few months on a warmer April day, we’ll look out our windows to see a chippie wandering on the deflating snow, looking for love.
Feeding Deer? The Reasons Not To
I recommend reading a recent article on feeding deer from the November-December issue of Montana Outdoors Magazine (https://issuu.com/montanaoutdoors/docs/mond22) that is appropriate for Wisconsin, too. Entitled “Death by Feeding,” the article outlines all the reasons not to feed corn, hay, or grains to deer during the winter. These reasons are well known and well established over many years, but to summarize from the article, “All members of the deer family change diets with the seasons. In summer, the animals eat mostly high-carbohydrate leaves and forbs (flowering plants) to build and store fat for winter. As the days shorten and green foods become scarce, they eat less overall and transition to low-carb browse – shrubs, twigs, and tree bark. They also start burning more body fat for energy.
“Ultimately, this is what they’re adapted for . . . It’s natural for them to lose weight in winter. It’s also natural for some of the weaker animals to die, especially calves and fawns entering winter in poor body condition . . .
“But when people feed big game animals corn and other grain, birdseed, hay, or apples,
the high-carb foods can cause an overgrowth of bacteria in the stomach that produces lactic acid, which leads to inflammation, abscesses, and ulcers in the stomach wall . . . The inflamed wall can no longer absorb nutrients, and the lactic acid leaks from the rumen into the bloodstream, destroying cells and tissues and eventually causing death . . . It’s a mismatch of meals to gut microbes.”
The caveat is that one can feed deer these foods if they’re introduced slowly and in small portions. Ron Eckstein, retired DNR wildlife manager tells me, “Deer can digest corn if fed starting in fall and going through the whole winter. [However], someone feeding corn to starving deer causes severe problems. The same thing is true for ‘hay.’ Hay comes in good and bad varieties ranging on quality. Some is poor quality and is more like straw than hay. So, feeding high quality hay to deer starting in fall and through the winter may not cause harm (their microfauna can digest it). Feeding hay, especially poor quality hay, to starving deer in late winter is a death sentence.
“The best winter deer food is a commercial deer mix designed specifically for deer. Because of CWD, and many other concerns, [however] it is best not to feed deer (and is currently illegal in many WI counties).”
As most of you already know, deer baiting and feeding is currently prohibited in 54 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties due to the presence of CWD.
If you still want to keep feeding, and it is legal to feed in your county, the best option is to give deer more of the winter foods they are already adapted to eating: winter browse, which includes buds and twigs of woody plants. Get out the chain saw and drop branches laden with buds, doing so over numerous locations so you don’t concentrate deer at one site and enhance the risk of transmitting diseases, particularly CWD.
Celestial Events
All the planet-viewing action in February occurs after dusk. Look for brilliant Venus low in the west-southwest, setting after 7 p.m. Mars will be high in the east, and then transits the sky to eventually set in northwest about 3 a.m. Look for Jupiter very low in the west-southwest, setting after 9 p.m.
Today, February 3, marks the midway point between winter solstice and spring equinox. Take heart if the winter is already seeming too long!
February’s full moon, the “Snow/Hunger/When Coyotes Are Frightened Moon,” occurs on 2/5. It will appear a bit smaller than usual, because it’s our most distant full moon of the year, 14% smaller than the closest full moon, which will occur on August 31.
The average last-of-the-year coldest low temperature also occurs on 2/5. Given how fickle our winter weather is, this statistic means virtually nothing, but it at least says we’re headed the right direction.
By 2/10, we’ll be up to 10 hours of sunlight from 7:13 a.m. to 5:13 p.m. The sun is now setting an hour later and rising 30 minutes earlier than it did at winter solstice.
And 2/14, of course, marks Valentines Day. If you think your heart beats fast when you’re close to the one you love, consider the ruby-throated hummingbird. When it comes to hearts, hummingbirds drive Ferraris, their hearts racing at a maximum of 1260 beats per minute, or twenty beats a second. No other animal can match the intensity of a hummingbird’s metabolic rate, even at rest. Hummers have the largest known relative heart size of all warm-blooded animals – 2.5% of their total body mass – yet place a hummingbird’s heart in your palm, and you would hold an engine about the size of a dull pencil point.
To put those figures in perspective, the human heart accounts for only 0.3 percent of our total body mass, and our resting heart rate is around 72 beats per minute.
Comet ZTF
Newly-discovered Comet ZTF is coming the closest to the Earth in 50,000 years – though still 26 million miles away – and will be visible to the unaided eye from late January into early February. Astronomers recommend going outside and looking northwest at approximately 9 p.m. local time no matter where you are. If you have a star mapping app on your phone, you can track the exact night-by-night locations.
Thought for the Week
It seems reasonable to believe — and I do believe — that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction. – Rachel Carson, 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment