A Northwoods Almanac for September 1, 2023

 A Northwoods Almanac for 9/1-14/23  

Nighthawks

            Tim Kroeff emailed me on 8/18 with a sighting of a flock of nighthawks migrating over a lake in the Mercer area. 

            Two days later (8/20), I saw a posting by Eric Bruhnke, an ace birder who has worked as an interpreter for six seasons at Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory in Duluth, Minnesota; counted migrating raptors at the Corpus Christi HawkWatch in Texas in 2015; and was the 2016, 2017, and 2018 hawk counter at the Cape May Hawkwatch in New Jersey, among other things he’s done. Eric described a “lifer” experience of seeing and counting more nighthawks than he’d ever seen in one day. That evening he counted 18,695 nighthawks in just under 3.5 hours flying over his backyard along the North Shore of Lake Superior in Duluth. He noted that “late August is prime time for seeing these birds migrate through the Duluth area” and that hot, calm conditions increase insect hatches, which attract insectivorous birds like nighthawks. He wrote, “There were times when I found myself getting watery-eyed while clicking them [off], being just delighted at the spectacle, with each one erratically meandering and feeding among each other.” 

            His tally would seem impossible to top, but on August 26, 1990, one experienced counter, Mike Hendrickson, tallied 43,690 in a two-and-a-half-hour period from a vantage point north of Duluth.

            More locally, three days later on 8/23, Bob Kovar on Wild Rice Lake in Manitowish Waters called me to say he was watching 50 to perhaps 100 or more nighthawks swirling around in the air above his dock. So, I hightailed it over there and found him not at his home, but trying to photograph the nighthawks careening over one of the nearby cranberry dikes. \

nighthawk photo by Bob Kovar

            If you’ve not watched nighthawks feeding on an insect hatch before, you would find it just as hard to photograph them as Bob was finding it. Nighthawks erratically bob and weave and dart, a bit like a bat or a moth in flight, as they swoop through the air literally trawling for insects. 

            Nighthawks fly with their mouths open and scoop insects in. They do this because that’s all they can do. Nighthawks aren’t hawks. They don’t wield lethal talons, but rather have flat feet that are very small and weak. Rather than killing prey with their beak or claws, a nighthawk simply flies straight into bugs with its mouth and throat wide open. Laura Ericson, well-known birder and author, writes: “This is fast enough that insects go straight down the hatch, meeting their deaths by contact with internal digestive juices rather than external killing structures. The nighthawk’s tiny vestigial tongue set at the very back of its mouth probably has little or no tasting function; food whizzes past too quickly to rest on the tongue and too fast for the bird to reject at the last moment if it doesn’t like the taste.”

            Laura worked for many years to rehabilitate injured birds, including nighthawks, and notes, “On the ground, the most succulent moth could walk right in front of the hungriest nighthawk, barely a millimeter from its beak, and the bird could do nothing but watch, hoping that the moth would walk in.”

            She was amazed at how helpless they were to feed themselves when not in flight. “When I first received a [injured] bird, I’d have to tease the fragile mouth open to place food inside. Within days, most birds would run up to me, mouths open, to be fed, but no matter how long I had one, I could never teach it to feed itself. This was not because nighthawks lack intelligence but because they lack the physical structures necessary for self-feeding on the ground . . . And even after nighthawks learn to open their mouths to be hand-fed, many adults can’t swallow food items on their own for days or weeks longer.”

            Nighthawks migrate a great distance between their breeding range and their wintering grounds in South America, making their flight one of the longest migration routes traveled by any North American bird. 

            Fall departures begin in July in both northern and southern portions of the breeding range in the U.S. and Canada, and individuals become quite gregarious during fall migration with flocks of 1,000's not uncommon. Records indicate that transients pass through Colombia and Venezuela,  and then head east of the Andes to reach their primary wintering grounds. 

 

Loon Story

            Mary and Steve Ales own property on Stearns Lake, and emailed me with this story: “We were fortunate to have two loon chicks born on the lake, likely in early July. We've watched them grow and as of 7/15 there were still 2 chicks.

            “[We returned on] 7/30, and we now have 3 chicks. One is clearly a bit smaller than the other two, but it's out and swimming around and diving. 

            “We've done some internet sleuthing and this seems pretty unusual to have a clutch of three, let alone this mysterious arrival of the third. We don't think it is an adoption as we've never seen another pair on the lake consistently. And given the parent's behavior on 7/15, we don't think that they were sitting on a nest.” 

            They asked me what I thought happened. 

            I didn’t know, so I suggested they contact Walter Piper who has done loon research on our local lakes for 31 years. His response was this according to Mary: “The answer seems to be one of two scenarios. Either something happened to the parents and the loon [chick] walked to our lake to find its new family, or there was an additional breeding pair that tried to set up home on Stearns Lake, and those parents were driven off by the resident nesting pair. Dr. Piper has seen both scenarios. The good news is that the family accepted the younger chick and everyone seems to be a happy family of five. However it happened, it was an unusual occurrence. We feel honored to have witnessed this.”

 

Hikes in State Natural Areas (SNA) and Federal Research Natural Areas (RNA)

            Over the last several weeks, Mary and I led hikes in Doering Woods SNA, Tucker Lake Hemlocks SNA/RNA, Frog Lake SNA, Scott Lake/Shelp Lake SNA, Giant White Pine SNA, and cancelled but scouted Lake Laura SNA and Lake Alva SNA.

            We love doing these hikes because of all the exceptional people we meet on the trips, but also because of some of the unusual things we see. I’ll just share two. We found what I think was the largest shelf fungi, an artist’s bracket (Ganoderma applanatum), that we’ve ever seen. I measured it at 29.5 inches across, and it looks a bit like an ocean stingray with its wavy brim. Cora Mollen’s and Larry Weber’s book Fascinating Fungi of the Northwoods says that one of these can live for as long as 50 years. Given the size of this one, I imagine it could be at least this old.

artist's bracket, photo by John Bates

            The other unusual item we found was a large mass of “scrambled egg’ slime mold. The Fascinating Fungi book says of this species, “As slime molds do, it first moves in amoeba-like fashion, engulfing nutrient including bacteria and organic matter. Finally, it migrates to a favorable spot for spore dispersal and forms its characteristic soft, yellow molds. At maturity, these become crusty and disintegrate, freeing their spores.” 

scrambled egg slime mold, photo by Mary Burns

            Yes, slime molds move. They ooze through their habitats – soil or woody debris for instance – and eventually stop to metamorphosize into their fruiting bodies. 

            They’ve even been shown to think and solve problems. Placed in a maze, they can find their way directly through the maze to a food source.

 

Trivia Time: Why is a Moose’s Nose So Big?

            I’ll bet everyone has wondered why a deer has a relatively short nose while a moose has a long one. Well . . . maybe none of you have ever wondered about this, but I have, so here’s the answer courtesy of the Alaska Science Forum and a scientist from Ohio, Lawrence Witmer..

            Before Witmer’s study, scientists had speculated that a long nose could help a moose shed heat from its huge body. Witmer found this adaptation unlikely because few blood vessels exist near the outside surface of a moose’s nose.

            Another reason a moose might have a big nose is to better sniff out predators or potential mates. Like a person’s ears, a moose’s large nostrils point opposite directions which might help moose to better locate smells. Moose may in fact use their unique nostrils for directional smelling, but Whitmer determined that it’s most likely that the moose utilize a set of valves that close automatically underwater.

moose illustration by Rebecca Jabs

            Most animals like horses, dogs, and cats and other members of the deer family can’t close their nostrils, but it’s a common aquatic adaptation. Whitmer figured out that when a moose dips its head under water, the difference between the water pressure and the air pressure causes the nostrils to close. This adaptation allows a moose to feed on underwater aquatic plants without water flooding into its nose.

 

Climate Change Stats for China and the U.S.

            China has led the world in annual carbon emissions since 2006, and currently produces more than double the carbon emissions of the U.S. However, per person the U.S. emits twice as much carbon dioxide as China does. China has 1.4 billion people, the U.S. 334 million. 

            The United States has reduced its annual carbon emissions over the last 25 years, largely because of the power sector’s shift from coal to natural gas and stricter environmental regulations, while China’s emissions are rising. But on a cumulative basis, America has still pumped far more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other country since preindustrial times. To date, the U.S. has emitted 20% of the worlds CO2, and China 11%.

            China is projected to surpass the United States as the biggest historical emitter, but not until 2050. Until then, America will continue to hold that distinction.

            Meanwhile, China is leading on developing renewable energy, producing far more wind and solar power than the U.S., and has the biggest electric vehicle market also by far.

            Bottom line: neither country is cutting enough carbon or making the transition to renewables fast enough to limit warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F).

 

Celestial Events

            For planet watching in September, look after dusk for Saturn in the east-southeast, and for Mars very low in the west. Before dawn, look for Venus high in the east and Jupiter in the south. Look on 9/4 for Jupiter about 3° below the waning gibbous moon.

 

Thought for the Week 

            A home is not simply a building; it is the shelter around the intimacy of a life . . . The inner walls of a home are threaded with the textures of one's soul, a subtle weave of presences. If you could see your home through the lens of the soul, you would be surprised at the beauty concealed in the memory your home holds . . . Where love has lived, a house still holds the warmth. Even the poorest home feels like a nest if love and tenderness dwell there. – John O’Donohue

 

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 August 18-31, 2023

 A Northwoods Almanac for August 18 – 31, 2023  

 

Fall Bird Migration Underway!

            August means our days are growing shorter and our weather is shifting as the sun’s position in the sky drifts south.In response, every autumn billions of birds migrate south through the US, mostly under the cover of darkness, and most beginning to migrate 30 to 45 minutes after sunset, with the greatest number in flight two to three hours later.   

            It may be hard to believe, but migration is already underway for many species, though most will pass through the contiguous U.S. from early September through October. 

            Bird researchers have spent decades trying to understand where and when bird migration will occur. In the last few years a highly sophisticated forecasting program called BirdCast (https://birdcast.info/news/the-return-of-migration-tools-fall-2023/) has been refined to provide tools that predict and monitor bird migration. These include forecast bird migration maps that predict how much, where and when bird migration will occur; live bird migration maps that show how much, where, and when migration is occurring in real-time; migration alerts to which one can subscribe to learn when intense bird migration will occur; and a dashboard that provides radar-based measurements of nocturnal bird migration at county and state levels.

            The researchers have built this app based on over 20 years of analyzing radar and weather data. The same Doppler radars that meteorologists use to estimate rainfall rates are equally adept at detecting other objects in the atmosphere, like birds.

            While this program helps birders know where and when to see maximum numbers of birds, BirdCast also uses the information on the numbers and flight directions of birds to expand the understanding of migratory bird movement. The ability to forecast migration two weeks in advance has tremendous potential for bird conservation – from informing siting and operation of wind turbines, to addressing impacts of light pollution, to providing information to mitigate bird collisions with aircraft.

            Wisconsin ranked 6^th nationwide this spring in the number of birds flying over the state, so one wonders where we’ll rank after this autumn’s flight. Keep an eye and an ear upward.

 

Late Summer Flowering – Large-Leaved Aster

            Large-leaved aster (Eurybia macrophylla) has finally come into bloom. We have dozens of species of asters, but the most common aster in relatively open woods is the large-leaf aster. The rough leaves are quite large (4”-8” wide), rounded, heart-shaped with a notch in the base, long stemmed, and feel rough. The flowers appear very late in the summer and are often sparse to absent among the many leaves – perhaps 10% of a given clonal colony will send up a flower. 

large-leaved aster, photo by John Bates

              Large-leaved aster assures its survival in a variety of very effective ways: by sending out long underground stems that produce new clonal plants away from the parent plant; by producing a toxin from its roots that weakens competitors; and by creating a sub-canopy of large leaves above the forest floor that shades out most competitors, much like bracken fern does. All of these adaptations help it form dense colonies that exclude virtually every other plant species. 

            Why does aster bloom so late in the year? No one can say for sure, but one possibility is the lack of competitors fighting for the available sunlight and soil nutrients, since over 70% of our wildflowers bloom by June 15. On the other hand, autumn days are shorter and cooler which would seem to offset the competitive advantages.

            William Quayle in 1907 wrote of asters: [They are] “stars fetched from the night skies and planted on the fields of day.” 

            Autumn days in the Northwoods are brightly colored not only by the changing leaves but by the these hardy flowers which can last well into October.

            Aster is Greek for "star", and is the source of other celestial words such as astronaut, astrology, astronomy, asterisk (the “little star”), and even disaster (to be “ill-starred”).

            The young, tender leaves of the large-leaf aster are reported to have been eaten by the Ojibwa who would boil the leaves with fish. 

            Here’s an important tip. The backwoods doesn't come complete with indoor plumbing, as many unprepared hikers have discovered over time, and the need for a natural toilet paper has been a high priority for many of those who forgot the Charmin. Early settlers supposedly used the large coarse leaves of large-leaved aster as a toilet paper, thus bringing to life the off-color, but easily remembered nickname of “large-a** leafster.”

 

Wake Surfing Can Be Prohibited

            From an 8/3 article by Paul Smith in the Milwaukee Journal (“Wake surfing drawing more scrutiny, calls for restrictions in Wisconsin”):

            “Arguably no boating activity in Wisconsin has generated more concern in recent years than wake surfing. The topic has come before the Natural Resources Board several times and local restrictions are popping up on wake surfing . . . The most recent in Wisconsin is a prohibition on wake surfing on Diamond Lake in Bayfield County. The measure became effective April 12; it was passed by the local town board after local residents presented data and persuaded the change . . . Only about 10 ordinances to restrict or prohibit wake surfing exist in Wisconsin . . . One is in Mequon-Thiensville on the Milwaukee River where homeowners and river users were tired of high waves and shoreline erosion caused by wake surfing . . . New research from the University of Minnesota and reports from Wisconsin residents seem to indicate that there is potentially significant long-term ecological damage produced by wake surfing . . . in Wisconsin it's mostly up to local municipalities to pass ordinances restricting or prohibiting the activity.”

            We’re a globally important area for inland lakes. What’s our responsibility for protecting them as communities of life versus an empty space for any form of recreation, no matter its ecological impacts? This is no different than any other zoning issue. Town boards can, and should, restrict wake surf boat use to very large lakes (500+ acres in 15+ feet of water), and prohibit their use on all other lakes. Period.

 

Wild Rice Class

            I’m currently taking a class on wild rice through Fe University (https://feuniversity.org) which is being taught by two true experts: Peter David, recently retired biologist and wild rice researcher from the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, and John Olson, retired wildlife biologist for the WDNR, semi-aquatic mammal expert, and long-time wild rice gatherer. The class takes place over four sessions, and the first one met on 8/8. 

            I learned a number of new things right away and had confirmed a number of other things that I thought were true. The wild rice species we have in northern Wisconsin is northern wild rice (Zizania palustris). There’s only about 6,000 acres of it in all of northern Wisconsin, so it’s not all that common. Northern Minnesota supports far more, somewhere around 30,000 acres, but there’s only a few sites in Michigan, and little else in North America. Southern wild rice (Zizania aquaticus) has a far wider distribution, but is far less valuable as wild food source because of how slender its seed is and how tall it gets. 

            So, northern wild rice has an extremely limited global distribution, and thus we have a global responsibility to do right by it. 

            It’s cultural value to Native American tribes can’t be overstated. It’s a sacred plant, a gift from the Creator. Alfred Jenks, an American anthropologist known for his work on historical wild rice cultivation, wrote this in 1902: “No other section of the North American continent was so characteristically an Indian paradise so far as spontaneous vegetal food [wild rice] is concerned, as was the territory in Wisconsin and Minnesota.”

paddling through wild rice, photo by John Bates

            I downloaded a copy of his 1902 book “The Wild Rice Gatherers of the Upper Lakes: A Study in American Primitive Economics,” and am working my way through it. He notes, “In 1817, the interior of Wisconsin is spoken of as watered with innumerable small lakes and ponds which generally abound with folle avoine [wild rice], waterfowl, and fish, each in such prodigious quantities that the Indians are in a manner exempt from the contingence of famine.”

            He described Green Bay: “Green Bay from above the mouth of Menomini [sic] River southward to the bay-head, has been fringed with the plant from earliest historic times, and today there are thousands of acres of wild rice in the shallows of its waters . . . Fox River from Lake Winnebago to its source has been reported as filled with wild rice from the time of Marquette, who spoke of it 1673: ‘The way is so cut up by marshes and little lakes that it is easy to go astray, especially as the river is so covered with wild oats [wild rice] that one can hardly discover the channel.’” 

            Jenks goes on to describe many, many areas of central and northern Wisconsin that were awash in wild rice – I’ll describe some of those in later columns. Suffice it to say wild rice was extraordinarily abundant historically, but is much diminished today.

male flower of wild rice, photo by John Bates

 

Women and Water Exhibit

            A Native American saying, “Water is Life,” is simple, direct and true. It’s also true that in many traditional cultures, women are the protectors of water, because women give birth and are seen as keepers of water. 

            My wife Mary Burns recently completed an exhibit entitled Women and Water: Woven Portraits from Around the World to honor women who work globally for the protection of water. The idea for the exhibit began with her connections with a few North American water keepers and water walkers, and the idea spread as she found more and more people across the globe doing important water advocacy and work. They included farmers in Mozambique, scientists, oceanographers, artists, journalists, limnologists, a sea captain in the Kingdom of Tonga, a conservation biologist in the Arctic, and activists in Detroit, India, Peru, and Honduras. All of these women and more are doing essential work for water, for the planet, and for us.

            The exhibit features 29 woven portraits representing 39 women and 20 countries, plus the Arctic and Antarctic, and is currently on display through early November at the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center in Ashland.

            Mary’s hope is that these women and their stories will encourage all of us to strengthen our own ties with water and inspire us to take action to protect our waters. 

            I readily admit to being biased, but the exhibit is exceptional and well worth the drive. See https://manitowishriverstudio.com/women-water/.

 

Celestial Events

            Look tonight, 8/18, for Mars about 2 degrees below the waxing sliver moon. 

            As of 8/23, the sun is now rising 60 minutes later than June 22, and setting 60 minutes earlier than June 29. Our days are growing shorter by 3 minutes per day.

            The second full, “Blue,” moon of August occurs on 8/30. This is the year’s closest full moon and will appear 14% larger and 30% brighter than the year’s farthest moon which occurred on Feb. 5. 

            

Quote for the Week

            “What we hear is the quality of our listening.” – Robert Fripp

 

 

 

A Northwoods Almanac for August 4- 17, 2023

 A Northwoods Almanac for August 4- 17, 2023  

 

Sightings – Blue-spotted Salamanders, A Musky Tale, and Small-flowered Pond-lilies

             Greg Bassett in Hazelhurst moved a couple plastic containers in his woodshed and out from under them came three blue-spotted salamanders. He noted, “I've come across a single one this summer on two or three occasions, but the last time I have seen that many together I think was when I was a kid. Definitely one of my summer highlights!!”

blue-spotted salamanders photo by Greg Bassett

            I rarely see blue-spotted salamanders, so seeing three at one time is a fine gift. Blue-spotted salamanders spend their non-breeding time typically in forests beneath moist logs where they consume slugs, earthworms, snails, beetles and other invertebrates. They’re found throughout the state and most of the Midwest and Northeast, as well as Ontario and Quebec.

            Carol Pfister sent me a photo that her daughter Shawna took while out for a pontoon ride on Big Crooked Lake. Shawna saw a large dead fish floating near the surface, and when she got close enough to net it, found a 30” musky which apparently choked when trying to eat a bass too large to swallow – see the photo! I seldom write about fish in my column (so many others do it well already), but this seemed uniquely worth reporting.

photo by Shawna Pfister

            Many aquatic plants come into their prime flowering in late July and early August, so this is the best time to explore lakes and rivers for their flora. While paddling Moose Lake in Iron County on 7/25 with a group of adult students from Fe University, we came across a species of “special concern” in Wisconsin – small-flowered yellow pond-lily (Nuphar microphylla). Susan Knight, ace aquatic plant biologist, taught the class with me, so she was able to positively identify it. It was previously collected from Moose Lake (but has never been collected anywhere else in Iron County) by Stephen Meyer in 1964, nearly 60 years ago. 

photo by Eric Epstein

            Susan took a sample of the plant – it was relatively abundant in this one bay – and has since pressed it and will send it to the University of Wisconsin herbarium (see https://wisflora.herbarium.wisc.edu/index.php for information on plant collections and records from around the state).

            

Carnivorous Plants In Our Lakes

            What an absolute pleasure it is to slowly paddle a lake with a terrific botanist like Susan. We paddled Frog Lake on 7/24, again for Fe University (btw: “Fe” stands for “ferrous,” the chemical symbol for iron), and here we found hundreds of lovely purple bladderworts (Utricularia purperea) in bloom. Susan did her PhD on bladderworts, so we were treated to an in-depth look at this rootless, free-floating carnivorous plant that traps and consumes tiny zooplankton. You can’t pick a bladderwort flower because you’ll lift the whole plant when you pull it out of the water. 

Purple bladderwort, photo by John Bates

            Bladderworts capture minute organisms in a hollow bladder-like trap enclosing a partial vacuum that is triggered by hairs near its opening. The bladders work a bit like squeezing all the air out of a ball and then letting go, resulting in a sucking inrush of water. Tiny zooplankton like daphnia and rotifers brush against the bladderworts hairs, the compressed bladder releases and sucks in the insect, and an elastic trap door mechanism snaps shut preventing escape. Slick and quick, the whole process takes 1/460 of a second, making bladderworts the fastest moving plants in the world – they are the Usain Bolts of all flora.

            Charles Darwin described how well the trap door works, "I may mention that my son found a daphnia which had inserted one of its antennae into the slit, and it was thus held fast during a whole day.”

            Neltje Blanchan, author of Nature's Garden in 1901, wrote that a sign should be posted above the bladderworts reading, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

            On 7/26, we paddled a third undeveloped Iron County lake – Plunkett Lake – with more Fe students, and here the highlight may well have been how many carnivorous sundews we saw. I’ve written before in this column about these marvelous plants, so please recall that the drops of “dew” are actually sweet smelling and sticky drops of mucilage that the plant secretes in order to attract its prey. Bugs land on the plant thinking that they have found a sweet meal, but become stuck in the goo. The plant responds by folding its leaves around the prey with the rapidity of response depending on what is being devoured, with more rapid response when the victim is actively struggling. The captured insect then becomes digested into soluble materials that are absorbed into the leaf cells and later distributed to other parts of the plant. 

sundew photo by John Bates

            Charles Darwin was utterly fascinated by insectivorous plants, particularly sundews, and published a lengthy book on them in 1875. He is famously quoted as saying in 1860, one year after publishing The Origin of Species: “At the moment, I care more about Drosera [sundews] than the origin of all the species in the world.”

            Carniverous plants play a wonderful role reversal in nature, the plant eating the animal, that would be lustily cheered by plants everywhere could they but shout. We were cheered just to see them and to understand a bit about how they live their lives.

 

Update to Voyageurs Wolf Project – Wolves Fishing

            Excerpted from the Voyageurs Wolf Project: “Big takeaway from our newly-published research: wolves hunting and catching fish is almost certainly a widespread behavior in places similar to the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem. That means wolves are very likely ‘fishing' in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and beyond each and every year!

We first learned of wolves hunting fish (spawning suckers) in 2017 when two wolves in the Bowman Bay Pack ‘fished’ . . . This was the first documented observations of wolves hunting freshwater fish in places like Minnesota . . . 

            “Zoom forward 7 years and we have now documented wolves hunting and catching fish every year except 2022 (when we had large flooding which likely made catching fish very difficult). That means we have documented wolves fishing 6 out of 7 years since 2017!

            “We have used an assortment of approaches to document this behavior including GPS-collar data, a single firsthand observation, trail cameras deployed at creeks, and a camera collar deployed on a wolf.

            “Using all this info, we have observed wolves from 5 different packs (and one lone wolf!) catching fish at various creeks and rivers in our area . . 

            “Based on this, we conclude that wolves ‘fishing’ is almost certainly a widespread behavior and that wolves in many similar ecosystems very likely hunt and catch fish every year, [though] wolves only fish for a relatively short period of time (a few weeks).”

 

Celestial Events

            August 6^th marks the midway point between summer solstice and fall equinox. We receive 14 ½ hours of sunlight this day.

            Look before dawn on 8/8 for Jupiter about 3 degrees below the moon.

            The famed Perseids are building to a spectacular peak on 8/13 that could boast roughly 100 meteors per hour. Viewing conditions will be nearly perfect, too. Predawn is usually best.

            The new moon occurs on 8/16, and it will be at apogee, the farthest from the Earth in 2023 – 252,671 miles.

 

Only Getting Hotter

            June 2023 was Earth's hottest June on record. Ocean surface temperatures hit a record high for the third month in a row as global sea ice shrank to a record low for June. 

            Canada helped add to the data. After experiencing their warmest May on record, Canada also had their warmest June on record along with drought conditions which have fed all the fires they are experiencing. 

            Meanwhile, the heat in July has already been so extreme that it is “virtually certain” this month will break records “by a significant margin,” the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and the World Meteorological Organization said in a report published on 7/27. 

“We have just lived through the hottest three-week-period on record.”

            And the surface ocean temperature in the waters of Manatee Bay at Everglades National Park around the Florida Keys soared to 101.19°F on 7/24, the temperature at which people typically take a hot tub. At this time of year, the water should be between 73 and 88 degrees.

 

Sales in 2023 up 47% for Electric Vehicles 

            Some good news – in the first half of 2023, U.S. customers bought 556,707 electric vehicles, which was up 47 percent from the first half of last year, according to Kelley Blue Book.

            EV market share was 7.2 percent of the U.S. market for cars and light trucks, which was up from 5.7 percent in 2022 and 3.1 percent in 2021.

            Electric vehicles are a harder sell up here in the Northwoods with our long winters and long distances between small towns. But in cities with kinder winters and numerous charging stations, they make a ton of sense. Our eldest daughter lives in San Diego and just installed solar collectors on her roof. She says her next car will be all electric, fueled for free from her rooftop array. Gotta love it.

 

Quote for the Week

            “We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.” – Wendell Berry

 

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.