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 6th 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
No comments:
Post a Comment