A Northwoods Almanac for October 27 – November 9 , 2023

 A Northwoods Almanac for October 27 – November 9 , 2023   

Sightings: Common Mergansers, Snow Buntings, White-crowned Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos, American Robins, Blackbirds, Golden Tamaracks

Sondra Katzen shared some photos of nearly two dozen migrating common mergansers enjoying a stopover on Oxbow Lake in Presque Isle in mid-October. Migrating waterfowl numbers peak in late October to mid- November as they head south.

photo by Sondra Katzan

On 10/16 while out on Powell Marsh, Mary and I saw our first flock of snow buntings on their southward migration. Keep an eye out along roadsides for a flock of birds that are distinctive for their black and white markings in flight – no other small birds has such big white wing patches.

            As of 10/20, white-crowned sparrows and dark-eyed juncos continue as the most numerous species appearing at our sunflower seed feeders. White-crowned sparrows most commonly nest at or near the tree line in the far reaches of Canada and Alaska, so they’ve already made a long flight by the time they reach our feeders.

dark-eyed junco photo by Bev Engstrom

            Robins have found their way to our property, too late to eat all of our mountain ash berries – the cedar waxwings beat them to those – but chowing down now on our crabapple crop. Hopefully, they’ll move on soon, leaving a good portion of the crabapples for the pine grosbeaks and bohemian waxwings we hope to attract to our yard  this winter.

            And finally in bird news, large mixed flocks of blackbirds– starlings, grackles, red-winged blackbirds, and rusty blackbirds – are wheeling their way through our area as they head south, too.

In the plant world, tamaracks are at peak smoky gold as of 10/20, and will soon be dropping their needles. Tamarack is an Algonquin word for “wood used for snowshoes.” The wood is flexible yet tough, and lent itself well to this use in northern regions where ash, another wood commonly used for snowshoe making, wasn’t readily available.

Mary’s grandfather, John Nutter, whose home we live in now in Manitowish, logged in this area in the 1920s, and talked of cutting loads of tamarack for shoring up mines in the U.P. The flexible wood could give a little without breaking when the mine soils shifted.

 

Leopold’s “The Last Stand” – The Porcupine Mountains

            Mary and I recently hiked and camped for three days in the Sylvania Wilderness Area and the following week for another three days in the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. These are the two best sites left in all of the Upper Midwest for old-growth upland forest, and for tree nerds like us, they offer a bit of heaven.

44" dbh eastern hemlock

            The “Porkies” contain 35,000 acres of remnant old-growth hemlock-hardwoods, by far the largest stand (Sylvania includes about 15,000 acres of remnant old-growth). For comparison, in Wisconsin, we don’t even have one square mile (640 acres) of remnant upland old-growth. So, that begs the question of how the Porkies got saved. 

It was a concerted effort by many people over a long period. In the early 1920s, P.J. Hoffmaster, the first chief of state parks in Michigan, identified the Porcupine Mountains as a location for a possible state park. In 1928, a petition was then made for the area to become a national park, but the Great Depression stalled the talks, and the advent of World War II effectively halted park development across the nation. Fearing loss of the virgin forest, in 1940, Raymond Dick organized the “Save the Porcupine Mountains Association” to protect the property from commercial mining and logging, and to preserve it as a park. 

But with the beginning of World War II, immense pressure came to bear to cut the remaining forest to support the war effort. And here Aldo Leopold stepped in with an essay in 1942 he titled “The Last Stand.” He wrote, “Sometime in 1943 or 1944, an axe will bite into the snowy sapwood of a giant maple. On the other side of the same tree, a  crosscut saw will talk softly, spewing sweet sawdust into the snow with each repetitious syllable. Then the giant will lean, groan, and crash to earth: the last merchantable tree of the last merchantable forty of the last virgin hardwood forest of any size in the Lake States. With this tree will fall the end of an epoch . . . 

“There will be and end of cathedral aisles to echo the hermit thrush, or to awe the intruder. There will be an end of hardwood wilderness large enough for a few day’s skiing or hiking without crossing a road. The forest primeval, in this region, will henceforward be a figure of speech . . .  

“Finally, there will be an end of the best schoolroom for foresters to learn what remains to be learned about hardwood forestry: the mature hardwood forest. We know little, and we understand only part of what we know.”

His essay continues at length to extoll the many virtues of conserving this last large slice of pre-European forest, and apparently it played its part. In 1944, the Michigan State Park Division began the acquisition of an area in the Porcupine Mountains for its scenic value, public recreation and for the preservation of a part of the last remaining large stand of virgin hardwood-hemlock forest in Michigan. The Michigan Legislature then, in an extra session, appropriated $1 million dollars for the acquisition, and that same year, the state purchased 46,000 acres.

            Today the Porkies are the largest of Michigan’s state parks, encompassing over 59,000 acres, of which 35,000 acres are old-growth. Most of the park is legally designated as a Wilderness Area and is recognized as a National Natural Landmark.

 

Try This Quiz

On 9/28, the Wisconsin Senate’s Committee on Financial Institutions and Sporting Heritage voted 3-2 to reject four of Gov. Tony Evers’ five Natural Resource Board nominees, apparently because they didn’t like their responses on wolf management. So, they fired them.

Why all the hullabaloo about wolves by the Senate? Is it a crisis like one committee member who said the nominees didn’t recognize “the devastation that wolves have done to people of the 29th district”?

Well, the DNR had received 31 verified complaints of wolf depredations by the end of July this year, affecting 18 producers. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Wisconsin saw the lowest number of farms with wolf conflicts in 15 years. 

So, the math says something quite different.

Then on 10/17, the Senate advanced a bill to require the DNR to set a strict statewide population goal for wolves. This was done in response to the state’s proposed wolf management plan that seeks to maintain the state’s population level at a flexible goal of 800 to 1,200 wolves. It’s important to note that the plan refers to the numbers as a guidance rather than a fixed goal.

Why a flexible goal? And why have it be a guidance that could potentially allow additional flexibility? Simple. Conditions change from year to year, and any agency, or business for that matter, needs the ability to adapt their management to inevitable changes that may be larger than one can anticipate. Think Covid as an example of a human issue that required extraordinary adaptive measures.

Management rules and regs change every year for nearly every species of wildlife that is hunted or fished. This is normal. Expected. Rational. Why? Because populations go up and down based on changes in habitat, weather extremes, over or under harvesting, etc. 

Back to the reputed “devastation.” A fellow writer recently put out a quiz for folks to test their knowledge on the actual impacts of various predators in our state – see how you do:

Question 1: Rank bears, bobcats, coyotes, wolves and two-legged hunters by the deer they killed in the Northwoods during 2020.

Answer: Humans killed about 54,000 Northwoods deer that year; followed by coyotes, 36,000; bears, 27,000; bobcats, 22,800; and wolves, 18,000. In other words, wolves claimed 11.4% of that deer kill. 

Question 2: Rank deer, elk, bears, turkeys, geese and wolves for their percentage of the  appraised $1.5-plus million in agricultural property damage inflicted in Wisconsin in 2022. 

Answer: Deer caused 71% of those damages, followed by bears, 10%; geese, 8%; elk, 4%; wolves, 4%; and turkeys, 3%. 

Question 3: Which large predator caused the most nuisance complaints in Wisconsin during 2022?

Answer: The DNR handled 872 complaints involving black bears last year, and it trapped and relocated 109 of them. The agency handled three “human safety/nuisance” complaints involving wolves. 

Question 4: Which animal kills more North Americans, wolves or black bears?

Answer: Since 1900, wolves have killed four people and black bears, 79. Two of the wolves were rabid. No wolf attack on a human has been confirmed in Wisconsin in modern history.

Question 5: What do Wisconsinites in wolf range want for wolf numbers?

 Answer: A DNR sociological study in 2022 found more Northwoods support for wolves than against: 33% of wolf-range residents wanted the same wolf numbers as recent years, 27% wanted fewer, 22% wanted more or many more, 12% said “I don't know”, and 7% wanted zero.

            So, to recap:

            Wolves are not the main predator of deer. It’s people, coyotes, bears, bobcats, then wolves.

            Deer cause 71% of all the agricultural property damage in Wisconsin. Wolves 4%.

            Black bears are by far the major source of human/nuisance complaints in WI.

            Wolves are a very small concern for human safety.

            Finally, most people in the Northwoods feel fine about their current population, and thus do not agree that wolves are “devastating” our life here in the North. 

 

Celestial Events

            The full moon, variously known as The Hunter’s Moon, the Changing Season Moon, or the Falling Leaves moon – occurs on 10/28.

For planet-watching in November, look after dusk for Jupiter in the east and Saturn in the south-southeast. Before dawn, look for Venus brilliant in the southeast.

On 11/5 look before dawn for the peak South Taurid Meteor Shower.

November 7 marks the mid-point between autumn equinox and winter solstice.

 

Thought for the Week

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day, I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness.” – Søren Kierkegaard

 

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 October 13 – 26, 2023

 A Northwoods Almanac for October 13 – 26, 2023  

 

Lady Bugs!

            We had three very warm days at the beginning of October, and the lady bugs (aka Asian multicolored ladybeetles) responded in droves. I last wrote about them in 2015, but I also wrote about them in 1998, 2000, and 2001 when they were an occupying force that caught every ones’ attention.

They came by the hundreds this time to our home, showing up all at once as if they had all read the same bus schedule. And in a manner of speaking, they did. If Asian lady beetles want everyone to get together, they don’t text; they simply emit aggregation pheromones, a chemical signal that is like a narcotic for them. The actual amount of pheromone that is emitted is astonishingly small – as little as a billionth of a gram. In response, the ladybugs typically gather in rock-concert-size crowds on the sides of houses that are exposed to full sun, find a crack to crawl in, and then go into a hibernation-like state called diapause. 

multicolored lady beetle

Homes exposed to sun tend to warm up more during the day compared to those nestled in forest shade, a characteristic apparently well understood by the cold-blooded ladybugs. Our house has a perfect southern exposure across the wetlands bordering the Manitowish River, and thus is a great site for photovoltaic cells and wintering ladybugs.

One would think that the birds would have a heyday cleaning-up on the ladybugs, but these beetles are toxic and generally unpalatable. Their bright coloration is thought to have evolved as a warning signal to be heeded by birds and other predators, but failing that, they offer an even more conspicuous warning. If a ladybug is threatened, it discharges a bitter, amber-colored fluid from its legs that is laced with astringent and odiferous chemicals. In winter, the collective odor of a bevy of lady bugs, whether in a house or under the leaves, serves as an ample warning to small mammals like shrews and voles that they need to go elsewhere for a digestible meal.

            This species was imported from China and Japan by the USDA in the late 1970s to control pecan aphids in Louisiana. Apparently no one dreamed they would thrive as they have, because the insects were also released in Nova Scotia, Georgia, Mississippi, Ohio, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Washington and Pennsylvania between 1978 and 1981. They arrived in Wisconsin in 1992.

            The good news, of course, is that ladybugs are beneficial in the summer. A single beetle eats thousands of aphids and other plant-damaging pests. 

            In the fall, however, they become a nuisance, and the only way to defeat them is by caulking the bejeesus (that’s the technical term) out of your house before they arrive. Once inside, if you crush them, they will stain any fabrics and emit a bitter smell. So, you’re left with the only option of vacuuming them up and disposing of them quickly before they leave your vacuum with a foul odor.

 

Chukar!

            On 10/3, I was driving along Powell Rd. near Manitowish Waters when I saw a small grouse-like bird along the shoulder of the road. I glassed it through my binocs, and saw that it was a chukar, only the third one I’ve ever seen in the Northwoods. I inched the car forward and got within 15 feet of it. Unfortunately, all I had along to photograph it was my old iPhone6, so the photos turned out grainy. I’ve included one from a professional photographer instead, so you can see the unique coloration and patterning.

            Chukars are chunky gamebirds native to dry, mountainous areas from Greece to China. In 1893, they were first introduced into North America for sport shooting by a fellow named Blaisdell when he shipped five pairs to Illinois from Karachi, India (now Pakistan). Further introductions eventually followed, and between 1931 and 1970, roughly 795,000 Chukars were released in 41 states in the U.S. (including Hawaii), and 10,600 birds were released in 6 Canadian provinces.

chukar natural range map

Large numbers of birds were also stocked in environments totally unsuitable for them (e.g., 85,000 birds were released in Minnesota, 28,000 in Nebraska, and 43,000 in Wisconsin).

However, they did well in most western states. In 1968, 37 years after the initial organized release effort in North America and Hawaii, chukar had become established in 10 western states, Hawaii, and British Columbia.

Hunters wanted more, of course, so between 1968 and 1996, approximately 130,000 additional game farm and wild trapped birds were released in California, Oregon, Utah, and Nevada to expand distribution and augment populations severely decimated by unusually heavy winter snows. These releases brought the total number of birds released in North America and Hawaii to approximately 936,000, of which 682,000 had been released in states and provinces where they became established.

The  upshot? Chukar has become a favorite of western sportsmen and ranks first in harvest among upland game birds in Nevada and Oregon, second in Washington, and third in Idaho.

Introduced species most often have unintended negative consequences, but chukars apparently haven’t had a major negative impact because they thrive in environments that most other creatures avoid. Their habitat of choice is a sparse, arid, overgrazed mountainside like those found in the Great Basin of the western U.S. and north through eastern Oregon, western Idaho, and eastern Washington. Chukars occasionally inhabit some agricultural lands adjacent to rocky canyons or mountainous areas, but they thrive on the overgrazed open ranges of the West where no agriculture exists, and they eat the leaves and seeds of annual and perennial grasses (primarily the introduced cheatgrass).

They didn’t survive their introduction into Wisconsin, so none breed here. But hunters occasionally release them to train their dogs or as part of a paid hunting experience, and that’s likely the source of this chukar currently trying to figure out how to live within the Powell Marsh Wildlife Management Area.

 

Forest Lodge and Fairyland State Natural Area

            Mary and I led a hike in the last week of September at Forest Lodge near Cable in Bayfield County. If you’re not familiar with the story of Forest Lodge, in 1999, the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest accepted a gracious donation from Mary Griggs Burke of her 872-acre Forest Lodge estate with an obligation to “provide environmental research and educational programs on or related to the Mary Livingston Griggs Special Management Area.” Special Management Areas (SMAs) are established to protect and foster public use and enjoyment of areas with outstanding scenic, historical, geological, botanical, or other special characteristics. 

There are four congressionally designated Special Management Areas on the 872-acre property:

1-    Mary Livingston Griggs Historical SMA. This fifty-acre area consists of the twelve historic lodge buildings and grounds. 

2-    Fairyland Research Natural Area. These 32-acres of old-growth Eastern hemlocks are used only for research study, observation, monitoring, and educational activities.

3-    Mary Griggs Burke Scenic SMA. This area includes the extensive undeveloped Lake Namekagon shoreline with some excellent stands of older hemlock. 

4-    Mary Griggs Burke Botanical SMA. Here are an additional 600 acres of second growth forest including the Forest Lodge Nature Trail.

Mary was the third generation owner of Forest Lodge, which was originally owned by the Northern Wisconsin Lumber Company. In 1902, Crawford Livingston purchased 100 acres of the lakeshore property for hunting and vacation purposes. Crawford Livingston’s daughter Mary Livingston Griggs and granddaughter Mary Griggs Burke continued to maintain and expand the property until Mary Burke’s death in 2012 when all 872 acres of Forest Lodge were entirely gifted to the U.S. Forest Service.

In 2002, Forest Lodge was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Since 2013, Forest Lodge has been in a transition period, having been closed to the public and now open – but with very limited facilities – due to the condition and ongoing restoration of the buildings. Public educational programs began in 2016 for the first time in the property’s history.

Northland College serves as the operator of Forest Lodge and coordinates the use of its facilities. One of Mary Burke’s foundations endowed Northland College’s Burke Center for Freshwater Innovation to operate on campus in Ashland and at Forest Lodge. The Center focuses on scientific research, communication, and leadership on water issues in the Great Lakes region and beyond. The Burke Center specializes in “translating” science to the general public, government agencies, NGOs, agriculture, and the private sector.

It's a very special place. Contact Northland College to see what workshops, conferences, courses, and/or interpretive tours they may be conducting.

 

September Temperatures Worldwide

Early analyses show global warmth surged far above previous records in September, even further than what scientists said seemed like astonishing increases in July and August. The planet’s average temperature shattered the previous September record by more than half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit), which is the largest monthly margin ever observed.

Temperatures around the world last month were at levels closer to normal for July according to separate data analyses by European and Japanese climate scientists.

September’s average temperature was about 0.88 degrees Celsius (1.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above 1991-2020 levels — or about 1.7 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal from before industrialization and the widespread use of fossil fuels.

 

Partial Solar Eclipse!

            The new moon occurs on 10/14, as does an annular solar eclipse where the moon’s disk is slightly smaller than the sun’s disk, leaving the outer edge of the sun visible – the “ring of fire”.  The eclipse begins in our area at 10:36 a.m., reaches maximum eclipse at 11:52 a.m., and ends at 1:13 p.m. 

You must wear protective eyewear to observe this! Ordinary sunglasses, even very dark ones, are not safe for looking at the sun. The only safe way to look directly at an eclipse is through special-purpose solar filters, such as “eclipse glasses” or handheld solar viewers. Here is a website for purchasing one: https://eclipse.aas.org/resources/solar-filters.

            We’ll only see about 40% of the eclipse – the main path begins in Oregon, arches down to Texas, then continues south into South America. This eclipse is the warm-up act for the spectacle of the nest total solar eclipse which will occur on April 8. 2024.

 

Other Celestial Events 

On 10/21, look for the peak of the Orionid meteor shower – best in predawn hours.

On 10/24, look after dusk for Saturn 3 degrees north of the waxing gibbous moon.

 

Thought for the Week

“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves.” – Virginia Wolf

            

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.