A Northwoods Almanac for 11/24 – 12/7/23

 A Northwoods Almanac for 11/24 – 12/7/23  

 

Sightings – Common Mergansers, Wooly Bear Caterpillars, White Birch Seeds, Cougars

On 11/15, I was driving by Little Horsehead Lake in Presque Isle when I noticed a large flock of waterfowl lounging on the lake. I stopped, peered through my binoculars, and counted 72 common mergansers! Often the last waterfowl migrant to move south in fall and first to return north in spring, common mergansers may winter as far north as open water permits in the Great Lakes region. Their migration peaks in November and runs all the way into late December. 

common mergansers, photo by Will Conway

I’m still wondering why so many were gathered together on Little Horsehead, a relatively small lake at 56 acres, but one known for an abundance and diversity of fish. Perhaps the mergansers were feeding, or perhaps just resting. Common mergansers across North America reportedly eat at least 50 species of fish, generally foraging on whatever is most abundant and suitably sized. During the breeding season, they also eat an array of invertebrates including caddis flies, mayflies, backswimmers, flies, water striders, dragonflies, crane flies, beetles, freshwater sponge, spiders, caterpillars, snails, and mussels. 

When our lakes finally ice-up, they’ll have no choice but to move south. Average ice-up occurs on 37-acre Foster Lake in Hazelhurst now around 11/27. This is according to 47 years of data collected by Woody Hagge. But Woody notes that there have been wild swings in ice-up dates over the last 20 years. And in 2015, Foster froze November 28, reopened sixteen days later on December 14, and refroze on December 28. So, how does one adjust figures for that scenario? These days, predicting ice-up is anybody’s guess.

common merganser distribution map

Given our recent mid-November warm weather, a few wooly bear caterpillars (aka “woolyworms”) were still being seen. Folklore has it that they can forecast the severity of the upcoming winter – if their rusty bands are wide, it will be a mild winter. But the more black there is on the 13 brown and black segments of their body, the more severe the winter. 

For over forty years, Banner Elk, North Carolina, has held an annual Woolly Worm Festival in October, whereupon retired mayor Charles Von Canon inspects the champion woolly bear and announces his winter forecast. Similarly, there is a Woollybear Festival that takes place in Vermilion, Ohio, each October. This year, 100,000 people attended it!

Well, whether our winter becomes severe or mild, one thing is for sure – they'll all be frozen solid under leaf litter anyway. In the spring, these caterpillars will thaw out, pupate within cocoons and emerge as gorgeous adult Isabella tiger moths.

            Mary and I have noticed extensive catkins (they look a bit like “cones”) of white birch seeds on local white birch trees, which is good news for wintering songbirds like pine siskins, American goldfinch, and common redpolls. The mature female catkins hold tiny winged nutlets attached to three-lobed bracts. Mary Holland, an excellent naturalist from New England, writes, “The [bracts] of white birch look somewhat like soaring birds.” Look for them on snow-covered trails this winter.

A bowhunter killed a cougar Nov. 11 on private property in Buffalo County, according to the WDNR. Cougar sightings, though still rare, are no longer extremely rare. There have been 25 verified cougar reports in Wisconsin in 2023, according to the DNR. Importantly, however, of the more than 100 verified cougar reports in the state in recent years, none have resulted in a risk to human safety or the use of lethal force against the animal, at least until now.

There’s still no clear evidence cougars are breeding in Wisconsin. Most cougars spotted in Wisconsin have dispersed from out west and are young males apparently on a walk-about.

 

Latest NOAA Climate Report 

The Fifth National Climate Assessment, 2200 pages long, was issued on Nov. 14, a product of more than 750 experts evaluating thousands of studies over the last five years. Federal agencies have produced these assessments twice a decade or so since 2000, as mandated by a 1990 law.

Let’s start with the good news. Our country’s annual greenhouse gas emissions fell 12% between 2005 and 2019. This trend was largely driven by changes in electricity generation: coal use has declined, while the use of natural gas and renewable technologies has increased, leading to a 40% drop in emissions from the electricity sector. 

Eighty percent of new electricity generation capacity came from renewable sources in 2020. Further, the costs associated with wind and solar energy plummeted by 70% and 90%, respectively, over the past decade. Onshore wind and solar are now the cheapest source for building new power plants, costing less than gas, geothermal, coal, or nuclear.

Interestingly, since 2017, the transportation sector has overtaken electricity generation as the largest emitter of carbon dioxide. Emissions from transportation rose by nearly 25 percent between 1990 and 2018, even as vehicles became more energy efficient. The reason? Americans are driving more.

            The report points out that cost-effective tools and technologies exist right now to significantly reduce America’s contribution to global warming. No need to wait, and many people are appropriately responding. Around two in five states, as well as 90 percent of U.S.-based companies, have assessed their climate risks. Eighteen states have climate adaptation plans; another six are working on theirs.  

But, while the emissions decline is good news, the report finds US planet-warming emissions still need to more sharply decline to be in line with the international goal of keeping temperatures from increasing above 1.5-degree Celsius, a threshold beyond which scientists warn life on Earth will struggle to cope. To put that cut into perspective, US emissions decreased by less than 1% per year between 2005 and 2019 – a tiny annual drop. We need to to ramp it up to 6% annually. 

Why? Since 1970, the Lower 48 states have warmed by 2.5 degrees (1.4 degrees Celsius) while Alaska has heated up by 4.2 degrees (2.3 degrees Celsius), compared to the global average of 1.7 degrees (0.9 degrees Celsius). 

But what people really feel is not the averages, but when weather is extreme. The number and severity of storms are getting worse. As of October 10, there have been 24 weather and climate disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion in the United States this year. By comparison, between 1980 and 2022, the typical annual average for events like this was eight. For the most recent five years, the annual average has been 18 events.

There is no place immune from climate change, but some states – including California, Florida, Louisiana and Texas – are facing far more significant storms and extreme swings in precipitation.

Whether or not individuals accept that climate change has huge financial costs, the insurance industry sure has. Climate risks have hit the housing market in the form of skyrocketing homeowners’ insurance rates. Some insurers have pulled out of high-risk states altogether. The largest homeowner insurance company in California, State Farm, announced recently that it would stop selling coverage to homeowners everywhere in the state. 

In parts of eastern Kentucky ravaged by storms last summer, the price of flood insurance is set to quadruple. In Louisiana, the top insurance official says the market is in crisis, and is offering millions of dollars in subsidies to try to draw insurers to the state.

And in much of Florida, most big insurers have pulled out of the state already. Earlier this month, the insurance arm of AAA announced it would not renew some “higher exposure” home insurance policies in Florida, and Farmers Insurance announced it will stop offering new home insurance policies in the state and won't renew thousands of existing ones, in part because of rising losses from hurricanes.

Florida established a complicated system years ago in response to soaring insurance prices: a market based on small insurance companies, backed up by Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, a state-funded company, that would provide windstorm coverage for homeowners who couldn’t find private insurance. Citizens is now the state’s largest insurance provider! But Citizens won’t cover homes with a replacement cost of more than $700,000, or $1 million in Miami-Dade County and the Florida Keys.

Insurance costs are hitting the middle class hardest. An insurance company deciding not to renew coverage against risks like fires and flooding can instantly devalue a property. A Florida homeowner who is dropped by an insurer could see the property's value decline 19% to 40%. You also can’t get a mortgage if you can’t get house insurance. And families who don't have adequate home insurance struggle terribly after disasters.

The federal government created the National Flood Insurance Program in 1968, and it now provides the vast majority of residential flood insurance in the U.S. The program is backed by taxpayer dollars, but it is chronically in debt and is increasingly unaffordable for homeowners because it wasn't designed for the enormous climate risk that the U.S. now faces. The average price of home insurance has risen by 21% nationwide since 2015. In Texas and Colorado, the average cost of home insurance has risen about 40% since 2015. In Florida, the statewide average is 57% higher. And in some of the hardest-hit areas, premiums have doubled or even tripled in the wake of major storms and fires.

The problem, as insurance companies see it, is that they can't charge enough to cover their bills after these major disasters. Says one insurance analyst, the United States is "marching steadily towards an uninsurable future.”

            The report concludes that Americans’ efforts climate change initiatives have mostly been “incremental” instead of “transformative.” The best possible future will emerge only if our nation, along with all other nations, work collectively to confront this enormous challenge.

 

Celestial Events

            It’s dark every morning now when most of us get up, but brilliant Venus is always there to greet us in the southeast.

            And it’s also dark when most folks are coming home from work, so look after dusk for Jupiter high in the southeast and Saturn in the south.

            The full moon occurs on 10/27 – the “Beaver” or “Ice is Forming” or “Snow” moon depending on your tradition.

            By 11/29, we’re now down to less than 9 hours of sunlight with winter solstice only a little over 3 weeks away.

 

Thought for the Week

“As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.