A Northwoods Almanac for 8/30 – 9/12, 2024
Sightings – Bottle Gentians, Bryozoa Colonies, Trumpeter Swan Cygnets, Sandhill Cranes, Turtlehead
Bottle Gentians: On August 12, I paddled Plunkett Lake with a large group from ICORE – Iron County Outdoor Recreation Enthusiasts. Besides just the pleasure of being with folks that love wild lakes, the botanical highlight of the trip was the sighting of bottled, or closed, gentians growing on moss-covered logs laying in the water. I rarely see bottle gentians, and I’ve never seen them growing of what I call “bog logs.” These are trees that fell into water decades ago, were slowly colonized by mosses, and then were eventually colonized by shoreland/water-edge plants.
Closed gentian flowers require a physically strong pollination partner. Large native bumblebees are one of the few insects that can pull the petals apart to get down to the nectar, and they’re rewarded for their effort by discovering the high sugar content in the nectar – 40%! Almost equal to a Mountain Dew! One naturalist describes them as the “soft drink” of the native plant world.
The flowers have blue tips until they’re pollinated, and then the tip turn white. The blue flower tips apparently signal to the bees that they’ve not been pollinated and there’s some very sweet nectar awaiting them.
Thoreau wrote of their intense blue: “[It is] a transcendent blue . . . bluer than the bluest sky.”
And in 1917 Herbert W. Faulkener wrote this about the bumblebees that enter the flowers: “I have had the pleasure of seeing a bumblebee thus enter a closed gentian with an assurance that proved he was an old burglar, experienced in ‘breaking and taking.’”
 |
| bottled gentian, photo by John Bates |
Bryozoans: Cathy Trochlell sent me an email with a photo of a bryozoa colony: “I found four of these really interesting jelly-like things in my lake. Three are the size of a child's head and the fourth is the size of a softball. Feels like hard rubber. Any idea what these are?”
Every year someone asks me about these remarkably odd creatures. I assure them that they’re not alien brains, but rather tiny colonial animals that are fairly common in our lakes and streams. Some 20 different freshwater species occur in North America and form colonies that range from moss-like growths to basketball-size gelatinous masses. The large, hard gelatin-like masses are what we most commonly see, and are called Pectinatella magnifica. Each colony is made of many individual creatures called “zooids” that are microscopic animals with a mouth, digestive tract, muscles, and nerve centers. They feed by filtering tiny algae and protozoa through a crown of tentacles (lophophore), and most are found attached to plants, logs, rocks and other firm substrates. They’re harmless and indicate good water quality.
 |
| bryozoa, photo by Cathy Trochlell |
Trumpeter swan cygnets: Bob Von Holdt in Preque Isle sent me a photo and a short note to tell me the six trumpeter swan cygnets that he’s been watching since May have survived. Mary and I have likewise been watching a family of three cygnets all summer on Powell Marsh, and they are getting quite large. Trumpeter swan cygnets typically fledge at around 100 days after numerous practice flights, so we should see them up in the air sometime in September.
Immature trumpeters usually overwinter with their parents and return with them to the general breeding area the next spring, but then have to make it on their own.
 |
| trumpeter swans, photo by Bob Von Holdt |
Sandhill cranes: Eric Benn sent a note with a photo of a pair of cranes meandering about the side of their home in Presque Isle. He wrote, “Mid-morning on Wed 17 July we glanced out the lake-facing windows of our home on the North end of Armour Lake in Presque Isle. Walking quite deliberately up the side of the rough grassy area beyond the garden retaining wall were a pair of Sandhill Cranes. They proceeded along the side of the house and briefly looked around the turn-around in front of the house and eyed the driveway . . . They crane-walked back along the side of the house and proceeded down the fairly steep incline through the ferns, shrubs & woods toward the lake.
“We enjoy hiking the trails/berms at Powell Marsh and enjoy sighting cranes (at a distance) there, and we periodically see them roadside or in fields away from the highways when we're south of Eagle River, Rhinelander, etc. But I was certainly not aware that they explore predominately wooded areas adjacent to our N Woods lakes.
“What a delight. I take this to be an encouraging sign that the crane population is robust enough that they are expanding or exploring areas where they aren't frequently observed.”
I responded: “Sandhills seem to be both more common and more tame these days. Folks have them in their back yards, we see them on the edge of busy roads, etc., and I don’t really have an explanation why. Cranes apparently are very quick to acclimate to human presence, because many don’t take off at first sight of us. I don’t know why they don’t spook, but we are grateful recipients!”
Turtlehead: The beautiful and unusual flowers of turtlehead have come into flower, their presence always signaling the curtain soon to close on our summer. At first glance, they might appear to be a white closed gentian, but the flower petals are not fully closed like the gentians – the top lip arches over the lower lip giving the unique appearance of a turtle’s head.
Turtlehead’s scientific name Chelone glabra derives from Greek mythology and a nymph named Chelone who insulted the gods; in punishment, she was turned into a turtle. Other common names include codhead, fish mouth, shellflower, snakehead, and snake mouth.
 |
| turtlehead, photo by John Bates |
Hummers Departing
Our local hummers are typically long gone by September 10, unless the weather stays uncharacteristically warm. But please leave your hummingbird feeders up until the end of the month, just in case any migrating hummers are still coming through. The myth that hummers won’t leave if you don’t take down their feeders is just that – a myth. Hummingbirds haven’t survived for thousands of years in our area without knowing when it’s time to get out of town. Hummers can’t tolerate cold nights, and they know it.
Nighthawks Coming Through
Nighthawks begin migrating in later August, but continue their migration into September. We have watched them an hour or so before dusk on many occasions. Their hawking of insects and darting flight easily give their identity away even at a long distance.
Nighthawks are neither exclusively night creatures nor hawks, but they bear a strong resemblance to a falcon, and they’re most often seen in the early evening. They feed on the wind by simply opening their mouths wide and swallowing whatever flies in – think of them as a flying vacuum cleaner. They flit erratically like butterflies or bats, in quick, glancing angles, and exclusively hawk insects, particularly flying ants, beetles, and mosquitoes. You might have seen them at night around a streetlight, working over the flittering moths.
Most are heading for mid-continental South America, wintering from southern Brazil to Argentina.
Monarchs Also Soon on the Move
In September, the vast majority of eastern monarchs fly southwest, funneling through Texas and finally assembling by the tens of millions in the 9,800 to 11,000-foot-high mountains west of Mexico City. The monarchs’ bodies are nearly 50 percent fat by the time they arrive in Mexico, providing enough energy to tide them through the winter. This fat is also needed to fuel them on the first lap of their flight north in the spring. Considering the body weight of a butterfly, this amount of fuel seems impossibly inadequate, but it somehow provides the energy stores needed for survival.
No monarch makes the round trip to Mexico and back to the Northwoods. The adults who left Mexico this spring began a migratory relay, stopping to lay eggs along the way and then dying. Their larvae hatched, pupated, and new adults emerged. The next generation then flew north and arrived in our fields and forests. Summer monarchs only live three to five weeks, compared to the eight or nine months of the overwintering monarchs, so two generations may be raised during the summer before the fall generation heads back to Mexico.
As a result, the adults heading south now have never seen Mexico. How they know the way is one of the many wonders of the natural world.
Hemlock Wooly Adelgid Coming Our Way
The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development recently verified a new detection of invasive hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA) on trees on a private property in Leelanau County, which is in the northeastern corner of lower Michigan. With this new detection, Leelanau becomes the ninth county in the state with active hemlock woolly adelgid infestations, joining Allegan, Antrim, Benzie, Mason, Muskegon, Oceana, Ottawa and Washtenaw counties. At risk are the estimated 170 million hemlock trees growing in Michigan forests.
Eastern hemlocks grow from the southern Appalachian region into northern New England and as far west as northwestern Wisconsin. Hemlock wooly adelgids have wreaked havoc everywhere they’ve appeared, with most areas losing 80% to 90% of their hemlocks.
Mild winters significantly contribute to the adelgid’s spread, yet another reason for doing everything we can to stop climate change.
Celestial Events
It’s almost impossible to believe it’s nearly September, but here we are! For planet-watching in September, look after dusk extremely low in the west-northwest for brilliant Venus and for Saturn rising in the east-southeast. Prior to dawn, look for Mars high in the southeast and Jupiter high in the south.
The new moon takes place on 9/2. Look after dusk on 9/5 for Venus about one degree above the waxing sliver moon.
We’re down to 13 hours of sunlight as of 9/7.
Thought for the Week
“Be so little distracted, your thoughts so little confused, your engagements so few, your attention so free, your existence so mundane, that in all places and in all hours you can hear the sound of crickets in those seasons when they are to be heard.” – Henry David Thoreau, 1851
Please share your outdoor sightings and thoughts: e-mail me at johnbates2828@gmail.com, 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