A Northwoods Almanac for 10/25 – 11/ 7/24 by John Bates
Avian Bird Flu
Recent articles in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (“Bald eagle recovery a testament to wildlife protections, improvements,” Paul Smith, 8/4/2024) and The Washington Post (“In eagle nirvana, avian flu is decimating America’s national bird,” Mark Johnson, 10/5/2024) have raised concerns about the impacts of avian influenza on Wisconsin’s bald eagle population.
I read these avidly, because we had an active eagle nest across the river from us for decades, but we haven’t seen any nesting activity there or nearby for the last two years. So, we’re curious, too, regarding what may be going on.
Eagles have been doing great in the seventeen years since the Fish and Wildlife Service removed them from the endangered species list, and numbers nationwide have continued to rise over that time. But avian influenza hit particularly hard in late 2021, and eagles began to die in many states.
In Michigan, the number of occupied eagle nests had risen from 52 in 1961, to 114 in 1984, and then to 1,000 or so by the end of 2021. Once avian influenza reached Michigan, the impact in 2022 was immediate – the number of occupied nests plunged 50 percent with tests on dead bald eagles performed by the Michigan DNR revealing that 38 percent of those that could be diagnosed had died of avian influenza.
In Minnesota, eagles have been dying, too, but no comprehensive figures exist on the impact of the disease because the state does not collect all dead eagles for necropsy, the animal version of an autopsy.
Eagles were dying even as far south in Florida and Georgia where avian influenza caused an alarming rate of bald eagle deaths and nest failures.
How as this happening? Waterfowl were dying of “bird flu,” and the eagles were eating the waterfowl.
So, what’s been happening here? Wisconsin now has the third highest population of bald eagles in the nation, trailing Alaska and Minnesota, so this is a big concern.
The problem is it’s hard to say exactly, because the DNR no longer conducts aerial nest surveys, partly because the species is doing well and partly due to funding shortages that required its staff to focus on areas of greater need.
To fill the void, Bald Eagle Nest Watch (BENW), a citizen science program begun in 2018 by the Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance (then called Madison Audubon), started working in partnership with the WDNR. In 2022, as bird flu – more precisely Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) – spread through the wild bird population in Wisconsin, BENW documented a sharp reduction in nesting success.
The disease was found in dead and dying adult bald eagles and was confirmed as a source of mortality in eagle chicks when BENW volunteers in Milwaukee County recovered a very young, recently dead eagle and submitted it for testing.
The eaglet was positive for HPAI. It helped explain the 65% failure rate among Wisconsin eagle nests in 2022, according to BENW data. The program had documented an average of 19% nest failures from 2018 to 2021.
That was a very serious decline. However, the good news is that last year, 2023, bald eagles appear to have recovered well with only a 15% nest failure, at least according to the limited BENW data.
So far in 2024, BENW volunteers have monitored 219 active nests across 40 counties (out of 72 in the state) and found 43 nests (20%) failed, but for many reasons including being toppled during severe storms this spring.
Drew Feldkirchner, Director Bureau of Natural Heritage Conservation for the WDNR, responding to a request for information from Ron Eckstein, retired eagle bander for the DNR in Rhinelander, wrote, “At this point, we have no plans to resume those [aerial] surveys. However, we are staying engaged on bald eagle work including the excellent NestWatch program led by Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance. We continue to receive those data every year and take that information into account.”
Carly Lapin, Northcentral Region Ecologist for the DNR, wrote, “As far as I am aware, we are not seeing the bald eagle die-off that we did several years ago at the peak of avian influenza in the state. In fact, our nest success numbers appear to have returned to normal, based on observations from NestWatch.”
With eagles now nesting in all 72 counties, it may be that the eagles have dodged this current bullet, at least in this incarnation of HPAI. However, there will likely be more variants to come.
Sighting – Juncos and Harris’s Sparrow
Dark-eyed juncos arrived at our feeders in Manitowish on 10/7 and a Harris’s sparrow visited our feeders on 10/10.
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| dark-eyed junco, photo by Bev Egnstrom |
Harris’s sparrows are a far northern nesting sparrow that rarely visit on their spring and fall migrations, and one we haven’t seen for many years. It’s always a blessing when you look out your window and a rare bird looks back at you, isn’t it?
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| Range map for Harris's sparrow |
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| Harris's sparrow |
Research into the natural genetic diversity and selective breeding of trees offers some hope for imperiled tree species like ashes, American beech, eastern hemlock, butternut, American chestnut, and American elm. The trick is to find those very few trees that are surviving and showing resistance to these diseases, and then to crossbreed them in hopes of restoring them to some of their original abundance in our forests.
And that’s where all of us come in. Researchers need help finding “lingering” trees. If any of us are aware of a tree or trees that appear to be doing well – they’re “lingering” – while others of the same species around them are dying, we are asked to download the app TreeSnap and submit our observations.
A caution. It’s important to not submit observations of trees like eastern hemlock where the hemlock wooly adelgid (HWA) hasn’t reached as of yet, like our area in northern Wisconsin. But if you live in North Carolina or Massachusetts or other eastern states where the HWAs have killed millions of trees, then that’s the area where the survival of hemlocks is rare and needs to be documented.
So, if you’re in an area that has been decimated by a specific tree disease or pest, but you see an individual or more doing well, consider sending information in to TreeSnap. Follow up questions will come your way, and your observations will not be shared with anyone except certified researchers in order to protect the trees.
Always More on Wolves
Pat Durkin in a recent excellent “Patrick Durkin Outdoors “column notes the following statistics (https://www.patrickdurkinoutdoors.com): “From 1985 through 2023 [38 years], the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources paid $3.38 million in sundry veterinary bills and abatements [for wolf ‘depredations’] to cover 750 calves, 450 hunting dogs, 270 sheep, 235 chickens, 150 adult cattle, 150 domestic turkeys, 65 pet dogs, 25 horses or donkeys, and other livestock injured or killed by wolves.”
Big numbers, right? Well, as Durkin points out, if you break them down in annual numbers over 38 years, those big numbers suddenly look pretty small, don’t they?
More importantly to my mind, Durkin notes: “The DNR, however, doesn’t track or write abatement checks for cats, dogs, parakeets or other suburban pets picked off by foxes, coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, hawks or bald eagles. Good thing. Imagine the drama of politicians demanding the DNR hold those evil-doers accountable, too.”
So true. Just wolves are the evil-doers. No coyote or bobcat or other predator gets headlines in papers for killing a lamb or calf or chickens or someone’s house cat. No one gets paid for losses from other predators.
And if you want to take it to its furthest end, no one gets paid for the damage woodpeckers do to all of our wooden siding. Or the damage sapsuckers do to our apple trees. Or . . .
Maybe the DNR should be paying us for all this other stuff, too!
No . . . they absolutely should not.
We live in a state that has exceptional wildlife. To enjoy the remarkable benefits of having them on the landscape, sometimes there’s a cost, one everyone should be more than willing to pay for the privilege of not living in a sterile city.
The Other Side of the Wolf Coin
Durkin also points out that there are those who think if we just had more wolves, we could eliminate CWD in deer. Or if we just had more wolves, they would control the ever burgeoning deer herd.
Nonsense.
I’ve written this before, but it bears continual repeating. All the best research has said that wolves eat from 17 to 20 deer annually. Multiply that times our 1,000 wolves, and that’s a pittance of 20,000 deer. If instead we have 1,500 wolves, as so loudly proclaimed by those who always believe they know better than the DNR, that’s a larger pittance of 30,000 deer. Out of a deer herd of somewhere around 1.6 million statewide – around 400,000 in the northern counties – that still leaves an army of deer on the landscape
Simply put, wolves will never control the deer herd in Wisconsin. Never.
The math doesn’t work for the wolf haters, nor does it work for the wolf lovers.
Now, if only math mattered.
Durkin ends his column with a perfect quote from wolf researcher David Mech who wrote in 2012, “The wolf is neither a saint nor sinner except to those who want to make it so.”
Celestial Events
Planets to watch for in November: After dusk, look for brilliant Venus very low in the south-southwest; for Jupiter rising in the east-northeast; and Saturn high in the southeast.
At dawn, look for Mars in the south-southwest.
New moon on 11/1.
The peak Taurid meteor shower occurs in the predawn on 11/5.
Thought for the Week
The smoke from the first meaningful fire in the wood stove, the one that just might keep going now until spring, smells sweet and crisp from the white birch that has laid silent in the pile for two years, snapping now and crackling and popping, spinning tall tales in long shadows as the sun sets, luring us to the couch to warm our feet, the air inside now pungent, too, from opening the stove door for gentle rearrangements, encouraging fire from individual logs I recognize by now as old friends from all the cutting and the splitting and the stacking and the hauling, and with the possibility of the first flakes of the season flying by morning, we are exactly where we want to be, the inside of our house reflecting the magnificent yellow of our woods outside, and time is slowing in that perfect way that only happens when you light the first purposeful fire of the year. – Bob Kovar
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
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