A Northwoods Almanac for March 13-26, 2026
Sightings - Golden-crowned Kinglet
Mary and I were snowshoeing near dusk a few weeks back when I leaned against a decaying red pine with lots of large and small holes in it, and a golden-crowned kinglet flew out from just under my arm and landed on a nearby branch. It was obviously roosting for the evening in one of the holes, and I disturbed it.
Bernd Heinrich in his book Winter World wrote several chapters on the extraordinary lengths that golden-crowned kinglets go to survive a northern winter. To begin with, they are the smallest songbird of all that winters in our Northwoods, and the second smallest in the summer, only out-smalled by ruby-throated hummingbirds. Golden-crowned kinglets weigh all of 5 grams, which is about a fifth of an ounce, or two pennies worth, and stretched out they may reach four inches in length. Heinrich says they own the title of the world’s smallest perching songbird (hummingbirds are not considered songbirds). Their size matters in winter, because the smaller the animal, the proportionately larger is the surface mass, leading to the greater loss of heat.
Toss in the fact that they maintain their body temperature at 109° to 111°F (43 to 44°C), some 5°F (3°C) higher than most birds. That means they have to burn more calories in winter to stay warm (BTW, their body temperature would cause most of us to die of heat stroke).
Nevertheless, few birds can out-tough them - they can survive down to minus 40 degrees F. Add in the fact that Heinrich found tiny geometrid (“inchworm”) caterpillars comprised the bulk of the kinglet’s diet, which are truly few in number, tiny, and difficult to find. Heinrich observed that kinglets feed incessantly, all day long, foraging tirelessly and averaging 45 short “hop-flights” per minute.
Our winter nights can reach -30°F and last 15 hours, so it would seem that their survival would be an impossible task. One research team measured the amount of fat the kinglets put on during the day, and while proportionately it was very high compared to other birds, they calculated that the kinglets would need twice the calories in their fat reserves to last the night. Heinrich thinks they may go into torpor overnight to lessen their calorie loss, but that’s not proven. He then took some of his students and tracked birds at dusk to see what they did at night, and they found that the tiny birds may conserve energy by huddling together in small
groups, and that the birds may roost together sometimes in miniature snow caves on evergreen branches, thereby benefitting from the snow’s insulating properties.
Even utilizing all their behavior and physical adaptations, Heinrich writes, “[Their survival] defies physics and physiology. We don’t know for sure how they do it.”
Beaver Lodge and Safe Ice - A Cautionary Tale
I was walking along a frozen lakeshore a few weeks ago when I came upon what appeared to be a relatively modest “hump” of snow. Our dog walked up on top of it, and as I was standing there, I thought, “This looks like a new beaver lodge. I better go around it on shore.” As that realization dawned on me, the ice under my feet immediately gave way, and I was plunged into water up to my chest.
A few shocked swear words later, I was able to pull myself up onto shore, but I was soaked. Fortunately, I was only 300 yards or so from my car, so I sloshed my way through the snow and was in the car and home stripping off my “not yet frozen but getting there” clothes a few minutes later.
I know not to walk on ice around a beaver lodge. I just didn’t recognize it as a lodge right away, and I paid the price. Fair warning - because beavers swim out daily under the ice and collect branches from their winter cache to eat in their lodge, the ice around the lodge is often thin.
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Moose in Wisconsin and the U.P.
In northern Wisconsin, moose remain a true rarity with perhaps a few breeding pairs among an estimated 20+ total individuals. For decades, Moose have not been recognized by the DNR as a resident species in Wisconsin, thus limiting any formal research into their current status. However, the Wisconsin DNR and Natural Heritage Inventory (NHI) recently said they intend to update the state rank for moose from SNA (Status Not Assessed) to SU (Status Uncertain) reflecting the recognition that moose are here and part of Wisconsin’s native fauna.
In the DNR’s stead, an Iron County resident, Amanda Griggs, began many years ago conducting moose surveys on her own in our area. She founded “Hidden Moose of Wisconsin,” a long-term research project trying to uncover and document Wisconsin’s moose population (see hiddenmoosewisconsin.wixsite.com). As a volunteer, she’s deployed dozens of trail cameras and is actively investigating a host of questions about moose in northern Wisconsin.
The moose story is quite different in the U.P. of Michigan. In the mid-1980s, the Michigan DNR translocated 59 moose from Algonquin Provincial Park to Marquette County. The goal was to establish a self-sustaining population in the U.P. of 1,000 moose by the year 2000.
All the translocated moose were fitted with radio collars to track survival and movement, and though there were some natural losses, the population grew steadily from the late 1980s through 2007.
But data from over the last 16 years obtained via aerial population surveys shows that their annual growth has slowed to less than 1%.
In the most recent moose survey conducted by the DNR in January 2023, an estimated 426 moose were counted in the western Upper Peninsula (the remainder of the U.P. is not systematically surveyed).
In February of this year (2026), a cooperative team from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and Northern Michigan University captured and collared 41 new moose and additionally recollared two of last year's yearlings. With these additions, researchers now have 56 active GPS collars deployed across the population with the intent to understand why moose numbers in the western Upper Peninsula have remained relatively stagnant.
So, the question always arises as to why there are so few moose in Wisconsin when there are so many in the U.P. In 1989, the Wisconsin State Legislature directed the DNR to investigate the feasibility of reintroducing elk, moose, and caribou. The resulting report, published in 1990, evaluated whether Wisconsin could realistically support these species again, and came back saying an elk reintroduction could likely succeed, but that moose and caribou would face significant challenges.
The report identified several limiting factors for moose, including ecological pressures from high white-tailed deer densities which result in presence of brainworm, a fatal parasitic nematode for moose that is carried by deer (in Minnesota’s moose population, for instance, brainworm causes between 25% and 45% of adult moose deaths).
As a result of that assessment, Wisconsin chose to begin reintroducing elk near Clam Lake in 1995, but declined to introduce moose.
Would moose do well in northern Wisconsin if reintroduced? The 1990 report suggested we don’t have the specific mix of habitats that moose favor. Frankly, I question that - moose occupied the northern half of the state prior to settlement - so, the habitat was adequate then, and should be so today. But I do agree that brainworm from our too high whitetail deer population is now and will continue to be a limiting factor, as are our warming winters.
It’s difficult to answer the question whether moose could be reintroduced into northern Wisconsin and survive. Climate change likely dooms them in the long run. In the meantime, keep an eye on Griggs’ website to see what she comes up with.
Canada Jay Nesting
Speaking of warm winters impacting moose, they are also impacting the nesting population of Canada jays in our area. I’ve coordinated the Manitowish Waters Christmas Bird Count since 1993, and up until 2011, we always had multiple sightings of Canada jays. In fact, we counted 13 individuals in 1994 in our count circle and 10 in 1998.
But, we’ve not seen any during our counts since 2011 - 14 years running now.
Why? Well, that requires us to understand their breeding strategy. Canada jays mate and lay their eggs in late February into early March, rearing a family of young jays by mid-March, an extraordinarily early timing requiring large amounts of high energy food. Why they raise their chicks so early in the year, with heavy snow around them and deep cold often well below zero, is a mystery, but they are only able to do it because of all the food they cached in the fall.
Canada jays cache insects, berries, mushrooms, and strips of flesh they’ve pulled from carcasses, sometimes caching up to 50 pounds per bird. They coat the food items with their sticky saliva - the stickiest saliva of any North American bird - making a little package that they jam in amongst spruce needles, in a tree crevice, a broken-off stump, or under loose bark, and then they somehow recall where to find it months later in the dead of winter.
They are “scatter-hoarders,” and as one writer says, Canada jays “have a memory like a Vegas card counter.” They create thousands of food caches, by some estimates up to 8,000, and somehow remember where to retrieve some 80 percent of those morsels.
So why are their numbers declining in our area? Because winters are warming in northern Wisconsin, and a January or February extended warm spell thaws out the frozen food caches, spoiling the food and leaving nothing to feed the chicks.
We’re at the southernmost edge of their range as it is, so any warming impacts their nesting success. Thus, Canada jays have been moving further north where winters are more consistently cold.
Celestial Events - Spring Equinox
Hooray for March 20, the official day marking the spring (vernal) equinox - our days are now longer than our nights!
Climate Stats
2025 was Earth’s third-warmest year since records began in 1850. Global average temperatures in 2025 were 2.4°F (1.3°C) above pre-industrial (1850-1900) levels.
The planet is rapidly approaching warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial averages, a number scientists believe is a threshold for much greater risks to lives, livelihoods, and ecosystems.
Global coastal sea level was recently measured to be on average around 1 foot higher than assumed, according to a recent report in the journal Nature, with some places - such as Southeast Asia and parts of the Pacific - reaching up to 3 feet higher.
Thought for the Week
“To travel well within your neighborhood is the greatest of journeys.” - attributed to Samuel Johnson
