A Northwoods Almanac for 4/10 - 23, 2026
April’s Origins
From Scottish writer Ali Smith: “The English word for [April] comes from the Roman Aprilis, the Latin aperire: to uncover, to make accessible, or to remove whatever stops something from being accessible. It maybe also partly comes from the name of Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love, whose happy fickleness with various gods mirrors the month’s own showery-sunny fickleness. Month of sacrifice and month of playfulness. Month of restoration, of fertility-festivity. Month when the earth and the buds are already open . . .”
Another definition of aperire is “to open,” which symbolizes the opening of buds and flowers in spring. April was considered sacred to the goddess Venus (the same goddess as the Greeks’ Aphrodite) who for the Romans was the goddess of love and beauty, but also a goddess of gardens.
On Venus’ birth, it was said the seas bubbled and turned rosy, and she arose, full grown and standing on a seashell in all her glorious beauty. She floated to Cyprus, arriving in April, and as soon as her white feet touched the shore, grass and flowers sprang up at her feet and she was sweetly received by the Three Graces.
For those of us not steeped in Greek/Roman mythology, the Three Graces were Aglaea (Splendor/Beauty), Euphrosyne (Joy/Mirth), and Thalia (Good Cheer/Bloom). They symbolized giving, receiving, and reciprocity.
So, as April throws every kind of weather punch imaginable at us, from ice storms to blizzards to tornadoes to heat waves, remember that it all leads to grass and flowers springing up at our feet and the eventual planting of our gardens.
Spring will come - it always does - but how long it will last is an open question, and the answer is as unpredictable as the April weather.
Enjoy the tumult if you can. It’s surely a test of our patience, our humor and our resilience. I know cabin fever is hard upon us.
Keep the faith.
April’s Full Moon - “The Maple Sugar Moon”
The full moon for April came on the evening of April 1, a moon the Ojibwe call “The Maple Sugar Moon.” How appropriate for me, because for the first time in my long life, I got to help haul sugar maple sap in metal pails. I’d always wanted to do this, and let me tell you, it was work! We transferred the pails that hung on the trees to larger five-gallon metal pails, which I learned very quickly when filled to near the top weigh close to 40 pounds. One in each hand, full to the brim, means 80 pounds to haul on snowshoes to a central receiving bin where the sap was drained via gravity through a pipe to a 500-gallon tank.
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| The crew |
I was helping my friends Bob and Terry Simeone who have been “sugaring” for 39 years on their 65 acres near Land O’ Lakes. Their property rests on the Winegar moraine, the final stopping point for our last glacier, which at its edge left behind decent soil, hummocky hills, and lots of rocks as its legacy - land perfect for sugar maples to thrive.
This year Bob and Terry “only” put in 200 taps, a seeming pittance compared to the thousand or more taps they used in their younger years, a time when they made over 200 gallons of syrup every year and collected the sap with a horse-drawn sleigh.
I learned quickly not to fill my 5-gallon pails to the brim - around three-fifths full seemed a good compromise - which even then represented 50 pounds for every trip to the receiving bin.
A few days later, my shoulders spoke to me in a strong language I hadn’t heard in a long while.
Later that week, I returned for a second sap gathering day, and because I had learned to moderate my loads, my shoulders spoke more kindly a few days later.
“Work smarter,” I tried to remind myself, and I did.
Next up is the first boiling which will have taken place by the time you read this. Bob and Terry will likely end up with well over 1,000 gallons of sap, a figure that translates after clouds of steam rise into the night from the evaporator into 25 gallons of the magic elixir we call maple syrup.
If you haven’t had warm pure maple syrup on homemade sourdough pancakes, well, I think it’s fair to say you haven’t fully lived. I’d invite you over for breakfast, but then I’d have to share our syrup, a hard thing to consider now that I know from experience how much work goes into it.
The Broad-Winged Hawk Project
Hawks are returning! We saw our first rough-legged hawk on April 1 in the Powell Marsh Wildlife Area. Rough-legs spend the winter just south of us where the snow cover thins out enough for them to hunt.
Rough-legs are a temporary pleasure. They stop over for a while on their way north, but soon depart for their breeding grounds in the treeless tundra or dense conifer taiga of far northern Canada and subarctic Alaska where they nest often on cliffs.
Our most common woodland hawk, the broad-winged hawk, typically begins returning in late April from its wintering grounds in Central and South America. A study launched in 2014 by Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania, the “Broad-winged Hawk Project,” has trapped, banded, and placed satellite transmitters on broad-wings in Eastern Canada and Northeastern U.S., starting with birds nesting in Pennsylvania and eventually expanding into New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Ontario, and Québec. Thirty-one of those transmitters have yielded at least one season of data, shedding light on migration patterns, premigration movements, home ranges, and habitat needs.
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| Broad-winged hawk range map |
Typically, only adult female hawks are tagged, as the transmitters are too large for juveniles and smaller adult males (male raptors are almost always smaller than females).
One of the most surprising findings so far is that hawks who summer within a few miles of each other might spend their winters thousands of miles apart. Some birds from Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Ontario commingle in Colombia, while others fan out to Brazil, Peru, and Nicaragua.
Equally surprising is that approximately 30 percent of the tagged birds flew west or even north before their fall migration, spending anywhere from one week to two months there before eventually turning around and heading south to Central or South America.
Here’s the data on just one of the birds: In early August 2022, a few weeks after her young fledged, “Skatutakee” - named for the small mountain within view of her nest - left her breeding territory in Dublin, New Hampshire, and flew to La Tuque, Québec, where she stayed until mid-September. Between August and November, she traveled more than 6,000 miles - 600 of which were “extra” north-south movements associated with her pre-migratory flight - and navigated her way through 13 different countries before settling in Bolivia for winter. The following spring, she returned to New Hampshire, where she experienced a nest failure in late July and promptly headed for Québec once again.
In 2023, she left on 13 September and settled in Inca, Peru by 19 November.
In 2024, she flew south on 11 September and arrived in Cascajo, Bolivia (a little later than usual) on 8 December.
In 2025, she started her migration from Québec on 12 September and by 12 November she settled in a new wintering site in Suapi, Bolivia.
What to make of this relative to our area? Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory and Hawk Mountain Sanctuary have begun a collaboration to expand the Broad-winged Hawk Project to the Central Flyway, so those of us in the Upper Midwest should soon be seeing migration data from tagged hawks who breed in our area.
I’ll keep you posted as more is learned.
FOY (First-Of-Year) Sightings in Manitowish
3/21/26: FOY American robins and red-winged blackbirds.
3/24/26: FOY common grackle.
3/29/26: FOY chipmunk.
3/30/26: Two American woodcocks were “peenting” on opposite sides of our home. Several purple finches appeared at our feeder.
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| Woodcock on nest, photo by Bev Engstrom |
3/31/26: Two great horned owls were calling close to one another. Great horneds could be sitting on eggs by now - they nest very early throughout North America.
4/2/26: FOY song sparrow.
Continuing at our feeders are dark-eyed juncos and American tree sparrows. We’re at the southernmost edge of the breeding range for juncos, so a few might stay, but tree sparrows nest in far northern Canada and will be moving on.
Annual Midwest Sandhill Crane Count
The 50th annual Midwest Crane Count will take place on Saturday, April 18, 2026, from 5:30 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. Mary and I participated in our first crane count in the Green Bay Area in the 1970s, and have counted in Iron County since the mid 1980s. It’s always an adventure!
To participate, contact the following county coordinators:
Vilas and Iron County: Hannah Thorpe hannah@discoverycenter.net
Oneida County: Bob and Jan Dall janbobdall@gmail.com
Forest County: Nicole Shutt forestcountycranecount@protonmail.com
Ice-Out Soon?
Average ice-out date on 39-acre Foster Lake in Hazelhurst is 4/16 according to 53 years of continuous data kept by Woody Hagge. Foster averages 224.8 days of open water. Marshes go first, followed by smaller, shallow lakes, then larger, deeper lakes.
Celestial Events
On 4/12/1961, Yuri Gagarin from the USSR became the first human in space.
On 4/15, look before dawn in the east for Mars 4° below and Saturn 5° below the waning sliver moon.
The new moon occurs on 4/17.
On 4/20, look low in the east before dawn for Mars just above Saturn.
The peak Lyrid meteor shower occurs on the night of 4/22.
Thought for the Week
“There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.” – Barry Lopez
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