A Northwoods Almanac for June 5-18, 2026

 A Northwoods Almanac for June 5-18, 2026  

 

A Very Birdy Late May!

            Each year, the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin hosts the state’s largest bird conservation fundraiser, the Great Wisconsin Birdathon. A birdathon is like a walk-a-thon fundraiser, but instead of logging miles walked, each competing team logs species of birds seen in one day and receives donations based on how many species they see.

            A local team named the Up North Hammerheads, consisting of members of the North Lakeland Discovery Bird Club, participates yearly, and this May 18, the Hammerheads benefitted from good spring weather, which, to say the least, isn’t always a given. They began at the tribal entrance to Powell Marsh at 5:50 AM, and then zipped around the Lakeland area’s top birding hotspots throughout the day, primarily in Vilas and Oneida Counties, finding birds wherever they went, and ending in downtown Minocqua at 5:35p.m.  You would think the team would have been exhausted by then, but they were excited and triumphant when they realized they’d smashed their previous Birdathon records with a total of 114 species for the day! 

            Some Birdathon highlights from Elizabeth Stone, a member of the team, included: At Pipke Park in Presque Isle, three green herons flew as a trio over the ponds. On Vandercook Road in Arbor Vitae/Woodruff, a Tennessee warbler was found taking a bath in a puddle in the middle of the road. And, further down Vandercook Road, when the team stopped in a young aspen stand to look for “young forest birds”, they were amazed to spot a squadron of nine American white pelicans flying overhead! As the day drew to a close, the team realized they still hadn’t seen an indigo bunting, a relatively common Northwoods bird, and then, lo and behold, they found one on a lawn in downtown Minocqua.  

            Two additional sightings made the Vilas County Rare Bird Alert that day: A LeConte’s sparrow and a pair of Wilson’s phalaropes, both identified at Powell Marsh Wildlife Area. 

Wilson's phalarope

            Sarah Besadny, the team leader for the Hammerheads, added these highlights: 

- We saw all seven of the “Wisconsin” woodpecker species except the two rarer species - black-backed and American three-toed.

- We saw 19 species of warblers

- We spotted three shorebirds with long bills and worked as a group to determine if they were long-billed dowitchers or short-billed dowitchers … and landed on short-billed.

- While walking down to the bridge at Chewelah Lake to look for barn swallows (a reliable spot for them on our Birdathon route), we saw not only the swallows but a bobolink perched at the top of some grasses near the lake edge.  

            Sarah noted that perhaps the greatest highlight was simply “getting outside on a perfect birding day - not too hot, not too windy, not too buggy, the leaves hadn’t really popped yet, and no rain! The variety of birds you can see in one day, the flash of color from Baltimore orioles/indigo buntings/northern yellow warblers/American redstarts, the surprise “finds”, the joy of seeing the same species in the same spots year after year - what a treat!!”

            If you would like to reward the Up North Hammerheads for their conservation efforts, you may do so through June 30 at the link: https://charity.pledgeit.org/WIBirdathon2026.   

            Funds raised go to bird protection efforts in the Lakeland area, to important bird areas throughout Wisconsin, and to vital winter habitat for our Wisconsin birds in Central and South America. 

 

Calla Lily

            Calla lilies came into flower on 5/26 in Powell Marsh. The unique brilliant white "petal" (actually a spathe) acts as a silky hood for the real flower, which is a golden club of tiny clustered flowers. If you pick a calla lily, you’re picking a bouquet of flowers. 

            Wild calla grows low to the ground with smooth, long stemmed, parallel veined leaves. The glossy heart-shaped leaves arise from long creeping stems which can also float, and which help calla to form large clonal colonies. The often pure stands of wild calla grace a dark-soiled wetland with a candle flame of white. 

            Wild calla usually flowers in June in bogs and shallow water margins - you're in good habitat if the mosquitoes run you out before you can even look for the callas. 

            The fruit forms a clustered head of brilliant red berries like Jack-in-the-pulpit. It’s said that the seeds and rootstocks, when dried, can be ground into an "unpalatable" but nutritious flour. Eaten raw, however, the tubers are acrid, causing an intense burning sensation in the mouth. One source (Lyons and Jordan) says the rootstalk must be “roasted for several hours, and then dried for six months before being ground into flour.” Seems like a rather long wait! Better to enjoy the brief beauty of the flower than destroy it for such a questionable culinary return.

            While the origin of “Calla” is uncertain, it is believed to come from the Greek kalos, meaning “beautiful.”  

            

Pink Lady’s Slippers  

            We saw our first pink lady’s slippers (Cypripedium acaule) in flower on 5/28 in a bog along the bike trail in Manitowish Waters. They’re relatively common in bogs and mossy hummocks, but also in sandy pine woods throughout much of the Northwoods. The seemingly dissimilar habitats have two things in common - both are acidic and both lack nitrogen. In fact, nitrogen appears to be toxic to some orchids.

            

photo by Rod Sharka

Pink lady's slipper is the only species of the five lady's-slippers whose pouch opens by a lengthwise slit - the other lady's-slippers openings are circular. A pollinating bee enters the one-way slit and tries to obtain nectar near the bottom of the slipper (there isn’t any - it’s false advertising!). But to return the way it came in is difficult because of the incurved edges of the pouch. So, the pink lady's-slipper has devised two small “windows” high up in the back of the pouch which let light in. The bee is thus “encouraged” to move through a passage to the lighted opening. On its way, it deposits pollen on the stigma, and then picks up new pollen from the anthers, all before it can exit through the “window.”

            Cypridpedium means “slipper of Venus” - Venus was the mythic goddess who was born on Cyprus, inspiring the Latin name for a flower of beauty equal to Venus herself. 

            The pink lady's-slipper has the honor of being the state flower of Minnesota. 

 

FOY (First-of-Year) Canadian Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly

            Mourning cloak butterflies are typically our first butterfly of the spring, but I always look forward to seeing the emergence of the first Canadian tiger swallowtail. This year we saw our first one on 5/25.

            With a wingspan of three to four inches and their broad black stripes on a yellow background, they are a beauty to behold. 

photo by John Bates

            The males emerge first and often congregate in large numbers to replenish fluids lost during their time in a chrysalis over the winter. This may be on wet sand or soil, or on fresh scat. 

            

Noise

            “Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.” - Mark Twain

            As the peak of summer season rolls in, so does all manner of noise, usually from machines purposely designed to maximize their bellowing  - Harleys come to mind, as well as souped-up pickups or ATVs. 

            Firecrackers can be the worst of noises because they’re so startling - there’s no incoming roar to prepare you like from an oncoming motorcycle. It’s just a sudden explosion that scares the wits out of you. 

            I was young once - I do vaguely remember! I, too, thought it cool then to peel out from stop signs and race around in motor boats making big wakes. 

            I was thoughtless. If it even occurred to me that my noise and boat wakes might distress others, I apparently didn’t care or thought it was no big deal. 

            The older I’ve become, the more I appreciate quiet - the silence of a lakeshore, a forest, a paddle on a river. There’s certainly sound, but it’s not noise. It’s wind in the pines, water lapping on sand, the spiraling song of a hermit thrush, the call of a barred owl at night. It’s the natural world speaking its myriad voices. 

            One of the most beautiful writings on the sound of wind comes from John Eastman in a piece titled “The Ghost Forest”: 

            “Pine is the larynx of the wind. No other trees unravel, comb, and disperse moving air so thoroughly. Yet they also seem to concentrate the winds, wringing mosaics of sound from gale weather - voice echos, cries, sobs, conversations, maniacal calls. With the help of only slight imagination, they are the receiving stations to which all winds check in, filtering out their loads of B-flats, and F minors, processing auditory debris swept from all corners of the sound-bearing world.”

            Sigurd Olson in his book Listening Point wrote, “As I sat there on the rock, I realized that, in spite of the closeness of civilization and the changes that hemmed it in, this remnant of the old wilderness would speak to me of silence and solitude, of belonging and wonder and beauty. . . I named this place Listening Point because only when one comes to listen, only when one is aware and still, can things be seen and heard. Everyone has a listening point somewhere. It does not have to be in the north or close to the wilderness, but some place of quiet where the universe can be contemplated with awe.

            Olson writes in his book The Singing Wilderness, “The wilderness sings because it contains so much silence.”

            Paul Gruchow in his essay “The Healing Values of Wilderness” says, “We feel things when we are silent, and what we haven’t felt, we haven’t known.”

            Noise drowns the world. Silence amplifies it. May we appreciate the quiet moments and learn to be listeners.

            

Celestial Events

            On 6/9, look low in the west after dusk for Venus right above Jupiter.

            Though summer solstice occurs on 6/20, the year’s earliest sunrises begin on 6/10, rising at 5:08 in the morning. This is 3 hours and 32 minutes earlier than our latest sunrises that occur around winter solstice. Note that without daylight savings time, the sun would be rising at 4:08 AM.

            The new moon occurs on 6/14 - the next full moon will be on 6/29.            

 

Thought for the Week

            Yes, we still need fossil fuels. But “renewables offer something fossil fuels never did: stability and sovereignty. There are no embargoes, price shocks, or tariffs.” - Selwin Hart, UN envoy.