A Northwoods Almanac for July 17-30, 2026
Sightings - Pie-bald Gray Squirrels and Merlins
Scott Ruesch sent me photos of a pair of piebald squirrels that were frolicking in his backyard in Harshaw. I’ve seen an albino squirrel before, but never a piebald one, or in this case, two! Piebaldism develops when albinism only affects certain areas of the skin, producing a “pied” or “piebald” effect with irregular patches of white. In piebald individuals, at least some of the cells can produce pigment. The unpigmented patches are due to localized mutations in skin cells that occurred during embryo development.
We’ve been observing and hearing a merlin in Manitowish for over three weeks. I first heard one calling from the edge of a wetland on 6/26, and then Mary and I saw it repeatedly along the same road in the same area on 7/1 and 7/2. And then one woke us up on 7/7 at 5:30 crying its harsh, high-pitched ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki right outside our bedroom window, likely to the detriment of some poor songbird that was visiting one of our feeders.
The merlin’s call comes loud, fast and furious and really can’t be misidentified, so even in the hazy subconscious moment of coming out of a deep sleep, you know what you’ve got.
We suspect the merlin(s?) are nesting in that area, but so far we’ve been unable to find the nest. A pair of merlins nested in this same spot a number of years ago, and we have watched for the pair to return over the following years, but we never spotted them.
Is it possible that it’s the same nesting pair? Who knows? Merlins are primarily monogamous. During a 9-year study, a researcher (Wiklund 1996) observed 9 males and 10 females who retained the same mate during 2 to 3 consecutive seasons.
Well, that’s not a long time, but perhaps this pair had a more lasting commitment!
Merlins often nest in abandoned crows or hawks nests, and most often in a white pine, so the nest usually can be easily seen.
They prey on songbirds that they catch in mid-air, but they also hawk flying insects, primarily dragonflies, especially in late summer and during migration. In one study, males brought on average 9.6 birds per day to the female and chicks during the nestling period.
Researchers have also observed that they often hunt cooperatively! Bengston (1975) observed 30% of hunts were done in pairs, generally male and female. One merlin flies down a tree corridor beneath the canopy and climbs to flush the birds, while the other flying behind initiates the attack. Remarkable!
Swamp Candles (Lysimachia terrestris)
Swamp loosestrife, or more commonly “swamp candles,” came into full bloom in the first week of July. That week I hiked one of the dikes on the Lac du Flambeau portion of Powell Marsh, and I came across a huge expanse of wetland completely covered in swamp candles - by far the most I’d ever seen in one area. It was beautiful!
The plant produces star-like yellow flowers that grow in a narrow spike, four to twelve inches long, and almost always occurs in wetlands Each petal has two red dots at its base forming a circle of ten red dots in the center of the flower. The rhizomes can grow rapidly, forming a large colony of plants in a season.
The name Lysimachia is in honor of Lysimachus, bodyguard to Alexander the Great.
Legend has it that Lysimachus, chased by a raging bull, pacified it by waving a
branch of loosestrife in front of it, the plant having long been known for its calming properties.
Thus, this is the apparent source of the name loosestrife. Lysimachia, is a likely translation of the common name: lysis meaning “a release from” and mache, “strife.”
Swamp candles are a native loosestrife unlike the non-native purple loosestrife, which is terribly invasive. We have several other native loosestrifes in our area that you can look for: swamp loosestrife/water willow (Decodon verticillatus), whorled loosestrife (Lysimachia quadrifolia) and tufted loosestrife (Lysimachia thyrsiflora).
Great Horned Owl Visiting in Manitowish
We have had a great horned owl apparently feeding a young owlet or owlets below our house since the beginning of July. The fledged owlets give a begging call that sounds similar to a hawk-like scream, though softer. This communicates their position to the adult, but may also indicate stress or danger.
Not only is the adult owl feeding its young at night, but it then roosts on a branch in a silver maple just forty or so yards from the our breakfast window. So, every morning now for at least a week, we’ve watched a great horned owl watch us as we eat breakfast.
We’ve been able to easily focus our spotting scope on the owl and see its yellow eyes. But what has impressed us most are the size of the talons! A great horned owl’s talons take a force of 28 pounds to open, and are so strong that they can sever the spinal column of prey even larger than itself. They can capture animals as large as raccoons, and can take flight with six pounds of prey even though they only weight four pounds. They’re known to kill great blue herons and take red-tailed hawks out of the air, as well as having been observed killing an adult male osprey at its nest. They’re primarily nocturnal hunters though, and take nestlings especially of larger birds like American crow, common raven, northern goshawk, and red-tailed, red-shouldered, and broad-winged hawks.
That’s why crows will mob great horned owls to try and force them out of the area. When that happens, the owl likely had taken a crow nestling, or adult, at night from their roost.
Loon Stats
From Walter Piper at loonproject.org: Dr. Piper first marked and studied loons in Oneida County, Wisconsin in 1993, later established a Minnesota study population in 2021 at a site 200 miles west-northwest of his Wisconsin Study Area (both study populations comprise 110 to 120 breeding pairs.)
This May, Piper recorded in his Wisconsin study area that 52 of 70 banded males returned to the territory they occupied in 2025, and 51 of 66 females did so. In Minnesota, 65 of 71 males returned, and 61 of 68 females came back. He cautions, however, that a few pairs in Wisconsin may have settled on some of these lakes after he stopped by to look.
His research is of utmost importance because he has shown that as of 2020 the Wisconsin loon population is declining. Collaborating for two years with researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, they made a critical finding. “A drop in water clarity in northern Wisconsin is reducing survival of loon chicks. Specifically, loss of water clarity in summer caused by heavier rainfall is strongly associated with loss of weight and lower survival among loon chicks. The only plausible explanation for this pattern is that loon parents, which hunt fish visually underwater, cannot catch enough fish to sustain their young when water clarity falls.”
He further notes, “Loss of clarity is likely to have dire consequences for loons, if it continues. The northern Wisconsin loon population is already producing far fewer young adults than necessary to replace breeders that do not return from the wintering grounds. In the next decade or sooner, we expect to see breeding pairs disappear from one and then another breeding lake in the state, owing to this dwindling of young replacements.”
Wisconsin loon pairs are producing fewer chicks; chicks are growing more slowly; and chicks are dying at much higher rates now than 30 years ago when Piper’s work began. His population model projects that the northern Wisconsin loon population is shrinking by as much as 6% each year.
Necessity - Invention and Motivation
The old cliché goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”
Well, it’s also the mother of motivation. The continuing Middle East War has increased costs of every type of fuel worldwide, as well as associated products like fertilizers that are made with fossil fuels. The Strait of Hormuz closure removed an estimated 20% of global oil and liquid natural gas supply, triggering the largest energy disruption in modern history, according to the July 3, “Shockwaves From The Gulf: The Iran War And Its Impact On The Global Economy And Energy Markets – Analysis,” Eurasia Review.
The silver lining in this is those prices and shortages have catalyzed many nations to push ahead with creating their own energy independence, supercharging efforts to speed up shifts to renewables, nuclear, and clean tech as a security imperative. As Selwin Hart, a UN envoy, puts it: “Renewables offer something fossil fuels never did: stability and sovereignty. There are no embargoes, price shocks or tariffs.”
Over the past decade, the share of wind and solar power in the global electricity mix has risen by more than 10 percentage points, from 23% to 33.8%. Over the same time period, the share of coal has dropped from 38.7% to 33.0% in 2025. New global data shows that renewables have overtaken coal to become the largest source of worldwide electricity production
What specifically is being built worldwide to meet new electricity demands? Solar - 75% of the growth in global electricity demand was met by solar power in 2025.
For an in depth view on all this, see the Eurasia Review article. The article concludes by saying, “The crisis has powerfully accelerated the global energy transition providing . . . a strategic urgency that prior environmental or economic arguments had not succeeded in generating at equivalent speed. Nations with diversified and domestically renewable electricity mixes proved substantially more resilient; those reliant on imported fossil fuels suffered acutely. The structural case for clean energy as a security asset—complementing its environmental justification—has been made with unprecedented empirical force.”
So, an unintended good has occurred. The war has forced nations to more quickly transition to non-fossil fuel sources of energy, and thus reducing the market for fossil fuels.
Celestial Events
Look for the peak Delta Aquarid meteor shower in the predawn hours of 7/29. The only problem will be that this is also the night of the full moon, which will wash the sky of its darkness.
Thought for the Week
“Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.” - Thomas Merton.
