A Northwoods Almanac for 11/13/20

 A Northwoods Almanac for 11/13 - 26, 2020  

 

Sightings - Spotted Towhee, Pine and Evening Grosbeaks, Snow Buntings 

11/3: At our feeders in Manitowish, we’ve had continuous visits since early November from evening grosbeaks as well as a few pine grosbeaks, with evening grosbeaks concentrating on our sunflower seeds and the pine grosbeaks taking seeds and feeding on our crabapples. Numerous people have observed evening grosbeaks in the last week, so be on the lookout at your feeders. Ryan Brady, avian conservation biologist for the WDNR in Ashland, writes that “east of Wisconsin they're seeing a full-blown irruption [of evening grosbeaks], with birds down into North Carolina and Tennessee already and big numbers in the northeast U.S. Here in the western Great Lakes, birds are moving, yielding sightings already south to Iowa, Illinois, and southern WI, but numbers are substantially lower, especially here in the north.”

11/4: Gale and Dave Fisher observed a single bat catching insects, which is quite unusual in November! Along those same lines, Mary, Callie and I saw a garter snake on 11/8, which is equally unusual. Bats should have migrated or hibernated by now, and snakes should be also hibernating. I suspect our very warm weather in early November brought a few hardy souls of various species out to explore, but that was an anomaly. By the time you read this, we will likely be back to full-blown snow-cover, and all hibernators should be tucked in where they belong for the winter.

11/7: Bob Kovar photographed a spotted towhee underneath one of his feeders in Manitowish Waters on 11/7. This is a rare sighting in the Northwoods! The only other spotted towhee ever confirmed north of Hwy. 29 was in 2007. Mary and I have seen these birds in scrubby habitats in Arizona where they nest, but they are a true western bird and are well out of their range here in northern Wisconsin.

photo by Bob Kovar

Spotted towhee range map 

11/7: Snow buntings are currently migrating through and are often being seen along roadsides. The males are entirely black and white, while the females are more brownish with much less contrasting black and white plumage. No other songbird is so extensively white, so that’s the feature to key in on.

 

Wilderness Walking

            Our remarkably warm early November weather made for excellent hiking conditions, and Mary, Callie and I tried to take full advantage of the heat. Our two most interesting hikes took place in designated federal wilderness areas, the first in the 4,446-acre Porcupine Lake Wilderness Area in Bayfield County, and the second in the 18,327-acre Sylvania Wilderness Area in the Upper Peninsula. 

Both areas are part of the National Wilderness Preservation System, a network of over 109 million acres of public land comprised of more than 760 wilderness areas. These areas were designated through the efforts of people like Howard Zahniser who wrote the first draft of the Wilderness Act in 1956. Nine years, 65 rewrites, and 18 public hearings later in August 1964, and after the Senate had passed it for the second time, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Wilderness Act of 1964 with only one dissenting vote. It was signed shortly thereafter by President Lyndon Johnson.

In Wisconsin, five wilderness areas have been designated, comprising a total acreage within the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest of 42,415 acres, or about 3% of the entire 1.5 million-acre forest (the Chequamegon side of the National Forest comprises in total about 858,400 acres in Ashland, Bayfield, Sawyer, Price, Taylor and Vilas counties, while the Nicolet side includes nearly 661,400 acres in Florence, Forest, Langlade, Oconto, Oneida and Vilas counties). 

Designated in 1984, the Porcupine Lake Wilderness was mostly cut over beginning in the 1880s, with cutting continuing sporadically up to 1977. Windstorms have also left their mark with fallen trees common throughout the wilderness. The North Country National Scenic Trail runs the length of the area with posts marking the trail location at some intersections, but otherwise the trail is unmarked. 

We hiked a four-mile long section of the NCT that touches the north end of 75-acre Porcupine Lake, a long, sinuous, spring-fed lake. Nothing remarkable happened on our hike, but we hiked in a completely silent place where nature again is primary and humans secondary, and that alone meets my definition of “remarkable”. 

Two days later, we hiked a 9.8 mile-long trail in Sylvania, which is within the one-million-acre Ottawa National Forest. Here you can also paddle or simply rest next to 34 named wild lakes. And here, for the most part, remains an old-growth hemlock-hardwood forest, the second largest in the Upper Midwest. We didn’t see another person throughout our five hours on the trail, nor again did we have anything “remarkable” happen, that is if you don’t consider solitude, pristine lakes, and old-growth hemlocks, yellow birches, sugar maples, and white pines  particularly remarkable. We, of course, do, and that’s why of all the places we could have chosen to go to that last day of foreseeable warm weather, we chose to go there. With sore feet, and nearing sunset, we drove home in quiet gratitude. 

on the trail in Sylvania

These places, these wildernesses, are now sanctuaries for species adapted to the North Country where they can live out their full lives without the incursions of modern development and resource-driven pressures. As the federal website for wilderness states, “They are places where law mandates above all else that wildness be retained for our current generation, and those who will follow.”   

 

Loon Decline: Article by Walter Piper

            Since 1993, Walter Piper has coordinated research on common loons on over 100 breeding-lake territories in Oneida County. I write about his work frequently in my columns, but now the results from his investigation of loon survival during the chick and early floater stages has been published by the American Ornithological Society. His study sample is large - according to estimates by LoonWatch, the loons he’s studied comprised 9.8%, 7.1%, and 8.6% of the statewide loon population in 2005, 2010, and 2015 respectively.

            His work reveals two major results. One, “compared to the late 1990s, 31% more chicks now perish before they reach five weeks, and 82% more chicks die after reaching five weeks of age.”

            Two, and more shocking by his own words, was his discovery that “the population of young adult floaters had plummeted to less than half of its size in the 1990s.” Floaters are young adults loons, future breeders, that either replace or evict older loons from their territories. Piper’s population model “projects a decrease of 6% annually in the northern Wisconsin loon population” and a “loss of roughly one-third of all loon breeding territories in northern Wisconsin by 2031.” 

            This is a startling projection and thus worthy of your time to read more in-depth. For the summary, see https://americanornithology.org/the-cryptic-decline-of-an-iconic-northern-species/. To read the entire paper, see https://academic.oup.com/condor/advance-article/doi/10.1093/condor/duaa044/5897435.

            A study in Ontario appears to be finding much the same results. See https://tla-temagami.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Drivers-of-Decline-in-Common-Loon-Productivity-in-Ontario-Science-of-the-Total-Environment-2020.pdf

 

High Waters

The paddling season has come to a close, and the overriding takeaway for me this year has been the crazy high water on so many lakes. We’ve had five years now of historically wet weather, and the impact on shoreline vegetation has been dramatic. On lake after lake, I saw what were shoreline trees like white pines, white cedars, and white birches in three feet or more of water. Many were dying or had died from the stress of their roots being underwater for several consecutive years or from the stress weakening the trees enough that insects and diseases were able to get the upper hand. Shoreline shrubs like leatherleaf, sweet gale, and tag alder were all inundated, and emergent aquatic plants like pickerelweed and bullrushes appeared to me to be far less abundant. High water levels also increased the amount of nutrient runoff, and the result was reduced water clarity.

Limnologists tell me that in our area we’re typically on a 13-year cycle of high water to low water. Our current higher water period began in 2013, so if we’re on that cycle, we’re still in for more years of high water. And with the one of the impacts of climate change being more intense rain events, deluges where runoff into our lakes happens more rapidly than during gentle rains, then we’re in for even more water well into our future. 

 

Celestial Events

            New moon occurs on 11/14. The peak Leonid meteor shower takes place before dawn on 11/17 - look for an average of 15 meteors per hour. On 11/19, look after dusk for Jupiter two degrees above the waxing crescent moon, and Saturn three degrees above the moon. As of 11/26, the average high temperature in Minocqua now drops to 32° for the first time since March 5. Minocqua averages 100 days, or about 27% of the year, with high temperatures at or below 32°.

 

Thought for the Week

“Things mysteriously change, leaving me wondering with no clues.” - Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center, in a blog posting on 10/19/20.

 

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 11/27/20

A Northwoods Almanac for 11/27 - 12/10 /20  

 

Sightings: Townsend’s Solitaire!

On 11/16, we had a first in our yard in Manitowish - a Townsend’s solitaire appeared at one of our crabapple trees and remained for two days. This was a first because Townend’s solitaires are a western North American bird closely associated with high mountain country, and thus a rarity in Wisconsin. 

I noticed it in the morning while watching pine grosbeaks feeding on the fruits of a different crabapple tree, and I wasn’t sure what it was. Mary and I have seen a Townsend’s solitaire only once, and that was several years ago in Arizona. The bird is all gray with a very noticeable white eye-ring, set off only by subtle, partially concealed buffy markings on the wings. On a gray morning in November’s somber gray and brown colors, it hardly stood out.

photo by Bob Kovar 

The bird wasn’t known to western scientists until it was first collected by John Kirk Townsend along the lower Willamette River, Oregon, in 1835. Townsend shot only a single individual, although this specimen proved sufficient for John James Audubon to honor Townsend in naming and describing the species in 1838. 

Townsend's solitaires nest in the mountains on the ground beneath rocks, logs, or other sheltering overhangs, butthey spend their winter at lower elevations in juniper woodlands or other habitats that provide abundant fruit. 

They characteristically perch on exposed treetops, which allows the holder of the feeding territory to announce his ownership and to scan for intruders, which he will then engage in a violent fight to defend his territory. For us, this habit of perching on outer branches made for perfect viewing of the solitaire - it wasn’t shy about sitting on open branches and allowing us to get good photographs.

Their diet out west in winter is well documented as almost entirely juniper berries. But during fall migration and for birds wintering in habitats other than juniper woodlands, their diet includes fruits like American mountain-ash, crabapple, winterberry holly, buckthorn, currant, serviceberry, hawthorn, chokecherry, bearberry, rose hips, sumac, poison ivy, honeysuckle, and elderberry, all of which are fruiting species we have in northern Wisconsin.

photo by Bob Kovar

Why the bird visited us is a mystery, and where it has now gone is also unknown. We’re simply honored it somehow found a crabapple tree in tiny Manitowish, well over a thousand miles from its normal wintering range on the other side of the Rocky Mountains.

 

John Kirk Townsend - American Naturalist 

The sighting of the Townsend’s solitaire inevitably led us to question why this species was named after Townsend. A Google search gave the answer. In 1833, at the age of 24, John Kirk Townsend was invited by the botanist Thomas Nuttall to join him on Nathanial Wyeth’s second expedition across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Along the way, Townsend collected a number of animals new to science including birds such as the mountain plover, Vaux’s swift, chestnut-collared longspur, black-throated grey warble, Townsend’s warbler, and the sage thrasher, as well as a number of heretofore unknown mammals (unknown, that is, to Euro-American scientists). Townsend, the “bird chief” on the expedition, also collected small rodents as excitedly as he did birds. One of the many species named after him is Townsend’s big-eared bat, a species that he found protected the men of the Hudson’s Bay Company by eating the dermestes beetles, also known as “hide” or “skin” beetles, which abounded in fur posts and often destroyed the fur pelts. 

            Townsend “collected” a few stories as well along the way. On one of his solo collecting excursions, he was chased across the Idaho landscape by an enraged grizzly bear. 

On the Willamette River in Oregon, he spotted a California condor on the opposite shore, shot at it in order to collect it, but only wounded it. So, he stripped down naked, swam across the river and chased after it trying to club it into submission, apparently all to the enjoyment of onlooking Native American villagers.

After collecting a number of reptile specimens and placing them in jars of alcohol, he returned to the camp to find one of his companions had drank all of the alcohol from the jars, ruining months’ worth of work. 

Yet another time, Townsend returned to his camp to find fellow naturalist Thomas Nuttall had eaten an owl Townsend had intended to preserve as a scientific specimen.

Apparently alcohol and food were in short supply.

On his return to Philadelphia four years later in 1837, he sold 93 birds he’d collected to John James Audubon who described them in his book Birds of America. Townsend ultimately supplied 74 of the 508 species Audubon discussed. 

In 1839, Townsend published his own book, The Narrative of a Journey across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River and a Visit to the Sandwich Islands. 

A little over a decade later, at age 41, Townsend died of arsenic poisoning. He had developed a formula used in taxidermy preparations, and arsenic was his “secret” ingredient. Today his name is best preserved in a few of the species he first described to the scientific world.

 

White-breasted Nuthatches

Mary recently noticed that white-breasted nuthatches coming to our feeders were more active at dusk than during the day. It turns out that in cold months, white-breasted nuthatches are especially gluttonous, caching seeds under bark and in other hiding places for later retrieval, a process called scatterhoarding. The pairs disperse their stores throughout their territory, remarkably only using each storage site once. The food is stored in bark crevices on the furrowed trunks of large trees and on the underside of branches, and is often covered with either a piece of bark or rotten wood, lichens, snow, or moss. 

The nuthatches don’t necessarily go a long ways to cache their food. In one study, males and females both cached their food at a relatively similar distance, an average of 13 meters from a feeder and nearly six meters above the ground.

The literature says that the white-breasted nuthatch’s caching is most intensive early in the day and decreases later. So, if Mary’s observation is correct that the white-breasted nuthatches are more active near dusk, either the nuthatches haven’t read the literature or they’re eating the seeds immediately at the feeders to help them get through our lengthening nights.

 

Black Knot Fungus

November’s bare branches readily expose any irregularities on a tree. We have numerous black and choke cherries that now are showing signs of black knot (Apiosporina morbosa), a common but only occasionally fatal fungal parasite of cherry and plum trees. The fungus has a two-year life cycle in which it encircles the branch, cutting off transmission of nutrients, and ultimately killing the branch. As the fungus grows, it releases chemicals that make the tree grow extra large plant cells that result in swollen, woody galls. The galls are a velvety green the first year but after two years of infection the galls turn black and hard. The fungus releases its spores in the spring of its second year, starting the process all over again on other parts of the tree. 

 

Black Bear Hibernation

Black bears should all be in hibernation by late November. The bears spent much of the early autumn eating excessively to fatten for hibernation, a process called hyperphagia, consuming 15,000 to 20,000 kcal per day. They also were drinking several gallons of water daily to process their large food intake and rid their bodies of nitrogen wastes. 

As the fall transition period progressed, black bears became increasingly lethargic, resting 22 or more hours per day. Their heart rates fell from 80-100 beats per minute to 50-60 per minute, and sleeping heart rates fell from 66-80 per minute to less than 22 per minute.

            Once into hibernation, studies of bears (from bear biologist Lynn Rogers) show that they live in a continuous dormant state but still use up to 4,000 kcal per day, mainly body fat. They don’t eat, drink, urinate, or defecate (warning: do not try this in your own home), and reduce their oxygen consumption and metabolic rate to a little as 25% of summer rates. Their breathing rate slows to once per 15-45 seconds, and their heart rate drops periodically to 8-21 beats per minute.

 

Sightings

            Ice-up has occurred on many smaller lakes, including Echo Lake in Mercer on 11/18 as reported by Carne Andrews.  

            On 11/10, Kay and John Suffron reported seeing a flock of 30 or more evening grosbeaks at their feeders on Annabelle Lake in Presque Isle. She noted that this is the first time they’ve seen evening grosbeaks in the eight years they’ve lived there.

On 11/12, Rod Sharka reported a pair of cardinals appeared at his feeders on Palmer Lake near Land O’ Lakes. Now if they will only stay and raise some chicks next spring!

On 11/13, Linda Johnson in Woodruff spotted a gray catbird at her feeders. We had one visit our feeders, too, on 11/17. Both dates are quite late for a catbird, though given that they are fruit eaters, they do have the ability to stay later than many other birds.

In Manitowish, we continue to have a small flock of pine grosbeaks (6 individuals) and evening grosbeaks (up to 15) at our feeders, with the pine grosbeaks also focusing on our remaining crabapples. We haven’t seen this number of evening grosbeaks for decades, so we are thrilled to have them.

female pine grosbeak photo by Bob Kovar

 

Celestial Events

            As of 11/28, we’re down to nine hours of daylight. The full moon (the “Ice is Forming Moon”) rises at 100% illumination on both 11/29 and 11/30. A penumbral lunar eclipse occurs at 3:43 a.m. on 11/30, but I wouldn’t bother to get up to see it. A subtle dusky shading will occur on much of the moon for 30 minutes on either side of the maximum eclipse, but that’s it.

            For planet-watching in December, look after dusk in the southeast for Mars, and in the southwest for Jupiter and Saturn. Before sunrise, look for Venus brilliant and very low in the southeast.

 

Thanksgiving

            I’m thankful for a million things on Thanksgiving, but near the top of the list is the view out my window onto the wetlands and pines surrounding the Manitowish River. Barbara Kingsolver relates this feeling perfectly: “It’s a grand distraction, this window of mine . . . This window is the world opening on to me. I find I don’t look out so much as itpours in.

            “What I mean to say is, I have come to depend on these places where I live and work. I’ve grown accustomed to looking up from the page and letting my eyes relax on a landscape upon which no human artifact intrudes . . . I consider myself lucky beyond words to be able to go to work every morning with something like a wilderness at my elbow.”

 

Thought for the Week

“The best way to know God is to love many things.” - Vincent Van Gogh

 

  

 A Northwoods Almanac for 10/30 - 11/12/20   by John Bates

 

Winter Finch Forecast

Each year, the online post “Winter Finch Forecast” offers detailed forecasts for eight far northern-nesting “irruptive” finch species: pine grosbeaks, purple finches, red crossbills, white-winged crossbills, common redpolls, hoary redpolls, pine siskins, and evening grosbeaks, as well as three irruptive non-finch passerines: blue jays, red-breasted nuthatches, and bohemian waxwings.

These winter finches irrupt depending on the scarcity of cone and berry crops in the boreal forest in Canada. The sudden appearances of these birds were a mystery for most birders until Ron Pittaway, a researcher in Ontario, came along and sent a survey in the late summer to his contacts in the field - an average of 45 volunteers per forecast - asking them to rate in their area the seed crops of trees like pines, spruces, hemlocks, and mountain ashes as poor, fair, good, excellent, or bumper. From these reports, Pittaway determined the likelihood of the winter finches remaining on their breeding grounds or moving south to find more ample food resources. Thus the Winter Finch Forecast is as much an art as a science, but it has been remarkably accurate since its inception in 1999. 

For this year's Winter Finch Forecast, Tyler Hoar has taken over the reins, and he notes in general that cone crops “average poor to fair from Lake Superior eastward with eastern white pine being the exception.” He then breaks this down into specific trees and what their lack of seeds might mean for various bird species. So, for pine grosbeaks he reports that there’s a good but erratic crop of mountain ash berries across the boreal forest, so we may see small movements of pine grosbeaks moving south into the U.S..

As for other species, he says purple finches are already moving out of Canada and into the U.S., and he predicts most will migrate south out of Canada.

Common and hoary redpolls should have a moderate to good flight south out of the boreal forest due to a poor to fair crop of white and yellow birch seeds.

Pine siskins apparently are doing great in western Canada due to excellent spruce crops, but in the eastern boreal forest spruce crops aren’t so prolific, so he predicts a small number moving southward. (This prediction has already been eclipsed by large numbers of pine siskins coming south.)

            As for evening grosbeaks, they had an excellent breeding season in eastern Canada due to an outbreak of spruce budworm, a favorite insect food, so as the insects decline in number, we may see some of the best flights of evening grosbeaks in decades.  

            And for bohemian waxwings, one of the most beautiful of all songbirds, the prediction is that most will stay north because the mountain ash crop has been so good. He notes that they often come south to forage on buckthorn, which is not good news for the folks continually working to eradicate the invasive buckthorn. 

 

Pine Siskin Invasion

Birds do exercise free will, however, and don’t always listen to things like the finch forecast. So, if you've never seen a pine siskin, this should be your year, because in the past month, the birds have inundated backyard feeders across the country. It's apparently one of the biggest irruption years in recorded history for pine siskins.

They’re certainly not the flashiest of birds. Brown and heavily striped with a flash of bright yellow on their wings and tails, they’re rather demure and modest. I suspect if you feed birds, you’ll be seeing droves of these.

 

Sightings - Bell-ringing Woodpeckers, Robins, Fox Sparrows, Carolina Wren, Gray Jays

Sarah Krembs sent me a note regarding a downy woodpecker’s polite interest in perhaps having lunch with them: “Mum and I both heard it so I know I'm not crazy. We were sitting in the living room when the doorbell rang . . . Then there were a few knock, knock, knocks in rapid succession. I didn't see him, but it had to be the little downy who's been lately tapping little holes in our siding. I googled it, and apparently we aren't the only ones with doorbell-ringing woodpeckers. One was even caught on camera.”

In Manitowish, a bevy of robins have eaten every last crabapple off two of our crabapple trees, while leaving another adjacent tree completely untouched. This happens every year with this particular tree, and it’s a mystery to me. I planted these crabapple trees, all from the same batch I received from the DNR, over two decades ago, and yet the crabapples on this tree are often left uneaten until the spring, or eaten as a last resort late in the winter.  

Fox sparrows arrived beneath our feeders on 10/22, and a male red-bellied woodpecker appeared on 10/18, while several white-crowned sparrows showed up on 10/16 and spent a day or two with us and were then gone. We continue to have good numbers of pine siskins, dark-eyed juncos, fox sparrows, white-throated sparrows, blue jays, grackles, mourning doves, and red-winged blackbirds.

            

foxsparrow photo by Bev Engstrom

    

            Carne Andrews sent these observations from Echo Lake in Mercer: “This morning, 10/20, we observed a juvenile merlin harassing an adult pileated woodpecker. The merlin would perch about 4 to 6 feet above the foraging woodpecker then fly directly at the woodpecker flushing it to a new perch in a nearby pine tree. We observed this pattern four times across the lakeshore until they flew out of sight. 

“Also have you had any sightings of Carolina wren in our area? On Oct. 19, I noticed an unusual bird on our sunflower seed platform feeder and got very good looks at it for almost a minute. I’ve not seen a Carolina wren this far north but am familiar with them where I winter in Texas. It was a large chunky wren, brown backed, dark buffy breasted with a prominent bold white supercilium and downward curved bill. The long tail was cocked to almost straight at least an inch above the head.”

As Carne noted, Carolina wrens don’t nest this far north, and so are a rare sighting for us. However, as a function of climate change, Carolina wrens have been moving further north over many decades, and now nest in southern Wisconsin, so perhaps this was a northern explorer, a Shackleton among birds. 

Bob Kovar had a hermit thrush eating from his suet feeder in Manitowish Waters on 10/22. Hermit thrushes are seed and insect eaters, not suet, so this is an anomaly.

hermit thrush photo by Bob Kovar

Denise Fauntleroy sent me a photo of gray jays that are coming to her feeders in Watersmeet, MI. This is the third year in a row that the gray jays have frequented her feeders, and in the spring, they bring their chicks to feed as well. Of course this is because, as Denise wrote me: “They love white bread soaked in bacon grease, plain bread, peanut butter, and any meat scraps (cut up very small). They often hang on the suet feeders too!” Well, no wonder she has gray jays - she’s running a veritable restaurant! These gray jays probably need to be checked for heart disease. 

gray jay photo by Denixe Fauntlerory

Ah, I’m just teasing Denise. More power to her for caring so much for them. Gray jays are a disappearing act these days in northern Wisconsin, and anyone who has them coming to their feeders is very lucky indeed.

Keith Pilger sent me a photo of a black chipmunk that has been coming to his son’s feeder in Stevens Point. We see black squirrels regularly, but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen, or heard of, a black chipmunk.

Mitch Myers reported a flock of 30 evening grosbeaks that came to his feeders in Mercer on 10/18. Evening grosbeaks have been a very uncommon sighting over the last two decades, but this could be a breakthrough year.

Dan Carney in Hazelhurst sent me a message saying he had a flock of 25 or more eastern bluebirds visiting his feeders in late September and into the first week of October. Bluebirds winter as far north as Indiana and Illinois, so they often stay north longer.

Joan Galloway had a male cardinal appear under her feeders on 10/17, only the second one she’s ever seen here in the Northwoods.

Kent Dahlgren sent me the following note and a photo on 10/13: “My wife Maureen and I went for a walk in Pipke Park in Presque Isle, and there were nine swans feeding, preening and actually sleeping in the ponds. It looks like they put their head under their wing to sleep. It was windy and when the swans started sleeping, the wind would start to push them across the pond.”  

 

A Who’s Who of Juncos

Juncos are dominant at our feeders right now, but they often appear quite different from one another. In fact, dark-eyed juncos come in 15 described races, of which six are easily recognizable in the field, while five used to be considered separate species until the 1980s. Look at your field guide to see these differences, but in general there are two widespread forms of the dark-eyed junco: the “slate-colored” junco of the eastern United States and most of Canada,  which is smooth gray above and is the form we commonly see here in northern Wisconsin; and the “Oregon” junco, found across much of the western U.S., which has a dark hood, warm brown back and rufous flanks. 

The quickest identifier for slate-colored juncos at a distance is the flash of their white outer tail feathers when the bird takes flight, but up close, look for a gray or blackish hood, and a dark back that contrasts with its whitish breast and belly. 

dark-eyed junco - slate-colored - photo by Bev Engstrom

The various forms of dark-eyed juncos differ in plumage and bill color, migratory behavior, songs, and body size, which has made for a messy taxonomic history. On occasion, we’ve seen an Oregon version at our feeders, and we certainly see a great deal of variation in the darkness of hood and back feathers on the slate-colored juncos, but they’re still all the “same” bird, at least as of the current science.

            All juncos are ground feeders, so those breeding in northern parts of their range have no choice but to migrate. East of the Mississippi River, junco females tend to migrate farther south than males, with adult females going farther than hatching-year birds, a process referred to as differential migration. This results in partial segregation of sex and age classes. So, for instance, in Michigan, 20% of wintering juncos are females, while 72% are females in Alabama. The genders and ages also vary as to when they migrate in the fall - females move southward before males, and adult females move south before young females. 

Enjoy them while you can!

            

August 10 Derecho The Most Costly Thunderstorm Ever

The powerful derecho that swept through the Midwest on August 10 is officially the most costly thunderstorm event in recorded U.S. history, easily surmounting the top five list of most expensive weather events in the U.S. Only Hurricane Laura with a price tag of $14 billion caused more financial ruin.

According to figures released by NOAA, the sustained line of thunderstorms traveled 770 miles from South Dakota through Ohio in 14 hours, flattening millions of acres of corn and soybean crops, as well as numerous homes, businesses and vehicles, especially in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. An estimated 90% of structures in Cedar Rapids were damaged by the storm, and more than 1,000 homes were destroyed. All told, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 850,000 crop acres were lost - 50% more than originally estimated. 

 

Celestial Events

            Full moon, a blue moon, occurs on 10/31. This is the year’s smallest and most distant full moon, 30% dimmer than our brightest moon of the year in April.

            For planet watching in November, after dusk look for Mars bright in the southeast, Jupiter low in the south-southwest, and Saturn also low in the south-southwest. Before dawn, look for brilliant Venus very low in the east.

            The peak South Taurid meteor shower occurs before dawn on 11/5 - look for about 10 meteors per hour. 11/7 marks the midpoint between autumn equinox and winter solstice. The peak North Taurid meteor shower takes place before dawn on 11/11, again a modest meteor shower of perhaps 10 per hour.

 

Thoughts for the Week

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. - Henry David Thoreau

Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder. - Jalaluddin Rumi 

 

Please share your outdoor sightings and thoughts: e-mail me at manitowish@centurytel.net, call 715-476-2828, snail-mail at 4245N State Highway 47, Mercer, WI, or see my blog at www.manitowishriver.blogspot.com. 

 

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 10/16/20

 A Northwoods Almanac for 10/16-29, 2020  

 

Sightings: Tamarack Gold, Loons, Pine Siskins, Lapland Longspurs

Tamaracks are in full golden splendor. As the only conifer in the North Country to drop its needles in the fall, the spectacle has a short shelf life, so enjoy it while you can. In the winter, many a person has misinterpreted the naked branches of the tamarack to mean the tree has died, but as Donald Culross Peatite wrote in his 1948 book A Natural History of Trees, “When spring comes to the North Woods, with that apologetic rush and will to please which well become the tardy, these same trees . . . begin, soon after the wild gees have gone over and the ice in the beaver ponds is melted, to put forth an unexpected, subtle bloom.  . . . There is no more delicate charm in the North Woods than the moment when the soft, pale-green needles first begin to clothe the military sternness of the Larch. So fine is that foliage, and so oddly clustered in sparse tufts, that tamarack has the distinction among our trees of giving the least shade.”

photo by John Bates

On 10/8, Mary and I watched an adult loon feeding a chick. This is exceptionally late  for an adult to still be feeding a chick given that the adults are soon to migrate, followed a few weeks later by the chick. Both the adult and the chick, however, were the same size, so perhaps this was a chick simply overly dependent on the adult. One way or another, it needs to learn full independence very quickly or its odds of surviving migration are slim.

A flock of 12 pine siskins appeared at our feeders on 10/7. I’ve seen reports of a hundred or more pine siskins overwhelming people’s feeders in southern and central Wisconsin, so I’m curious to see whether we will experience a similar deluge in the next few weeks.

pine siskin photo by Bev Engstrom

And in a walk on Powell Marsh also on 10/7, we were delighted to see a flock of eight Lapland longspurs who allowed us to approach very closely. Lapland Longspurs breed in tundra habitats across the arctic, their name referring to the Lapland region of Scandinavia. We rarely see these birds in migration, so this was a treat.

contributed photo

 

Wild Lakes

            I mentioned in my last column that I’m working on a new book describing the last and best undeveloped lakes in Northern Wisconsin for paddling. With winter biting at our heels, the book will have to wait until next spring to be completed. Still, Mary and I camped last week for three days on Lake Laura in Forest County, and we paddled seven new wild lakes while walking in to another two. 

It’s fascinating to me how each lake has an immediate personality based on the convolutions (or lack thereof) of its shoreline, its shoreline vegetation both onshore and in its shallows, its sediment composition (muck or sand or cobble or combinations thereof), its put-in (from asphalt boat landing to walking across part of a peat bog), its ease in getting to (can I drive right up to it or portage in on a rough trail), its immediate presentation of wildlife (loons calling, flocks of ducks, etc.), and its very subjective beauty, wildness, and mystery.

We were particularly taken by Savage Lake in Florence County, a 144-acre wild lake that was an adventure to find, and which was only three feet or so in depth for most of our paddle. The shoreline was often comprised of mature eastern hemlocks and white cedars, and the put-in was nothing more than a scrape between two hemlocks. We kicked up numerous flocks of ducks, and the beavers clearly were at work on the aquatic vegetation. It just had that feel of a wild place seldom visited, though there was a parking area and a sign for the lake once we found it.

We never saw another person for the hours we were in the area, and it was a beautiful fall Saturday afternoon.

Entering a wild place, as Paul Gruchow writes, “speaks not to what we have learned from books, but to whatever depends upon experience with the physical world: knowing how to read a footprint in the mud, how to steer a canoe into the wind . . . what sort of weather the clouds and the wind foretell . . . which bird sings overhead, what flower blooms in the marsh.

“It speaks to that which is a gift and not an acquisition . . . Nothing here - not the mists that rise in the morning, nor the wind that blows at midday, nor the curtain of colors that falls in the evening, nor the slap of a beaver’s tail in the night - can be commandeered, or caused to happen, or forbidden.

And it speaks “to our capacity for delight and wonder . . . to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives . . . to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation.”

Indeed. I often have to remind myself that all I am called to do on these lakes is pay attention and to breathe it all in as deeply as I can. The lakes, like all life, wish only to be honored for who they are, and my deepest hope is that we’re doing just that while we’re there.

 

Leaves! CPOM 

Leaves, leaves, and more leaves; that’s THE story of October. Billions, well, more likely trillions of leaves, have fallen in the last three weeks, producing a dizzying kaleidoscope of colors on the ground and an incessant noise as one scuffles through the dry leaf litter. 

What happens to them all? Why aren’t we awash in a sea of leaves arching over our heads? There are two stories here: one involves the leaves landing on the forest floor, and the other involves leaves that fall onto our lakes and rivers.

 Let’s just consider the leaves now floating on our northern waters. Mary and I have spent much of the last month paddling undeveloped lakes, and on every lake, recently fallen leaves drifted colorfully, whether from overhanging shoreline trees or from wetland shrubs and herbaceous plants clothing the shores and extending out into the shallows.

By next spring, these leaves will be gone, but gone where? Most of us don’t consider the leaves as food for aquatic life, but indeed that’s exactly what they are. Since the forests along the headwater streambanks shade the river, limited photosynthesis typically takes place. In fact, as little as 1 percent of the stream's energy may derive from photosynthesis. Thus, in the headwater streams of the Northern Highlands where we live, the forest vegetation along a stream is the main energy source for life, typically providing most of the energy for organisms living in and along the stream. Leaves, needles, twigs, bark, and branches drop or wash into a stream and become a storehouse of organic material needed by stream organisms. 

This shower of organic materials from the forest provides a rich food base for a diverse population of insects and microbes that browse and shred the leaves, gouge tunnels into logs and branches, and rasp off algae and fungi. Nearly two-thirds of this debris is processed within the headwaters, with very little of it leaving the headwater system without being at least partially processed. 

This rain of leaves and twigs is termed “coarse particulate organic matter” (CPOM), and  streams are dominated by insects in particular that shred the leaves, but only after they’ve been colonized and conditioned by microbes that leach out soluble organics. Typically one-third or more of the dry weight of a leaf is lost through leaching in the first two days. The continued conditioning done by microbes like protozoans, bacteria, and aquatic fungi may yet take weeks or months depending on the plant species and on the stream temperature. Leaves from basswood, alder, and most herbaceous species process quickly. Maple and birch leaves process somewhat more slowly, while oaks, conifers, and most ferns break down very slowly. 

If the headwaters are turbulent, the mechanical action of the water abrades the leaves and helps tear them apart.

The shredder insects, like many stoneflies, eventually get into the act, skeletonizing the leaves, and converting about 40 percent of what they eat into their own tissue and respiration. The microbial organisms that helped condition the leaves for the shredders are also ingested, serving I suppose as the protein in the leaf sandwich.

So, shredders set the table for the collectors downstream, as well as for another group of insects called grazers or scrapers. Collectors filter their food from the water, or gather what they need from the sediments, while scrapers shear attached algae and other materials from rock and plant surfaces in the water. The shredders turn the CPOM into FPOM (fine particulate organic matter), acting like food grinders to make the materials smaller and more digestible downstream.

In smaller streams like the size of the Manitowish River, shredders and collectors are co-dominant. In mid-sized rivers, collectors and scrapers are co-dominant. In big rivers like the Mississippi where significant photosynthesis takes place, collectors are dominant.     As the particle size of leaves and other organic matter becomes progressively smaller downriver, the stream community becomes progressively more efficient at processing the smaller particles that arrive at its table.

In the meantime, predatorial insects like dragonfly larvae,  various fish, and a host of others, feed constantly throughout the stream orders. 

The takeaway? Streams (and lakes) are highly dependent on the forest systems around them. It’s a holistic system that begins with leaf fall in autumn. 

 

Celestial Events

            The new moon occurs tonight, 10/16. 

The peak Orionid meteor shower occurs before dawn on 10/21 - look for 20 per hour. 

On 10/22, look after dusk for Jupiter two degrees above the waxing crescent moon and Saturn just above it at three degrees above the moon.

The average low temperature in our area drops below freezing as of 10/22, this for the first time since April 22. Minocqua averages 183 days with low temperatures at or below freezing. That’s exactly half of the year.

 

Thought for the Week

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

“I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to the future generations.” - George Bernard Shaw

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 10/2/ 2020

 A Northwoods Almanac for 10/2 - 15, 2020  

 

Sightings

Let’s start with a mystery. Jim Phelps emailed with this sighting on 9/17: “We've had a place in Presque Isle since 1972 and have never seen anything like this. We had a lot of Lake Superior rocks on our deck and some seemed to be disappearing. While sitting at the kitchen table we watched a gray squirrel pick up one and run off with it. Since then this has happened a couple of times. I felt rather foolish chasing one into the woods yelling, ‘Drop the rock’. Jane googled this behavior, and it said squirrels do this because the rocks retain heat in the nest and help the nest dry out. We have also noticed at least two dozen spots in front of the deck where small rocks had been dug out and taken. I know we have a lot of squirrels, but how often does something like this happen? I won't even ask you about the black squirrel that picked up a piece of kindling and was dragging it off the deck.” So . . . does anyone have an alternative theory about what the squirrels are up to? 

Randy and Debbie Augustinak in Land O’ Lakes emailed that coyotes “once again wiped out dozens of snapping turtle eggs near the culvert along Cty. B this week. It’s frustrating, but we’ve come to expect it. Maybe we can devise some sort of ‘egg rescue’ plan next year, and hatch the eggs up near our house, where they’d at least have a fighting chance.”

Mary Jo Oyer in Mercer sent this note: “We went for a walk yesterday (9/17) and when we got back to our place, two bear cubs were in our yard. We didn’t have anything in our bird or deer feeders for deer and birds, but luckily they didn’t damage the feeders.”

photo by Mary Jo Oyer

Bob Von Holdt in Presque Isle sent an update on trumpeter swans near his place: “The trumpeter swan adult pair had five cygnets this spring. Three survived and have gotten quite big.” Trumpeter chicks are fair game for a number of predators, so it’s not unusual for a pair to lose some or all of their chicks. Survival of three chicks is thus a successful year.

chicks in June, photo by Bob Von Holdt

3 chicks left in September, photo by Bob Von Holdt

Candy Cannon shared with me two short videos of a bobcat that passed through her yard on the morning of 9/19. She noted, “We live on Little Bearskin Lake. The cat strolled in and laid in the yard for around 15 minutes. I took photos and videos through our window! What a treat to see!”

Rain and more rain came down from 9/21 to 9/25. Fall colors have appeared quickly, and the hard rains have already brought many of the leaves down. We had four inches of rain in our gauge at Manitowish, adding to the already existing flooding of the Manitowish River by our home. We’re quite concerned how high the water will rise when the Manitowish Chain of Lakes begins their three-foot drawdown on 10/1. It’s an enormous amount of water from over 4,000 acres of lake surface to pour into a narrow little river over a short period of time.

 

Bird Migration: Endings, Peaking , In Process, and Just Beginning to Depart

            There’s timing involved in the migration of birds. In our area, some birds leave as early as the beginning of August, while others wait until late November. Every migratory species has a bell-curved migration, starting slowing, reaching a peak, and then falling off until they’re all gone.             

Our earliest migrants include birds like bobolinks and black-and-white warblers that begin leaving in the first week of August. There’s a long list of these earlybirds that will all be gone by mid-October, including some of our most beautiful birds like scarlet tanagers, brown thrashers, rose-breasted grosbeaks, and Blackburnian warblers.

            Birds that are coming through our area right now and peak in their migration in early to mid-October include such notables as American robins, yellow-rumped warblers, white-throated sparrows, and hermit thrushes.

            Birds which just began migrating in late September to early October, but which won’t peak typically until late October include dark-eyed juncos, fox sparrows, pine siskins, and various waterfowl like ring-necked ducks and ruddy ducks. 

            Still other birds are remarkably hardy, or crazy, and so a proportion will wait until November to finally get out of town. These include winter wrens, swamp sparrows, eastern meadowlarks, great blue herons, and sharp-shinned hawks.

            Each species has a strategy in mind honed over millennia to take advantage of our northern woods and waters as long as possible before leaving. Some species then travel a relatively short distance, like robins, while others jet for South America, like bobolinks and common terns. Every species has a story as to why they’ve chosen their path, their timing, and their ultimate destination, and if we pay attention, we get to witness many of these stories as they play out.

            

Wild Lakes

            In working the last two years on a new book on the last undeveloped wild lakes of northern Wisconsin, I’ve identified well over one hundred lakes I need to paddle. Mary often accompanies me on these explorations, and last week we traveled to Bayfield County to paddle some wild lakes embedded in the Chequamegon National Forest. We camped for four nights on the edge of the 6,600-acre Rainbow Lake Wilderness Area which was the first federal wilderness designated in Wisconsin in 1975. In that time we paddled nine wild lakes, walked in to another four, and failed to find two others despite having “directions”. 

            I’ve now paddled nearly 60 wild lakes with another 40 or so to go before I feel I can say I’ve paddled all the ones over 30 acres that are left in the northern part of the state - well, at least all the ones we can find and/or get to. Oh, it’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.

            Perhaps most interesting and beautiful of all the lakes on this trip was the 537-acre Totagatic Lake, situated within the 1,403-acre Totagatic Lake State Wildlife Management Area. We pulled up to the landing and found a sea of wild rice stalks, now well past prime harvest, but still standing tall from shore to shore. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen so much rice! 

Totagatic Lake rice and fall colors, photo by John Bates

Paddling through wild rice is a bit like walking through a tall grass prairie - it’s hard to see where you are sometimes, and it’s a chore to paddle. The maximum depth of the lake is 8 feet, and only occasionally do you find a tiny piece of open water.

Waterfowl love wild rice, so we had numerous sightings of waterfowl, although more often than not, we could hear them more easily than see them.

I’d like to return in the spring well before the rice comes up and see what the birdlife is like then. All that rice in the sediments should be a paradise for waterfowl.  

 

No Family Reunions for Loons

            In Walter Piper’s latest blog post (see https://loonproject.org/author/wpiper2012/), he discusses social gatherings of loons in late summer and early fall. As always, read everything Walter has to say - his research writings are an absolute wealth of information. But I wanted to just note one item from his post regarding whether loons from the same family ever socialize. He writes, “I have been asked a number of times whether the visitors at social gatherings might not be chicks that were hatched or reared on a lake and have returned as adults to re-connect with their parents. Setting aside the fact that young adults looking for a territory would seem to have little to gain from visiting their parents - and might even harm their parents by drawing more attention to the territory - we have many marked loons of all ages in our study area and can look at the number of times that young adults have revisited their natal lakes. Of 1743 visits to lakes by adults that we marked as chicks that we have recorded so far, only 13 have been visits to the natal lake. We have not yet run statistics on this pattern, but it seems clear already that young loons actually tend to avoid their natal lakes - intruding at many lakes in the neighborhood but seldom visiting their natal one.”

            This is a common practice in the animal world. Once a young bird or mammal leaves the family territory, it’s rare that the family ever interacts again. While we humans have family gatherings every year around various holidays, nearly all bird and mammal parents say goodbye when the young depart, and they really mean it. 

photo by Bev Engstrom

 

Emerald Ash Borer Detected in Dunn, Oconto, Pepin, and Shawano Counties

The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) has detected emerald ash borer (EAB) for the first time in the following counties: Dunn (town of Rock Creek), Oconto (town of Little Suamico), Pepin (towns of Lima and Waterville), and Shawano (city of Shawano). These are the first new county detections of 2020 for Wisconsin. There have also been 30 new municipal detections in counties where EAB was previously detected.

To date, Wisconsin has found EAB in 56 of the state's 72 counties. The entire state is part of the EAB federal quarantine area.

 

Celestial Events

            For planet watching in October, look after dusk for Mars bright in the east, Jupiter equally bright in the south, and Saturn also in the south but significantly dimmer. Before dawn, look for Venus, absolutely brilliant low in the east.

            The full moon occurred on 10/1, but it’s still 99% illuminated tonight, 10/2. Look also tonight for Mars less than a degree north of the moon.

            The peak Draconid meteor shower occurs before dawn on 10/7 - look for around 10 meteors per hour.

 

Thought for the Week

Bird migration is the one truly unifying natural phenomenon in the world, stitching he continents together in a way that even the great weather systems, which roar out from the poles but fizzle at the equator, fail to do.  - Scott Weidensaul

 

Please share your outdoor sightings and thoughts: e-mail me at manitowish@centurytel.net, call 715-476-2828, snail-mail at 4245N State Highway 47, Mercer, WI, or see my blog at www.manitowishriver.blogspot.com.