NWA 4/5/13

A Northwoods Almanac for 4/5-18, 2013 by John Bates

Bobcat!

            On 3/20 at 6:30 a.m., I was leaving the house for work, the morning still more dark than light, when I looked out the window just as I started to turn the doorknob. There, perhaps four feet in front of the door, sat a bobcat. It stared down into the wetland below our house, its back turned to me, only its ears turning now and again to capture sound. I quietly called up into the house, “Mary! Come down QUICKLY!”

She knows the drill. We do this whenever we see something unusual and want the other to see it. She came down immediately, and I pointed out the window and whispered, “Bobcat!” We then stood in the window watching the bobcat for the next five minutes as it scanned the wetland, the cat never appearing to feel our presence so close behind the door.

I then backed slowly away and ran upstairs to wake Callie – this was something she needed to see, too! She came right down, but Mary was already running up into the house saying the bobcat was moving along the house toward a shed that sits on the edge of the wetland. We went to every window trying to find where it had gone, when suddenly I saw it walking on our back deck, again just a few feet out a window. It turned to look out onto the wetland, staring out from beneath one of the deck railings, and never looking to face us.

            Again, we watched for five minutes, and then Mary whispered, “Look, a rabbit’s coming!” A small cottontail hopped very slowly past the deck, perhaps 20 feet out from the bobcat, and a 4-foot leap down from the deck for the bobcat. Amazingly, the cat simply watched, and the rabbit continued on. But soon it turned around and again hopped very slowly back the way it had come, right in front of the bobcat.

            We were whispering, “The rabbit has a death wish! Why isn’t the bobcat taking it?”

            The rabbit passed the deck again, hopped another 30 feet, whereupon it turned around, and came back past the deck again, this time even closer than it had the first two times!

            We were just floored by the rabbit’s complete lack of awareness of the bobcat. It seemed to be begging to be eaten.

            The bobcat tensed and twitched as the rabbit hopped by again, ever so slowly, right on past the bobcat, which in turn, again simply watched.

We were dumbfounded. The rabbit then hopped out into the marsh and disappeared, and the bobcat remained tensed under the railing.

            Now, nearly 15 minutes had gone by since I was first leaving for work, and I was seriously late. I left as quietly as I could, and a few minutes later, Mary and Callie watched as the bobcat walked to the end of the deck and leaped off the highest end, perhaps 7 feet down to the snow, and bounded off into the marsh. End of story.

            But why didn’t it take the rabbit? My best guess is that the snow was still very deep, and while the rabbit was staying on top of the light crust, perhaps the bobcat knew it would have floundered in the deep snow.

            We’ll never know. And likewise, the oblivious rabbit will never know how lucky it was to have escaped certain death.

More Bobcat Action!

            Soon after our bobcat interaction, Jane Flanigan in Woodruff sent us several amazing photographs of a bobcat. The first shot shows the bobcat, tongue hanging out, eyeing up the deer carcass they had hanging in their tree for the birds. And the second shot shows the bobcat literally hanging from the deer as it took its fair share. Remarkable!

New Arrivals in Manitowish

            The eagles nesting across the river from our house were clearly incubating eggs as of March 20.

We heard our first northern saw-whet owl “singing” on 3/23.

A merlin appeared at our feeders on 3/28, scaring the bejeebers out of every songbird in the area.

Our first robin appeared in Manitowish on March 30. My records show an average arrival date of March 23 for robins, so they’re a week late. We also saw our first geese on March 30, and their average arrival date, at least according to our records, is March 16.

Hooded mergansers, a junco, and a grackle showed up on 3/31 despite the intermittent snow squalls. But alas, still no red-winged blackbirds as of this writing on 3/31. Red-winged blackbirds arrive on average on 3/20, so they’re late, too.

            The Manitowish River opened below our house on 3/30 – last year it opened on 3/8. The 23-year average is 3/16.

            March was a tough month, but don’t forget how easy December and January were. Winter simply chose to show up late this year, and then to make up for it by staying a little longer.

The Limits of Mitigation

The recently passed Mining Bill allows for the mitigation of the many wetlands that will be lost through the open pit mining of the Penokee Range. Proponents say that mitigation is nothing new and protects wetlands overall.

It is true that mitigation is nothing new – every year thousands of acres of wetlands are legally destroyed and converted into something considered more lucrative through mitigation. This process attempts to achieve the admirable goal of "no net loss" by allowing developers to construct their projects in wetlands in return for offsetting the damage by building a wetland somewhere else.

In theory, this sounds straightforward – for each acre of wetland lost there should be at least one acre of wetland created.

The problem is that mitigation typically fails as an even-up trade, since creating a highly complex wetland from scratch is nearly impossible to do. Relative to the Mining Bill, we’re talking about potential mitigation for the Kakagon Sloughs on the Bad River Reservation, a wetland considered the best remaining landscape-sized wetland in all of the Great Lakes.

The Great Lakes, of course, form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth, containing 21% of the world's surface fresh water, so saying that the Kakagon Sloughs are the best wetlands on the Great Lakes is saying a great deal.

Thus, it’s an enormous risk to put the Kakagon Sloughs in jeopardy, and perhaps ultimately to try to make a trade for them. Using a football analogy, it’s like trading Aaron Rogers for a baby yet to be born, the assumption being that we can train, or build as it were, any baby to be equal to Rogers, an MVP of the league.

Perhaps more analogously, it’s like trading a magnificent architectural structure – say the Sistine Chapel – for a pole building.

No architect, businessperson, or football coach would make these kinds of trades. Unfortunately, most natural wetlands are ultimately traded for something just like this, for something that is not their equal, but instead looks and acts like little more than an artificial farm pond.

If you think it’s easy to create a wetland – that all it takes is dumping a bunch of water on some empty land – then you forgot to inventory all the plants, insects, amphibians, fish, birds, mammals, and microscopic life that are part of a wetland community. And you also forgot to ask how they biologically interact, and how far they need to be spaced apart, and where, and how many, and why. And you didn’t think about the hydrology, soils, and geology necessary to make the physical side of it work either.

How do you re-create something that took nature the last ten thousand years of natural selection to develop? Scientists know a lot about the value of wetlands – that they help regulate water cycles, that they serve as water filters, that they provide habitat for diverse flora and fauna and offer a hundred other functions. But even specialists don't always know how they do it. You can’t make a wetland simply by dumping all the parts on some empty land, any more than you can make a new cow by chopping one up and dumping its parts in a barn and saying “Voila! A cow!”

Back in the early 1980s when I was in a graduate class on wetland ecology at UW Green Bay, the Kakagon Sloughs on the Bad River Reservation were always described as the best remaining landscape-sized wetland in all of the Great Lakes. Covering 16,000 acres, the sloughs have been given the international designation of a “Wetland of International Importance” by the 1971 Ramsar Convention, the first Ramsar site to be owned by a tribe.

The Sloughs have also been designated an internationally “Important Bird Area.” IBAs are determined by an internationally agreed upon set of criteria set by national governing organizations.

And the Sloughs have been designated as a National Natural Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior, recognizing them as one of the best examples of a wetland in the nation (there are less than 600 NNLs that have been designated within the United States and American Territories.)

On Lake Superior, the Kakagon Sloughs are called the “Sea of Rice.” The Sloughs are also one of the largest wild rice resources in the entire world.

For that matter, the Penokee Range is identified as an important area of high conservation significance due to its unique geology, its many rare plants and animals, and its high quality recreational opportunities (WI Land Legacy Report, 2006). This landscape was included in the DNR’s Forest Legacy Assessment of Need (2001), while The Wisconsin Wildlife Action Plan identified the Penokee Range as an Important Bird Area and a Conservation Opportunity Area of Continental Significance to maintain as a large continuous forest (2008).

Like all estuaries, the health of the Kakagon Sloughs depends on the health of its upstream watershed, which is the Penokee Range. Perched high above the Sloughs in the Penokees are fifty-six miles of perennial, and 15 miles of intermittent, waterways flowing through the proposed mining land. The following rivers and streams flow through the property (E and O indicate that portions of these waterways are designated as Exceptional or Outstanding Resource Waters by Wisconsin’s DNR): Apple Creek, Bad River (E and O), Ballou Creek (E), Barr Creek (E), Camp Six Creek, City Creek, Devils Creek (E), Dunn Creek, Edies Creek, Erickson Creek, Gehrman Creek, Gravelly Brook, Happy Creek, Hardscrabble Creek, Javorsky Creek (E), Krause Creek (E), Montreal Creek, Opergard Creek, Potato River (O), Rocky Run, Rouse Creek, Tafelski Creek, Tyler Forks (E and O), and several unnamed creeks.

So, good luck trying to mitigate all that. I think the Packers would have better luck trading Rogers for a future baby, and no one would see that as anything other than as a disaster. Trading the Penokees and the Sloughs for something we simply don’t know how to build, and frankly never will, would be no different. 

NWA 3/22/13

A Northwoods Almanac for March 22 – April 4, 2013 by John Bates

How to Survive Falling Though the Ice

As March winds down, the danger of falling through thinning ice heightens. Many creeks are wide open, rivers will soon be opening, springs have created open water holes in marshes, and small lakes are showing signs of rotting ice.

So, what should you do if you fall through the ice? Mary and I took a wilderness first aid course last spring and were shown an exceptional video (http://drbenkim.com/what-do-if-you-fall-through-ice) on exactly what happens to one’s body and mind when in icy water, as well as how to survive the experience. The narrator, Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht, a thermophysiologist at the University of Manitoba, actually does controlled demonstrations of himself as a skier and and as a snowmobiler going through the ice, and records what happens the longer he is in the water.

Here are a few notes on what he says: “First, be aware that as soon as your body hits icy cold water, it will experience something called cold shock phenomenon. This phase lasts between one to three minutes, and is characterized by an instinctive gasping response, which can lead to hyperventilation and a huge waste of energy. Try to slow your breathing down and know that you have more time than you think to survive.

“Once you are relatively calm, try to swim to the point at which you fell into the water and use your arms to grab hold of a solid edge of ice.

“For most of us, the natural instinct is to pull ourselves straight out, as we would do in hoisting ourselves out of a swimming pool. This is next to impossible. The most efficient way to get yourself out of the water is to keep your legs as horizontal as possible and kick like you're swimming, and try to get into a rhythm of kicking your legs and pulling your body forward onto the ice with your arms. Kick, pull, kick, pull, etc.”

These short videos show exactly what happens when you go through the ice, what to do to get out, and then what to do to survive hypothermia. They are the best videos by far that we’ve ever seen on this. Please watch them.

Salmonella at Bird Feeders

Reports are coming in of salmonella occurring at bird feeders, not an unusual phenomenon in early spring. A bird infected by salmonella typically becomes very lethargic and puffs its feathers up like it’s very cold, eventually dying in a few days.                        Salmonella bacteria live in the intestines of birds and are shed in the feces of infected birds. Birds contract salmonella through direct contact with infected birds or by consuming food or water contaminated by the feces.

Redpolls, goldfinch, and pine siskins are among the most susceptible species at Northwoods feeders, and since we currently have large concentrations of redpolls in our area, all of us need to clean up the seed hulls under our feeders, change the water in our birdbaths frequently, and clean our bird feeders with a 10 percent bleach solution.

If you observe dead or sick birds at your feeders, take the feeders down, clean them, and then wait a week before starting to feed again.

If you see dead or sick redpolls, keep your cats and dogs indoors, since with certain strains of salmonella the animals could become infected through eating the affected birds.

Dead birds should be removed from feeder areas. You can pick the birds up by using a plastic bag to avoid direct contact with the bird; it's important to wash carefully after handling potentially diseased birds.

The Ides of March

The Ides of March corresponds to March 15 on the Roman calendar and became notorious as the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. Caesar was stabbed to death at a meeting of the Roman Senate by some 60 conspirators. According to Plutarch, a seer had warned that harm would come to Caesar no later than the Ides of March. On his way to the Theatre of Pompey where he would be assassinated, Caesar passed the seer and joked, "The ides of March have come," meaning to say that the prophecy had not been fulfilled, to which the seer replied "Aye, Caesar; but not gone." This meeting is further dramatized in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, when Caesar is warned by the soothsayer to "beware the Ides of March."

Because of the soothsayer's exchange with Caesar, the Ides of March now signifies at the very least a fateful day. But more than that, it intimates a sense of foreboding that an unpredictable danger is in the air; that anything might happen.

            And that pretty well summarizes normal March weather in the Northwoods. More importantly, it also reflects the reality of how hard life has become for most wildlife species. March is usually the month of greatest hunger for wildlife – the culmination of winter – and thus the month where death finally overtakes those individuals weakened by constant cold and want since November. That Spring Equinox occurred a few days ago is little more than an abstraction if the deep snow remains and the jet stream continues to draw down frigid Canadian temperatures.

            Thus, March is the month that for some will bring to light the phrase “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” for it’s now that individuals may die with the warmth of spring in sight just a few counties south and only a few weeks away.

Bird Song Again! Robins Returning

However, March is also a month of great vigor, where mating is taking place for many mammals, and even birthing for a few of the hardiest, and birds are winging north to proclaim ownership of territories and their simultaneous desires for a mate (or mates). It is a period of rekindled exuberance, and one of the first to try and sing spring into being is the American robin, that most common bird which most of us exult in for a few weeks and then summarily disdain and ignore the rest of the year.

I’ve been rereading The Singing Life of Birds, a book by Donald Kroodsma, a world-renowned birdsong expert, who has an entire chapter on the songs of the robin. He recorded and analyzed the familiar “cheerily cheer-up cheerio” carol of various robins and found it far more complex than most of us would ever realize. He discovered that every individual bird has its own unique repertoire of phrasing, its own tempo of delivery, and its own repetitive patterns that make it possible to identify individual robins solely by their song.

Robins, like most songbirds, also sing with a far greater intensity at dawn than they do the rest of the day. As Kroodsma writes, “Listening to how birds sing at dawn is key to understanding them . . . Hear any singing bird at dawn, and you’ll likely hear something special, perhaps even undescribed in all of the written literature about that species.”

So, as the robins return, and dawn is still at a reasonable hour, try to get out and hear the difference between their dawn song, and their songs later in the day.

Saw-whet Owls

            Speaking of songs, the male northern saw-whet owl begins his serenading of females usually in late March, though its serenade has not one whit of musical quality to it. Listen in the evening for the monotonous, single tone of the saw-whet, a sound likened to the beeping of a truck when it’s backing-up.

Migration is Starting

            Birdwatchers in southern Wisconsin are reporting a host of birds that have migrated back including waterfowl like tundra swans, goldeneyes, all three species of mergansers, wood ducks, scaup, pied-billed grebes, and ring-necked ducks. Add in great blue herons, sandhill cranes, and tundra swans, as well as songbirds like red-winged blackbirds, robins, and song sparrows, and despite our snow, the birds are telling us that spring is near.

Celestial Events

            On 3/26, we reach 12.5 hours of daylight. The full moon occurs on 3/27. Known to various tribes as the “Sap” moon, the “Crust on Snow” moon, and the “Death” moon, this may be the last full moon of this winter that will reflect off snow.

            On 3/29, look for Saturn three degrees north of the waning moon.

            In April, look for Jupiter in the west at twilight, and Saturn rising in the east.           

March Thought

“The seed catalogues are arriving again, and as I take them from their brown envelopes and study them at the kitchen table, I muse again on the dogmatic assertion which I often make that the countryman’s relation to Nature must never by anything else but an alliance. Alas, I know well enough that Nature has her hostile moods, and I am equally aware that we must often face and fight as we can her waywardness, her divine profusion, and her divine irrationality. Even then, I will have it, the alliance holds. When we begin to consider Nature as something to be robbed greedily like an unguarded treasure, or used as an enemy, we put ourselves in thought outside of Nature of which we are inescapably a part. Be it storm and flood, hail and fire, or the yielding furrow and the fruitful plain, an alliance it is, and that alliance is a cornerstone or our humanity.” – from Henry Beston, Northern Farm

NWA 3/8/13

A Northwoods Almanac for March 8 – 21, 2013 by John Bates

Sightings – Carolina wren, Townsend’s solitaire, red crossbills, barred owl, ermine

Two rare bird sightings of southern species stand out over the last month. First, Dan and Donna Krejci in Rhinelander had a Carolina wren visiting their feeders since December, though they haven’t seen it for 3 weeks now. Carolina wrens typically winter only as far north as Illinois.

Second, Bob Orgeman in Rhinelander sent me photos on 2/18 of a Townsend’s solitaire perched on a tree overhanging the Wisconsin River. Townsend’s solitaires belong out west where they are closely associated with high mountain conifers, even nesting occasionally above tree line.

Red crossbills continue to show up at people’s feeders. Uwe Wiechering on Sparkling Lake sent me photos of red crossbills at his feeders, as did Cindy Olsofka in Harshaw, while Gordy Seifert  reported seeing them at his feeders in Springstead. Red Crossbills inhabit boreal forests from Alaska to Newfoundland, and mountainous conifer forests south to the Appalachians, Arizona, New Mexico, northern Mexico, and the Sierra Nevada of California. These birds are true wanderers, and may breed wherever they find a prolific source of conifer cones. Hopefully a few of those spending the winter around here will stay and breed!

Uwe Wiechering also sent me a photo of a barred owl perched near his bird feeders, very likely eating the mice under the feeders.

            David Schmoller in Minocqua sent me a photo of a red-bellied woodpecker searching for insects on a dying pine. Dan Carney in Hazelhurst also has a red-bellied woodpecker at his feeders, as well as a red-headed woodpecker and a hoary redpoll.

Finally, Judith Bloom sent me some wonderful photos of an ermine eating from their suet feeder, likely to the chagrin of the local woodpeckers.

Spring is Coming – Believe It!

Sandhill cranes, robins, red-winged blackbirds, and an array of waterfowl are being reported in southern Wisconsin. They’re all poised to come further north when our weather moderates a bit. We usually see our first robins and red-winged blackbirds right around spring equinox on March 21, so keep your eyes skyward.

Great horned owls are also now on their nests incubating eggs, and eagles are busy doing housework around their nests in preparation for laying their eggs, an event usually occurring near the end of March.

Celestial Events

Today, March 8, we receive 11 hours and 32 minutes of daylight, riding the wave toward March 17 when we hit 12 hours and 1 minute of daylight, the first time our day is longer than our night since September 24. The actual vernal equinox occurs on 3/20 when the sun crosses the equator into the northern hemisphere.

The comet PANSTARRS loops around the sun from 3/10 to /15, and should be visible low in the northwest after sunset. Look for the comet in the vicinity of the waxing crescent moon.

On 3/17, look for Jupiter 1.5° north of the waxing crescent moon.

More Cold Data

This morning (3/3), we hit -17°F, a reading which isn’t particularly welcome in March! However, the sun was shining, and by 10 a.m., the temperature had climbed 35 degrees on its way to a high of 30°. Indeed, the rest of the week is forecast to be in the 30s, leading to what will likely be region-wide cheering.

This time of year nearly everyone in the Northwoods suffers from cabin fever and spends inordinate amounts of time dreaming of spring, so writing now about the positive values of extreme cold is the height of foolishness. But apparently I can’t help myself, and it’s all David Schmoller’s fault. 

David lives in Minocqua and recently sent me the entire weather record kept at the Minocqua Dam from 1903 to 2011. He then summarized the coldest temperature data by decade, and noted: “What is happening is this: the past couple decades have seen a drop-off in low-end temperatures, particularly the -30°F and below. They were fairly evenly spread up until the 1990’s. The deepest bottom dropped off in the 1950’s, which is when a lot of data sets start showing signs of warming.” Here’s the chart he sent me:

DECADE OF COLD TEMPERATURE
Days at/or below	1900	1910	1920	1930	1940	1950	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000
-40	4	4	3	4	0	1	0	0	0	3	0
-35	4	2	2	7	2	4	10	2	5	1	0
-30	7	13	18	20	9	8	14	17	13	4	0
-25	18	30	35	25	17	19	18	32	28	13	24
TOTAL	33	49	58	56	28	32	42	51	46	21	24

Several things pop out. First and foremost, from 2000 to 2011, the temperatures in Minocqua never hit -30°F or below.

Second, since 1940 we’ve only hit -40° in two of the last six decades. And in the 1990s, that only occurred in an anomalous three-day span in 1996.

Third, the total number of days at or below -25° is at its lowest, by far, in the last two decades.

Most folks greet this sort of data with a delighted “Thank God,” or “That’s great!” because those extreme cold temperatures make life really hard. Cars don’t start, heating bills go through the roof, things start to break, and we immediately freeze just stepping outside to go to work.

I totally get it, and I don’t enjoy it either! But it’s extreme cold, above and beyond all other things, that makes the North the North.

When I say “the North,” I’m thinking about the plants and animals that have adapted to this cold regimen over the last 10,000 years. Back in the 1940s and 50s, UW botanist John Curtis and his students fanned out across the state surveying over 1,000 plant community sites, culminating in his landmark book, The Vegetation of Wisconsin. The book described a “tension zone” in Wisconsin that marked a crossover between the Northern Mixed Forest—closely related to the forests of northeastern Minnesota, northern Michigan, southern Ontario, and New England—and the Southern Broadleaf Forest, which is more like forests you’d see in Ohio and Indiana. The zone stretches across the state in a loose S-shape from Burnett County in the north to Racine County in the south, with species from both floristic provinces intermingling in this narrow zone. 

David Mladenoff, a professor in conservation in the Department of Forestry and Wildlife Ecology at the UW (and a Hurley native), writes: “The tension zone is marked by a climatic gradient, with cooler, moister conditions to the north and relatively warmer, drier conditions to the south . . . You’ll know you’re in the tension zone when you’re heading north and oaks that are dominant in southern Wisconsin, such as bur, black and white, meet up abruptly with red and white pine as well as paper birch and tamarack swamps that are more characteristic of the north . . . You’ll start seeing some birds that are absent or relatively uncommon in the south: common loon, ruffed grouse, osprey, common raven, white-throated sparrow and purple finch. You’ll also encounter northern mammals: snowshoe hare, porcupine, red squirrel, black bear and timber wolf.”

The vegetative differences between the Northwoods and southern Wisconsin are enormous. Curtis’ book includes a map of the number of species reaching their range limits in each county, and you’ll note that 50 plant species reach their range limits in Marathon County, while only one species reaches its range limit in either Iron or Vilas counties.

I bring this up because as our temperatures have continued to annually warm, the tension zone has been moving north. David Schmoller’s data is simple, straightforward, and undeniable – we’ve lost our extremes in cold winter temperatures. Every plant and animal species has a range of temperature tolerance, and when northern temperatures stop falling to those extreme lows, temperature barriers no longer apply, and southern species can live further north.

It’s already happening. Numerous species historically restricted to southern and central Wisconsin have already moved north or are now proliferating where they were once uncommon – cardinals, wild turkeys, and cottontail rabbits come to mind. Less clear is whether our normal northern Wisconsin species are moving further north, but they will. For long-lived species like trees, the movement will be hard to notice, but it will be inevitable.

In March, it’s hard to imagine that too much warmth could be “bad” for anything, much less for plants and for animals. But indeed it is, and at stake is what we now define geographically as our home – the Northwoods. Hard as it may be to accept, and worse, to desire, we need extreme cold.

NWA 2/22/13

A Northwoods Almanac for 2/22 – 3/ 7/2013

Spring in the Air?

            Though at the moment February continues to offer its normal menu of snow and cold, there are definite signs that spring is coming. Black-capped chickadees are singing their “Hey, sweetie” song more frequently and robustly, ravens are engaging in courtship flights (rolling and tumbling), bald eagles are coming and going from their nests, and if you have cardinals around as Don and Greta Janssen do in Woodruff, the males have begun to more ardently express their desires in song. Even the male pileated woodpecker that uses a dead black ash right next to our house as his favorite drumming tree is now hammering away with a greater frequency and duration, The competition for territories and mates is in its earliest phases, but birds everywhere are heeding the change in daylight, as are our early flowering trees and shrubs. We’ve still got to be patient until May for spring to arrive in full dress, but its first faint expressions are in the air now.

Common Redpolls

Common redpolls have earned their first name this winter – they have indeed been common, a phenomenon that typically occurs in alternating years. I’m always impressed by these diminutive birds, because they are true cold weather birds. They breed circumboreally, meaning they’re found in boreal regions of the Arctic from northern Scandinavia, Russia, and Siberia, to Greenland, Iceland, and the British Isles.

Their alternating irruption cycle is mostly driven by widespread failure in seed-crop production among spruce and birch trees, which forces them to winter farther south. But they don’t just wander straight south from their breeding grounds – some seem to go on long adventures. One redpoll banded in Michigan was subsequently recovered in eastern Siberia, while another redpoll banded in winter in Belgium was recovered two winters later some 5,000 miles east (89°) in Heilongjiang Province, China. The “why” behind such extraordinary migrations is hard to fathom.

Redpolls are highly acrobatic, feeding in trees on the outermost branches, and often hanging upside down while extracting seeds. They eat a lot – from 31–42% of their body mass each day, though given that they weigh less than a half-ounce, that’s not necessarily a lot of seeds.

As they eat, they store seeds in their diverticula – an expandable area of their esophagus – for later regurgitation, husking, and swallowing. Their diverticula can hold up to two grams of seeds, or about 15% of the bird’s body mass. This adaptation enables them to shelter in dense conifer cover while eating, a savings of significant energy at times of intense cold. This mass of stored seeds when digested provides over 25% of their daily calorie requirements in winter and can get them through a long Arctic night.

And those nights can be extremely cold – common redpolls in Alaska are able to survive at temperatures of -65°F, a figure topped by hoary redpolls, which can withstand -88°F.  To survive these temperatures, redpolls employ a number of other strategies besides storing seeds in their diverticula.  They retain heat by fluffing their feathers, an effective tool given that wild Alaskan redpolls have 31% heavier plumage in November than in July. Their plumage structure is also better for insulation than many other species.

They also know to remain inactive whenever possible to retain energy, and to seek shelter. In fact, they have been observed making roosting chambers in snow! They drop from a tree into the snow, and dig out a tunnel 10 to 15 inches long down to a chamber 2 to 4 inches below the snow surface. Then before dawn, they break the roof to depart, leave the roost, and start foraging, being active considerably earlier than other birds. They are even reported to be sunbathing at times, though I’m not sure how this is determined. (Do they sit in lounge chairs? Perhaps put on sunscreen?) I don’t know, but what I do know is that redpolls are remarkably adaptive, and we’re truly fortunate to have them at our feeders.

Red Crossbills

            A number of people have emailed to say they have red crossbills now coming to their feeders, a species that Mary and I have never seen at our feeders in Manitowish (we’re jealous!). Their highly distinctive mandibles are curved and crossed at the tip, an unmistakable feature shared only with white-winged crossbills. The adult male is a deep brick red to reddish yellow (some even greenish) with uniformly dark blackish brown flight feathers, and a short, deeply notched blackish brown tail. The female, on the other hand, is uniformly olive to grayish, with a greenish-yellow breast and rump and a white throat.

            Keep an eye out for these highly uncommon birds!

Cold Data

            I often hear this response to what seems like relatively small increases in overall annual temperatures: “Why would 2 or 3 degrees warmer matter to anything? So what?”

Well, here’s a great example of “so what” – the mountain pine beetle, a native species that has never before been much of a problem. In the last decade, however, an exponential increase in the beetle population has occurred from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico to the Yukon Territory near Alaska, the result of which has been that the number of forest acres killed by these beetles is 10 times that of any previous epidemic recorded.

Long thought to produce only one generation of tree-killing offspring annually, some populations of these native mountain pine beetles now produce two generations per year, dramatically increasing the potential for the bugs to kill lodgepole and ponderosa pine trees. Because of the extra annual generation of beetles, there can be up to 60 times as many beetles attacking trees in any given year, an exponential increase. Each beetle lays 60 eggs and, since nearly all survive, each of those beetles goes on to lay 60 more eggs in the same summer, which means 3,600 more beetles.

Why has this happened? In the last two decades at the Mountain Research Station in Colorado, mean annual temperatures were 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they were in the previous two decades. The number of spring days above freezing temperatures increased by 15.1 in the last two decades. Also, the number of days that were warm enough for the beetles to grow increased by 44 percent since 1970. It should also be noted that a serious prolonged drought has increased the forests’ susceptibility to the beetles.

The bottom line – warmer temperatures have given the beetle larvae more spring days to grow to adulthood.

Not only are the beetles expanding in all directions, they are expanding upward. In the last 25 years, the beetles have expanded their range 2,000 feet higher in elevation and 240 miles north in latitude in Canada.

So, what does a western beetle have to do with us? The Great Plains have long been considered an insurmountable barrier to the mountain pine beetle, but now some fear that the beetles could reach the Great Lakes region. The beetles are now between 60 and 120 miles from the nearest stand of jack pine, a species not previously acquainted with mountain pine beetles and which experimental evidence suggests that the beetles will thrive in. If the beetle hits the jack pines, nothing would stop it from plowing eastward into stands of eastern white pine and cruising south all the way to the loblolly pine forests of the Southeastern United States.

So, does a two or three degree average increase really matter?

Celestial Events

            The full moon, called by some tribes the “Snow” or “Hunger” moon, occurs on 2/25.

For planet-watching in March, after dusk look for Jupiter bright in the west, while Saturn rises in the east after 9 p.m. Before dawn, there’s not much to see until Mercury reappears low in the southeast around mid-month.

On 3/2, look later in the evening for Saturn about 3 degrees north of the moon.

March 6^th marks the first day that our average high temperature again reaches 32 degrees, a figure we haven’t seen since November 30^th. For those of you who think it’s always cold in the Northwoods, Minocqua averages 269 days with high temperatures above freezing every year.

NWA 2/8/13

A Northwoods Almanac for Feb. 8 – 21, 2013 by John Bates

Cougar

A male cougar was treed by hounds near the Chippewa Flowage in Sawyer County on Jan. 19. The cougar was in some large dead white pines, but sat only about 15-20 feet up. Adrian Wydeven, a mammalian ecologist with the WDNR, later followed the tracks after the cougar left the tree and noted that its running strides averaged 134” (range 122-147”) and its walking stride was 42” in dense cover and 62” in more open cover. Russ Smith, an area resident who spotted the cougar, took a number of photos and kindly consented to my use of one of them. The cougar was estimated to weigh 160 pounds.

             Another cougar was also apparently treed in eastern Price County on 12/28/12, 49 miles to the east, but there is no way of knowing if this was the same cat.

           

Predator-Prey

Gail Rae Van Sluys wrote to me on 1/20 with the following:

“The temperature warmed from a frigid -11 to -4 as the sun streamed through the wide window, announcing a spectacular Sunday morning in January . . . We climbed a gentle ridgeline, each footfall breaking the stillness of the trail with snapping twigs and squeaking snow. Braced against a bone-chilling breeze, we ascended a point overlooking the immense frozen lake and scanned the shoreline for activity. Beneath the next point, less than a quarter mile ahead, a dazzling deep blue flowage lapped at an edge of ice.

“We focused our binoculars on the narrow passage of water, trying to capture the rapture of otters fishing and frolicking. Instead, we saw the bushy tail of a fox – but the colors were a mottled gray and brown. Now the body resembled a coyote, trotting beneath the point jutting out from the opposite shore. Seconds later, a tawny spindly-legged doe spilled out of the woods onto the ice. On the far side of the deer, a second canid leapt from the forest.

“Startled, the doe dashed for the open water and slipped on the icy edge. The wolves converged on the helpless creature, lunging and snapping at flailing limbs. Working together, one wolf found purchase on a hind leg while the other was a flash of fur, helping its pack-mate drag the hapless creature toward the opposite shore.

“Wild predator and prey engaged in a brutal struggle for survival. I cringed with the terror of the ambushed deer surrounded by gnashing teeth and blood-spattered snow in its last minutes of life. Realizing its fate, I begged the wolves to take the deer down quickly and end its misery. Evisceration was aggressive and swift. Nature’s lesson was fierce and necessary – the wolves had to eat and the deer was fair game.

“Several hikers backed away to face another direction. After five minutes, the deer was motionless as the wolves feasted. We trudged on toward the next point above the carnage.

“Within ten minutes we were directly across from the carcass. One wolf remained . . . The lens of my binoculars steadied on the wolf’s sturdy frame as I studied the unmarred markings of its finely patterned fur. The head swiveled, and for two long seconds, two dark piercing eyes fixed steadily on my own.

“A moment later the wolf turned to survey its surroundings . . . [and then he] launched away in a long lope along the opposite shoreline. The confident beautiful creature receded in the distance, leaving us stunned by death shamelessly splayed atop pink and red-stained snow.

“In our determination to find otters, we tramped on past the flowage and around the bend. Slides and tracks paralleled the trail, but no one appeared. Too cold to wait for activity, we backtracked past the kill site. The wolf had returned, but immediately detected our presence and again loped away.

“Timing is all. We never saw owls or otters. ”

             Gail’s story illustrates well how often our minds and hearts conflict over the issue of predation. We’ve all seen copious data, scientific articles, and ecological research on predator-prey relationships, all of which inevitably lead one to support sustaining healthy populations of predators. But to witness the predation of a large mammal by another mammal often places the heart deeply at odds with what had previously been a comfortable intellectual understanding.

I, too, am frequently conflicted in this way - for example, in exactly what Gail’s story is about. I thoroughly believe in the need for reducing the deer population and the value, and right, of predators in doing so. But watching an animal get torn apart by another just plain hurts my heart despite what my mind says. I also hurt when I see a deer dead beside the road, or see deer roped down on the roofs of cars during hunting season, even though I’m simultaneously rooting hard for hunters to maximize their kill.

Most of us have a hierarchy of acceptable “hurt” when it comes to predation. Watching a dragonfly capture a mosquito is cause for pleasure. Watching a songbird then eat that dragonfly also elicits enjoyment (and no emotion for the dragonfly). Watching an eagle or otter or walleye catch a fish is cause for greater excitement yet, with rarely an emotional twinge for the fish. But as we move up the continuum of “higher” animals, the heart starts responding. The fox pouncing on a mouse, the sharp-shinned hawk grabbing a goldfinch, the great horned owl grabbing a rabbit, the mink capturing a muskrat, the eagle taking a loon, the bear taking a fawn, the wolf taking a doe – for many, a process that had been a great moment to recount to others, now becomes painful to watch, even a moment to become angry about, perhaps even a moment to wish the predator dead instead of the prey.

All this, of course, is elicited even while we live the irony of eating venison that night for dinner, or perhaps a steak from a cow, a fish fry from some perch, an elk we shot out West, a turtle we trapped, a rabbit or grouse we shot.

All species live at the expense of other species. That’s an intellectual given. But to see it in reality, to hear a rabbit scream, or witness the terror of another animal in a fight or flight for its life, well, that’s hard to reconcile.

I debated whether to publish Gail’s story – I was concerned it would only give the wolf haters more fodder, and perhaps even those who irrationally fear wolves more reason to be fearful. But that’s the best reason for printing her story. Our heartfelt hates and fears are mostly irrational – they don’t line up with what our minds understand, or at least should understand. The very difficult trick, and one I’m unlikely to ever master, is to have the intellect and heart align, each listening to the other, and then seeing the natural world for what it is. And what is it? It’s a place we like to simplify as full of winners and losers, but it’s really one which is more amazingly dynamic and complex than our hearts and minds can fully fathom. And while our emotions may cloud our deeper wisdom at times, I’m glad that our hearts hurt when another species dies. Without compassion, without empathy, what would we be?

Which brings us back to the wolves. The campaign by some against predators has been long standing. But so has our ecological understanding that prey need predators. Aldo Leopold wrote 70 years ago, “Predators originally performed for deer and elk the function of dispersal which most other species perform for themselves. When we elect to remove deer and elk predators, we automatically assume responsibility for performing their job. We have failed to do this because we failed to realize that they had a job.”

 Four years later, he added: “It cannot be right, in the ecological sense, for the deer hunter to maintain his sport by deer browsing out the forest, or for the bird-hunter to maintain his by decimating the hawks and owls, or for the fisherman to maintain his by decimating the herons, kingfishers, tern, and otters. Such tactics seek to achieve one kind of conservation by destroying another, and thus they subvert the integrity and stability of the community.”

Gail’s finely written piece explores this wild natural community where we have all chosen to live, and describes well the difficulty we have in reconciling the role of large predators in it. I suspect most of us will always have a strong visceral reaction to witnessing such events. How we respond over time speaks to our sense of the preciousness of life, and our ability to bring our heart and mind together in a deeper ecological understanding.

Other Sightings – Cardinals, Muskrats, and an Albino Gray Squirrel

Cardinals: Bill and Cheryl Crawford in Harshaw had the pleasure of being visited by a female cardinal last week. “She's very shy,” wrote Bill, “and obviously not familiar with bird feeders. The chickadees and the mob of finches and redpolls scare her away. So, we've been throwing black sunflower seeds on the ground for her. Unfortunately, the neighborhood herd of turkeys makes pretty short work of the seeds, too.

“We had a male cardinal earlier in the winter but he only stuck around a few short days. In the seven years we've lived here, those are the only two we've seen. And until you see a female, painted in some of Mother Nature's most subtle colors, you forget how exquisite birds' colors can be.”

Muskrats: Dean Acheson was returning home a few weeks ago from doing a photo shoot at the International Paralympic Committee's Nordic Skiing World Cup in Cable, when he came across a dark, furry animal in the road. He noted, “Turning around, I stopped just as it was finishing crossing the road. It immediately ran under the car and it took some banging on the car's lower body work to ‘encourage’ it to vacate its newly found shelter.

“The muskrat hightailed it into the ditch where it pretended to hide in some short pines. I got off a series of photos . . . I returned to the car to get the flash to open up the shadows, and by then the muskrat had scampered 50 yards into the woods, apparently headed to a swamp.

“While it was annoyed by my presence, it sure beat being watched by a coyote or an owl. I recall getting as close as 50 yards from a coyote in the Presque Isle area many years ago as it prowled the road, gulping down young muskrats it came across in the ditch. This was in the spring time.”

Albino Squirrel: Ferdy Goode in Woodruff sent a picture of an albino gray squirrel that shows up occasionally in his back yard.

Celestial Events

            As of 2/7, we’re now receiving over 10 hours of sunlight a day, and we’ll hit 11 hours by 2/26 – it sure feels good to have the light returning.