Looking Into the Lives of Dragonflies

Upon spotting the green dragonfly resting close enough for me to capture, I knew I had to try. With my kayak nestled into the grassy bank of the Namekagon River, I snapped a few photos of my target and began to reach my hand out slowly. But when my fingers gently grasped the dragonfly, I was horrified to find that it was squishy rather than the typical hard feeling of an exoskeleton. My hand shot back to my side in an instant, repulsed. My first thought was that the dragonfly was dead and waterlogged.

Not interested in a squishy, dead dragonfly, my attention drifted and I let myself be absorbed by the scenic setting of the Namekagon River. It wasn’t until my eyes meandered back over to the dragonfly that I realized they had moved! Rather than being lower on the blade of grass, they were now several inches higher.

My curiosity piqued, I inched my kayak closer. That’s when I spotted the brown, empty shell of the nymph’s exoskeleton. Beginning to put the pieces of the puzzle together, I realized the dragonfly that I had tried to capture was a freshly emerged adult who had just burst out of their final molt!

A teneral boreal snaketail dragonfly, freshly emerged.

Using a dragonfly guide book, I keyed in on the bright green coloration, and club-shaped abdomen, identifying the dragonfly as a boreal snaketail. These dragonflies are found near cold northern streams and rivers, and males can be spotted flying up and down the water, patrolling their territory.

The boreal snaketail’s aquatic life started when an egg was deposited into the Namekagon River by a female dragonfly tapping her abdomen on the top of the water as she flew by. The snaketail’s egg sinks through the water, and settles into the riverbed. Days later, a small nymph hatched out of the egg. Most of their life was spent as a nymph, swimming through the water looking for their next meal. In general, dragonfly nymphs are voracious predators, eating zooplankton, aquatic invertebrates, and even small fish!

A key part of a dragonfly nymph’s success as a tiny-but-mighty aquatic predator is their extendable hinged jaw, or labium. Think of it as an extra arm that shoots out to snatch prey before bringing it to their mouth. If that’s not cool enough, the labium is hydraulically powered! To propel their deadly grabber, a nymph draws in water through their body and compresses their abdomen, creating pressure that pushes out their labium in a matter of milliseconds, snatching prey as they swim by.

The nymph's ravenous appetite fuels their growth. This causes them to molt multiple times–shedding their exoskeleton as they grow bigger and bigger, much like a kid who keeps outgrowing their clothes. Depending on the species, a dragonfly nymph undergoes between five to fourteen molts before finally emerging as an adult. When they are ready to begin their transformation, the nymph makes their way to the edge of the water, scouting for a place to emerge. Once they have found a suitable location, they’ll sit in shallow water for several days, poking their head above the water as their body changes inside their exoskeleton, slowly shifting to breathing air.

Emergence–the act of a nymph transitioning into an adult dragonfly–begins as the nymph grabs vegetation and hauls themself above the water. Once in position, they hook into their perch with their forelegs, and begin to transform. The skin behind their head splits first, letting their thorax push through. As the crack travels farther down their back, the head, wings, legs, and part of the abdomen are pushed out. Now only attached to their old exoskeleton by their abdomen, they take a break, waiting for their new body parts to harden. Grabbing their old exoskeleton, they pull their abdomen free, and shed their final connection to their life as a nymph.

An emerging boreal snaketail dragonfly and its exuvia. 

These newly emerged adult dragonflies are called tenerals, and are very susceptible to predation. Their wings are shiny and new, but lack fully developed wing muscles, hindering their ability to escape predators. Birds are the main predator of ternal dragonflies, but even rainfall or strong winds pose a threat to their still-hardening exoskeleton. Regardless, they take off in a weak flight, eating as many insects as they can. It takes roughly a week for them to gain their adult colors, strong flight abilities, and a fully hardened exoskeleton. Once they are a full adult, they are incredible aerial predators who catch their prey 95% of the time!

Not wanting to disturb the teneral boreal snaketail dragonfly more than I already had, I continued down the river. My mind was swimming with excitement around witnessing the boreal snaketail’s emergence. I was privy to an intimate part of an animal's life, and I could not be more grateful for this moment.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Treasures of the Big Bay Lagoon

The calm waters of Lake Superior glimmered in midday sunshine, and dozens of families enjoyed the sandy beach of Big Bay Town Park on Madeline Island. I hiked past them all, my steps echoing slightly on the boardwalk that winds through pine forest behind the beach.

When a little path diverted from the boardwalk and disappeared into the alder thicket on the inland side, I followed it through the brush. Threading my way through the alders, and then stepping carefully through drifts of dry grasses, I gained a view of the Big Bay lagoon. Brightly colored canoes carried families past waterlilies into the calm, protected water. I scanned the low mat of grasses and shrubs between me and them. Nope, I didn’t see what I was looking for.

This beautiful juxtaposition of clear, cold water in Lake Superior, the long sandy strip, and the dark waters of the lagoon, tell a geologic tale. First, the Mid-Continent Rift started to tear North America apart roughly 1.1 billion years ago. Immense amounts of magma erupted through cracks created by the rift, then cooled into lava flows many miles thick. Now unsupported, the crust subsided, creating a huge basin.

In that time, before land plants had evolved, rain fell on bare rocks and braided streams carried sediments into the basin. Over 4,000 feet of sand accumulated, and over time was cemented by quartz and iron oxide precipitated by water seeping through the sand. Fast forward millions of years, and a series of glaciers scraped through the area, carving softer rocks out of the Lake Superior basin, and leaving behind more resistant areas of sandstone that became the Apostle Islands.

The northeast-trending shape of Madeline Island tracks the direction of ice flow. And for some reason, the glaciers were able to carve a little deeper into the northeast-facing pocket we now call Big Bay. When the ice melted away from the area about 15,000 years ago, water levels dropped in stages, and the waves of Lake Superior carried sand across the entrance to Big Bay. The resulting bay mouth bar closed off the back half of the bay to the waters of Lake Superior, and vegetation began to accumulate in the calm water. Eventually, shoreline currents built another bay mouth bar, with the lagoon trapped between the two.

Satellite imagery of Madeline Island with Big Bay Lagoon circled.

This long history resulted in a variety of unique habitats for tourists as well as plants. Some brave souls swam in the chilly waters of Lake Superior, while groups of kids chose to play in the warm waters of the lagoon just a few feet away. Sea kayakers can explore the sandstone cliffs of the island when the winds are right, but many families prefer the quiet waters of the lagoon for paddling.

A diversity of plants find their own niches here, too. Beach grasses face the lake and anchor sand against the wind. A red pine forest carpeted with wintergreen, bearberry, and other drought-tolerant vegetation inhabits the sand spit. And in the stagnant lagoon where decomposition has slowed and organic matter has accumulated over time, a floating mat of Sphagnum moss and sedges holds numerous treasures in a type of wetland called a fen. Treasures I was hunting!

On about my third try, when I pushed through the alders and looked out over the grassy mat, I found what I was looking for: a cluster of odd-looking flowers poking up above the grass. On stalks over a foot tall, there were deep-red, five-lobed umbrellas, each with five delicate petals drooping underneath. Like periscopes, they peek above the wispy blades of sedges. Like marking flags, they indicate something special hides below.

Wading through the sedges, water seeping into my sandals from the sponge-like mat of Sphagnum moss, I found the cup-shaped leaves of pitcher plants clustered around the base of each flower. These carnivorous plants trap insects in their leaf pools and host a little community of beings to help digest those insects. This provides nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients that are in short supply in the peat soils.

Pink caught my eye next, and I admired a large patch of rose pogonia orchids. On each, a few light pink petals surrounded a fringed lower petal with hot pink stripes and yellow anthers. Instead of eating insects, orchids in bogs get nutrients from fungi attached to their roots.

Sunny yellow flowers beckoned then, and I balanced on a rotting log to get closer. These horned bladderwort flowers look harmless enough, but in the wet soil their roots have set little traps to catch tiny aquatic macroinvertebrates who supplement their diet of sunshine.

Lining the same log was a row of sundew rosettes—their tiny spoon-shaped leaves prickling with hairs, each tipped with a shining drop of dew. On several leaves, tiny gnats lay trapped in the sweet, sticky droplets while dew filled with enzymes released their nutrients for the plant to absorb.

I snapped photos happily, then checked the time. Gazing wistfully across the expanse of the lagoon I still hadn’t explored, I turned back anyway. At the Madeline Island Museum, I quickly added local photos to my slideshow for the Madeline Island Wilderness Preserve Speaker Series. With a crowd gathered, the title of my talk flashed up on the screen: “Treasures of the Secret Fen.” I couldn’t wait to tell them about the delights I’d found just a few miles away and a million years in the making.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too. Natural Connections 3 is in the works—and needs illustrators from the community! Find out more at: https://www.cablemuseum.org/books/

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Hunting For Elk

I didn’t expect to find myself hiking across a golf course on my day off. The moment we stepped into the sugar maple forest on the far side of the green the temperature dropped, the air smelled sweeter, and we felt a little bit safer from stray golf balls. An ovenbird called from the shadows, his two-note song increasing in intensity as he defended his territory. Teacher, TEAcher, TEA-CHER!

The cool shade of the sugar maple forest was lovely as volunteers waited with Stacey for Josh's signal.

Stacey Petrus, wildlife biologist with the Wisconsin DNR, scanned the surrounding ridgeline through the scattered trunks, looking for any signs of Josh Spiegel while the rest of the group caught up. Josh, who is the Sawyer County and northern elk biologist for the DNR, had headed up the hill several minutes before us, following the Very High Frequency (VHF) signal from the GPS collar of a cow elk.

The researchers were already familiar with this elk, Cow 448. In the hungry days of winter, they’d lured her and 14 others into an oversized horse corral with some tasty alfalfa and grain mix. Once the elk where chemically immobilized, the DNR were able to utilize a large animal ultrasound and confirm that she was about halfway through a pregnancy that began last September. Then they waited.

If an elk calf can make it through their first year, they have a 92 percent chance of surviving each year after that. The DNR is in year two of a three-year effort to understand the survival rates and mortality factors of that first perilous year. Do the young do better where there’s been a recent timber harvest or other disturbance? How important is it for the maternity habitat to have a view? Is there a habitat type that increases the risk of predation by bears or wolves? To answer these and other questions, they attempt to locate and deploy a GPS collar on 25 calves as soon as possible each spring.

During the Friday night before Father’s Day, Cow 448 recorded a tight cluster of points after a substantial movement away from other elk—a clear indication that she had given birth. A postpartum cow will move the newborn calf away from the location of the birth bed—an area of high scent and disturbance—and then stay relatively close while she feeds and rests. The first task was for Josh to bump the cow a little farther away from the probable location of her calf so that we could search for the young one safely.

Josh (right) shows the GPS data to Adrian, Randy, and Stacey.

When he gave the all-clear, we moved up to the hilltop. Josh anchored one end of the search line on the spot where he’d located the cow. We lined up beside him, spacing ourselves to cover the most ground while also being able to see under every bush. Stacey positioned herself on the far end of the line. Their GPS units would help us keep track of the area we’d already covered. Then we began to walk.

Josh, Adrian, and Randy in the search line.

The hilltop had been selectively harvested a few years prior to regenerate oak trees, so we parted thick clumps of saplings and stepped over the brittle piles of sticks that had once been the tops of trees. The flat-topped clusters of maple-leaved viburnum flowers shone white in the dappled shade. Raspberry canes tangled our feet. We peered beneath the boughs of young balsam fir and focused our attention so as not to miss the dingy brown of an earnestly hiding calf. Thunder rumbled in the distance, adding to the suspense.

We’d gone 100 yards when Josh called a halt. We reformed the line on his other side and walked back in the same direction we’d just come, covering new ground. I was pushing aside a thicket of paper birch saplings when a murmur went through the line. Adrian Wydeven, a retired Wisconsin DNR wolf biologist, was pointing silently at a spot in a patch of young raspberries about 10 feet in front of him. Success! Josh directed us to form a circle around the calf.

Adrian, Randy, and Stacey circling the calf.

Elk this young rely on remaining motionless for safety, Josh explained. Just in case, we were all wearing bright orange nitrile gloves. That way, if the calf bolted, we could gently guide them back to the ground while not leaving behind a scent that might attract a bear.

The calf remained curled in his bed. Stacey deftly slipped a soft blindfold over the little brown face to keep the calf calm. She checked the sex, then rolled the calf into a net bag and hooked that to a scale. At 37.8 pounds, the little guy was above the long-term average birth weight of 35 pounds. Next came the GPS collar encased in a bright red scrunchie to reduce discomfort and protect the elastic belting that will expand with the calf as he grows.

Stacey and Cynthia collar the calf. 

Josh gently opened the calf’s lips and measured the amount of tooth showing above his gums. This technique provides an estimate of age and confirmed that he had been born on Friday night. Finally, Stacey took a small sample for DNA testing then attached an ear tag. All this took under 15 minutes.

Josh Spiegel measures an elk calf’s teeth to determine his age while Stacey Petrus readies a DNA sample.
Photo by Emily Stone.

We all moved away quietly while Josh replaced the blindfold with a handful of grass and made sure the little guy would sit tight until his mom returned in a few hours. Elk have a very durable bond, and researchers have found little evidence that our brief disruption of their mother-child relationship will result in abandonment or other negative impacts.

When Josh caught up to the crew, he told us about a calf they’d searched for earlier that morning—and the bear who had found them first. It’s no accident that elk calves and deer fawns are all born at about the same time. Predators may eat many tender meals, but they can’t eat them all, and some will survive. The data we just had a hand in collecting will help us to understand more.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too. Natural Connections 3 is in the works—and needs illustrators from the community! Find out more at: https://www.cablemuseum.org/books/

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Canadian Tiger Swallowtails

While we’d been busy banding birds, the Sun had climbed high into open skies above the Moquah Barrens on the spine of the Bayfield Peninsula. The temperature had climbed since early morning, too. As the group of students in the Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteer Training Course climbed back into our cars and caravanned through this U.S. Forest Service Special Management Area, yellow clouds rose up from the middle of sand roads.

Pulling into the Bladder Lake Recreation Area a few miles away, we were met by more yellow. Kathrine, one of the Museum’s new Summer Naturalist Interns, walked down to the sandy shoreline only to be engulfed in a swirl of yellow wings. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more Canadian tiger swallow butterflies in a single day!

This abundance of beauty has been building. On June 5, as I paddled the Namekagon River for a “Birding by Ear” field trip, occasional tiger swallowtails flitted along the shoreline. By June 10, we encountered half a dozen on the blackberry flowers at the trailhead for Morgan Falls—a hike that’s always a highlight of the Master Naturalist Course. And now it was June 11, and we were surrounded by their delicate yellow wings with black tiger stripes and scalloped edges leading into two little “swallowtails” at the rear.

As lackadaisical as the flight of butterflies may look, these butterflies are in a hurry to complete their life cycle in a brief northern summer. Visiting flowers to sip sugary nectar powers their flight. Males need some additional nutrients, too, and those come from something much less sweet than a flower.

Our vehicles disturbed clusters of butterflies on the sand roads. Their rising inevitably revealed a pile of animal scat. Male butterflies engage in an activity called puddling, where they lap up nutrients from the surface of puddles, or piles of poo. At Bladder Lake, they were puddling on a collection of decaying plants that had washed into a corner of the beach. The salts, proteins, and minerals they gain from this behavior get wrapped up in a nuptial packet and transferred to the female during mating.

Most if not all male butterflies engage in puddling, but it seems especially important for Canadian tiger swallowtails. Females must have enough energy to give their offspring a head start by laying large eggs; the nuptial packets are part of this. They also place their eggs, one per leaf, on the south side of trees. This provides more warming Sun exposure and less competition for the developing larvae.

As the temperature increases from 54 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit (due to normal changes in weather, or just a great location) the larvae can increase their growth rate by up to 500%. There is a catch, though. Larvae on birch trees won’t grow faster, even if it’s warm. Only the more nutritious leaves of aspen trees allow for such rapid growth. The butterflies must choose their host plants carefully, and hope that aspens are available, especially at the far north end of their range in Alaska and Canada. Apples and cherries are also possible host plants.

In a surprising but smart move, if a caterpillar survives a summer cold spell, they will then begin to grow faster. The longer and the colder it was, the faster the caterpillar will grow when it’s over—as long as they aren’t dead. Larvae with food in their guts freeze at warmer temperatures.

With all the poop puddling their Papas do, perhaps it’s fitting that young tiger swallowtail caterpillars avoid predation by looking just like brown and white bird droppings as they feed on the sunny surfaces of leaves. The older caterpillars costume themselves to look like mini snakes with leaf-green bodies and big yellow eyespots. They arm themselves with orange glands that emit stinky chemicals if disturbed. Despite those defenses, birds such as the gray catbird, rose-breasted grosbeak, and eastern towhee who we’d banded earlier that morning, probably eat many of them. As we’ve discussed before, one Being’s baby is often another’s baby food.

If they survive childhood, the larvae store up cryoprotectants to help them avoid freezing and then transform into pupae. Once properly hardened off and hidden away, the chrysalis can survive at least seven consecutive days at -2 degrees. The faster that a caterpillar can get to the safety of a cold-hardened chrysalis, the better—even if that means not growing as large. Smaller larvae result in smaller adults, but that didn’t seem to matter to the clouds of yellow and black butterflies rising in the sunshine.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too. Natural Connections 3 is in the works—and needs illustrators from the community! Find out more at: https://www.cablemuseum.org/books/

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Junebugs and Beetles

Something small and bright caught my eye. Stopping mid-stride and mid-conversation, I bent down to look at a small jumble of legs and exoskeletons in the tread of the Ice Age Trail. Luckily, my hiking buddy was also a naturalist, and she investigated the insects with me.

The yellow mantle behind the head of a black carrion beetle is what I’d noticed first. They are quite striking, even when rooting around in the decaying flesh of a recently dead animal, looking for a place to lay their eggs. The adults eat dead stuff, too, hence the bear hug this one was giving a shiny brown, but unmoving, carcass of a Junebug. I snapped a couple photos of the food chain in action, and we continued hiking.

Seeing the Junebug triggered childhood memories of these big bugs battering against the window screens while we played board games around the kitchen table on hot summer evenings. Though harmless and clumsy, their clawed feet and loud scrambling scared me. Things scritching on windows at night was definitely the stuff of nightmares.

Junebugs are harmless of course. And they are not actually bugs, they are beetles in the genus Phyllophaga, which means plant eaters. The distinction between bugs and beetles has to do with their wings. True Bugs have one pair of wings that are half leathery and half membranous. When folded, they don’t quite meet. This forms an X on their back. Stink bugs are a classic example. Beetles, in contrast, have two pairs of wings. One pair is hardened into a protective sheath, and they cover a more fragile pair used for flying.

Well, the males use them for flying anyway. In many species of Junebugs the females have small, ineffective wings. Instead, they waft pheromones into the night and let the males come to them. Sometimes the males get distracted from their search by your lighted windows. Now that the air conditioner is turned on and the windows closed, I rarely hear them.

The next afternoon I was walking dirt paths again, this time at the Cable Community Farm. A glint of shiny auburn caught my eye, and once again I was looking at a dead Junebug in the dirt. Their particular shade of red-brown really is very pretty. I think Anne of Green Gables would approve. Their head had been snapped off and the guts extracted through the hole. No murder weapon was in sight.

Since my evenings at the garden have been alive with birdsong, an avian predator was my best guess. Birds are excellent pest control at the garden. Bluebirds love caterpillars, tree swallows clear the air of flying insects, a local Cooper’s hawk will hopefully keep the rabbits out, and someone ate a Junebug. Thanks, Friend!

Junebugs are native insects, but in large numbers they can be destructive to lawns and gardens. Their larvae are big white grubs who live in the soil for a few years while nibbling on the roots of plants. The damage makes it hard for plants to take up nutrients and water, so they end up looking yellow and wilted. Robust, healthy plants can often withstand the stress, but small plants may be killed.

I dropped the Junebug’s empty shell back to the ground and continued with my task for the day—hand sifting the soil in an entire row to pick out rocks and make it ready for carrots. The Cable Community Farm is enjoying our first year at a brand-new site, and the soil has already grown a bumper crop of rocks!

Partway through the row, that familiar shiny brown popped up again. This time the Junebug was still alive! As I pulled out my phone to snap some photos, the beetle ran around anxiously until they found soft soil and then made short work of burrowing back down. It was clear that they prefer being underground during the day, even as adults. Zooming in on the photos, I could see the little clubs at the end of their antennae that are characteristic of the Scarab Family. These can be fanned out to detect odors.

After finding only one live beetle in my garden row, I was happy for my carrots, but worried for the Earth. Many people are quick to pull out the chemicals when they see an insect but fail to see the far-reaching consequences of disrupting the food web. Decades of increasing use of pesticides has taken a toll on ecosystems, and the beneficial bugs—like pollinators—often are killed right alongside the ones whose value we don’t yet understand.

I dug the beetle back up and tossed them into the compost pile with the grass roots, far away from my carrots. They are an important member of the ecosystem and I’m happy to let them live…over there.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too. Natural Connections 3 is in the works—and needs illustrators from the community! Find out more at: https://www.cablemuseum.org/books/

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Skydancing the Night Away

Excitement and nerves were at an all-time high as my car crept down the gravel road, the sun having just slipped below the horizon. I was on the hunt, following clues to lead me to my prize. My treasure was the somewhat elusive American woodcock, and I was hoping to catch a glimpse of their infamous skydance. Each spring, the males put on a dramatic display to attract a mate. They prefer a wet, forested area to hide out in, with a clearing nearby to perform their dance. The spring peepers and chorus frog songs that filled the air clued me in on being in the right place.

An American woodcock. Photo by Keith Ramos, USFWS.

The wind whipped through the trees, and time ticked by as robins, chickadees, and other songbirds sang their evening delights, but I had yet to pick up on the distinctive call of the American woodcock. Doubt began to creep in with each minute that went by. I began to wonder if I had found the right place, and was on my way to accepting that I may not find what I was searching for tonight. That's when I heard it–the American woodcock's opening line to start his show.

Peent.

My head snapped to the direction of the sound, with my ears tuned in and excitement taking hold once more. There it was again, peent. The soft, almost nasally call was off in the distance. I started my car and continued creeping down the gravel road. A small, shadowed shape flashed before my car, and disappeared into the thicket on the other side of the road. A woodcock!

The woodcock landed on the gravel road, not 20 feet behind my car, and began to call out again. Peent. I watched his silhouette, barely letting a breath escape my lungs, not wanting to risk scaring him away. He continued his serenade for a few more minutes before rocketing into the air. The remaining light was dwindling fast, but I watched as he flew past and began his spiral upwards.

As he flew, I mainly tracked him with my ears–only catching an occasional glimpse with my eyes. The twittering noise of his wings gave him away, his physically modified flight feathers singing as air rushed through them. It was like being immersed in a natural surround sound theatre as he circled around, higher and higher, the whistling sound of his wings looping through my ears.

Suddenly the sound of his ascent stopped, and a new sound took its place. In the final act of his mating display, the woodcock fell from the sky, spinning acrobatically as he plummeted. I found it reminiscent of scenes in old cartoons with the twittering piano tunes escalating as the character falls through the air. But rather than crashing into the ground, he righted himself at the last moment, and landed near the same spot he took off from. He was hoping that a female had taken notice of his superior showmanship, and would be waiting in the spot he took off from. He was not so lucky this time around.

But rather than that being the end of the show, it's simply the first act of many. As he stood on the gravel road that was his stage, the Woodcock began to call again. Peent. His determination to impress the ladies will keep his show going into the night.

While I was not his intended audience, I was enthralled by his skydance. There is something to be said about being privy to the intricate lives of wildlife. It feels intimate, getting a small glance into their private lives. As I watched the woodcock’s dance, a few cars drove down the gravel road, but turned before reaching us. I couldn’t help but think they were so close to a show of a lifetime, and had no idea. The woodcock paid them no mind, continuing to call out before taking to the skies again.

Night had completely fallen by the time I headed home. As I left, I was grateful I witnessed the woodcocks skydance. It is amazing how the smallest moments leave lasting impressions, and the impactful memories that wildlife can impart. I wish I could thank him for letting me witness his display, and the lasting memories he unknowingly imparted. Instead, I left him still singing on the gravel road and wished him luck in his nighttime endeavors.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Baby Food

The wetland just east of Lake Namakagon was still brown with last year’s dried leaves and swollen with this year’s melted snow as we drove home from a chilly hike in late April. Movement caught our eye, and we peered intently into the late afternoon sunshine. Two sandhill cranes, perfectly camouflaged in the warm browns of the marsh, stood on a spit of sedges and leatherleaf. Their red caps didn’t stand out, but when their eyes caught the sun just right, they glowed orange.

As we watched, one crane and then the other dipped their head down into the thicket of plants, then tossed a twig or long leaf over their shoulder. Over and over they repeated this behavior while we snapped photos. At one point, one of the cranes folded up their stilt-like legs and nestled their belly into the vegetation, their long black beak, red cap, and orange eyes just visible over a small channel of open water. Clearly, they were building a nest. Likely, the sitting bird was the female, helping to mold the pile of weeds into a cozy home.

Although the female shapes the nest and incubates the eggs overnight, the male helps to build the structure and splits incubation duties with her 50/50 during the day. Both parents lose belly feathers to form a brood patch where blood vessels just under bare skin share body heat with the eggs.

Although I often hear their rattling bugle calls echoing across the lake and through my open windows, having cranes nest where I could see them was a new treat. For a few weeks, every warm afternoon found me biking along that stretch of road with my camera at the ready. Each time, the evening sunlight spotlighted the face of a crane on the nest.

Then, I left for a conference in California. When the weather and my schedule finally cooperated again, it had been exactly a month since the nest building. Although I scanned the wetland with high hopes, no cranes were visible. The typical incubation period for cranes is 28-30 days, so it was conceivable that the 1-3 eggs might have hatched. But although the chicks emerge with eyes open and can soon walk and run, there’s little chance they could have already had the strength to travel to another wetland. And although they would have been too small for me to spot among the shrubs, their parents would surely have been visible.

The possible culprits are numerous. Many Beings will eat an egg or a baby bird. Crows, ravens, raptors, foxes, coyotes, raccoons, mink, and great horned owls are all potential predators if they can avoid the kicks and stabs of a defensive parent.

A few days after biking past the empty wetland, I switched vehicles. Paddling through a wide, marshy section of the Namekagon River, we again spotted a pair of sandhill cranes. This time their rusty feathers stood out against the fresh green spikes of horsetail. One stalked through shallow water with eyes focused downward, even dipping their head into the muck for something tasty.

The harsh cries of a red-winged blackbird brought our attention back to the other crane in the taller grass. The red and yellow epaulets on the blackbird’s wings flashed brightly as he dive-bombed the crane and even landed on their broad brown back. The wading crane returned, but there was little they could do except hunker down and point their beaks against the attacks of the smaller bird.

And could you blame him? This one male blackbird may have attracted as many as 15 females to build nests in his territory. While he doesn’t help incubate the eggs like the male crane, he does spend more than a quarter of his daylight hours in territorial defense against his peers and potential predators. And the cranes were potential predators. Although they eat plenty of waste grain from farm fields during migration, throughout the breeding season they seek the protein of small mammals, frogs, and baby birds. The blackbird was right to be leery.

These crane encounters drove home an ecological reality: One Being’s baby is often another’s baby food. The abundance of summer is driven by this necessity. Tender young leaves become caterpillar food. Six thousand caterpillars—who are baby butterflies and moths—become a half-dozen chickadee chicks. Some of those chicks become red squirrel kittens. The squirrels become red fox kits, and so on. How does anything survive?

Red-winged blackbirds can have multiple broods with several eggs over the course of a summer. Even after feeding a few cranes, they are one of the most abundant native birds in North America. At best, a pair of cranes raise no more than one chick per summer, but may have 30 years or more together to produce two successful heirs and replace themselves. Even with some predation, their population is increasing slowly due to habitat protection. There is space enough for all of us.

In the end, we can’t escape the fact that a bit (or a lot) of death goes into every life.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.