Adventures with Bagworm Moths

The relatively mild weather we’ve been having this fall has been wonderful for hiking. Unfortunately, it’s also good weather for outdoor chores, so I don’t have freezing cold and snow as excuses to let the windows go unwashed. As I brushed off spider webs, I noticed small brown somethings stubbornly stuck to the windows and frames. The objects were each a tiny cluster of dead plant stems formed into a cylinder and glued to the surface with a circle of white at one end.

This jogged a memory, and I thought back to our moth workshop last summer. Kyle Johnson, Minnesota Biological Survey (MBS) Entomologist, found an impressive number of caterpillars and moths for us to learn about in just 24 hours. During that workshop, at the end of July, we spotted one of these little brown cases on the surface of a leatherwood leaf. Kyle explained that they were movable camouflage for the larvae of bagworm moths. I stored that information away for future use.

We spotted this bagworm moth larvae on a leatherwood leaf during the moth workshop in July. Photo by Emily Stone.

The future is here! I snapped some photos of the bagworm cases before scraping them off the windows with my fingernail, and scrubbed the glass clean. As I started investigating the bagworms further, my searches turned up some dire-sounding warnings about how they can defoliate evergreen trees in your yard. The photos of the cases didn’t look quite right, though. Eventually, I discovered that there are two species of case-forming insects sometimes called common bagworms. One has the tongue-twister name of Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis and is also known as the evergreen bagworm. Although they can be destructive to juniper and white cedar, they are native to North America. The other insect is Psyche casta, also known as the grass bagworm. This matched the cases I found much better! Both types of bagworms are the larvae of tiny moths.

While they don’t seem to cause problems, grass bagworms were introduced from Europe around 1931 and have spread from Boston across southeastern Canada, and as far west as Minnesota. Modern information about them is pretty sparse, but in 1934, when they were new and interesting, Donald W. Farquhar of Harvard University wrote a comprehensive observation of their unusual life cycle.

Farquhar observed the larvae hatching in June and July. Their first act is to spin a silken sleeping bag and then decorate it with bits of their surroundings. Grass bagworms use little straws of dry grass, which also creates excellent camouflage. This stage reminds me of caddisflies, which are unrelated aquatic larvae who also use silk and local materials to build a protective case. In both groups of insects, the cases are distinctive enough to help with identification. I had split open one of the cases after scraping it off my window, and I did find white silk lining the case of grass.

Once protected, the bagworm sticks their head and thorax out of the case to crawl around and feed. Although the evergreen bagworm seems to cause whole trees to turn brown, I think that grass bagworms just skeletonize patches on broader leaves. Farquhar reports that they eat grasses, mosses, lichens, and “other low plants.” He also observed them eating the scale insects who cause beech bark disease out East, and even cannibalizing their peers in a laboratory setting. As with quite a few moth species, they must get all of their eating done in childhood, because the adults have no mouths!

This larval childhood is also when they do their traveling. Sometimes, just after spinning their tiny silk bag, a larva will drop down on a thread and catch a ride on the wind, similar to a spiderling ballooning on their silk. Humans transport them even farther as we move the objects they call home. Even with tiny legs, walking places is an option, too. Full-grown larvae will climb up trees, buildings, fence posts, stone walls, and my first-floor windows to get ready to pupate and go through metamorphosis. Monarch butterfly caterpillars also go through this wandering phase.

According to Farquhar, all of that takes 11 months. The larvae spend the winter under rocks or in the crevices of tree bark. Fresh spring food allows them to grow faster, and by May they are ready to pupate and become adults.

This bagworm moth case still has the exoskeleton of the pupae sticking out one end! Photo by Emily Stone.

Female bagworm moths have no wings. They emerge from their case, hold onto the bag, and in Farquhar’s words, she “liberates the attractant which summons males within perceiving distance.” In other words, she releases pheromones. Males, who do have strong wings, follow her scent upwind and then search on foot to find her. The two mate, and then the female reinserts her ovipositor into her empty case and squirts in about 150 eggs. She closes up the end of the case with white fuzz, then drops to the ground to die. The eggs hatch after a couple of weeks, and the cycle begins again.

Although I’ve noticed bagworm cases before, I didn’t know anything about their life cycle, or why I find their old cases on walls and windows instead of plants. Now I do! So I’m grateful that this warm fall weather allows me to check things off my to-do list.

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. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Cyanobacteria Then and Now

I don’t quite know what to do with myself in this warm fall weather. Shouldn’t we be crunching through snow or at least hiking on frozen ground? Shouldn’t my watercraft all be in storage and my skis be by the front door? Instead, on an afternoon in late October, I found myself on the shore of Lake Namakagon, paddleboard resting at my feet.

Stand-up paddleboarding is a new skill I picked up this summer. I found it useful for navigating swells on Lake Superior, and spent a day exploring the sea caves. Far more often, though, I’d get done with a bike ride, paddle out beyond the weeds and muck at my shoreline, and using the paddleboard as a swim raft, jump in! Even though it was much warmer than the big lake, a dip in Lake Namakagon was refreshing.

But on that October day, the gentle waves that lapped at my toes were bright green. In almost any other circumstance I’d find that color beautiful, but the thick soup of algae made my stomach drop. There would be no refreshing swim.

Blue-green algae blooms are an increasing issue even in wild lakes. I spotted this algae bloom on Crooked Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in late September. Photo by Emily Stone.

I stared at my feet for a minute, deciding whether or not I should even attempt to paddle through the goo. Then a spot of deep red caught my eye. Among the dark gray rocks along the shore was one lovely pebble made of jasper. That lifted my mood just enough to propel me away from shore.

As my paddle created swirling patterns in the green scum, I struggled with finding beauty in such a mess. This, I guessed, was a bloom of blue-green algae. Warm weather, calm winds, and plenty of nitrogen and phosphorus from lawns, farms, and autumn leaves increasingly lead to algae blooms in late summer and early fall.

Days of calm, warm water with plenty of nutrients often lead to blooms of blue-green algae in late summer and fall. These cloud reflections on Lake Namakagon hide a thick, green soup. Photo by Emily Stone.

Algae are the base of the aquatic food chain. They use energy from the Sun to transform carbon dioxide and water into sugar. Tiny zooplankton eat the algae, and bigger critters eat the zooplankton, eventually feeding fish, eagles, and us. Blue-green algae aren’t true algae, though. They are a type of bacteria who invented photosynthesis.

On land, cyanobacteria are part of cryptobiotic crusts, which hold sandy soils in place. As a partner in some species of lichens, they fix nitrogen out of thin air. In the water, though, cyanobacteria are becoming more common, and more problematic. The thick film they form on the surface reduces sunlight to plants below. They can clog water filters. And they sometimes, but not always, produce toxins that are harmful to pets, livestock, and humans.

My thoughts strayed back to the red pebble near the shore. Jasper is a form of mineral-stained quartz that once formed as layers within iron ore. I enjoy finding them because they are part of such a unique story. A story, I realized with a jolt, where cyanobacteria play a leading role.

Once upon a time, and by that, I mean 1.9 billion years ago, the atmosphere was filled with carbon dioxide and methane, and the first inklings of life had only just begun. Volcanic activity in the early oceans, and erosion off the few continents, enriched the water with iron and silica.

Cyanobacteria bloomed in those mineral-rich seas, and they also produced at least one type of toxin: oxygen. Free oxygen wasn’t part of the Earth’s early atmosphere, and it was lethal to the first forms of life. At first, the oxygen reacted with the dissolved iron and silica, removing itself from the water by precipitating jasper and other minerals. When cyanobacteria doing photosynthesis pumped out more oxygen than the minerals could remove from the water, though, they poisoned themselves. Boom and bust cycles of cyanobacteria, plus other seasonal and erosional events, resulted in bands of iron-rich rock with different colors, textures, and thickness. Conditions on Earth have changed so much over millennia that this type of rock may never form again.

Like me learning the new skill of paddleboarding, cyanobacteria eventually evolved enzymes that allowed them to live with oxygen. No longer at risk of poisoning themselves with the element, they proliferated wildly, their oxygen waste sweeping most of the iron and silica out of the ocean water for good. Then excess oxygen, no longer tied up with iron, escaped into the air, and began creating the atmosphere we enjoy today.

It's a little ironic, then, that one of the issues with cyanobacteria on the modern Earth is that when they die, sink to the bottom of a lake, and decompose, they deplete the oxygen that life now requires.

A few days after that soupy paddle, the Halloween snowstorm stirred up the lake, and the red jasper at my landing disappeared. The storm waves also dispersed the cyanobacteria, at least until next summer. Over the course of Earth’s history, these little beings have played many roles. Were they heroes for giving us oxygen? Are they villains for gumming up our lakes? Maybe they are simply one part of a long and complicated story.

From the Wisconsin DNR:

"It’s very helpful for us to receive bloom reports from the public. You can email them to DNRHABS@wisconsin.gov, and please include photos for verification when possible. If you are ever at the Lake Superior shore and see a bloom, please let us know ASAP by email or by  texting Gina LaLiberte, Statewide Harmful Algal Bloom Coordinator and Inland Beach Monitoring Coordinator, at 608-640-7910. We have a rapid response group set up to grab samples from the (usually) very short-lived Superior blooms."

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. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

In the Dark

The recent Wisconsin Association of Environmental Education annual conference was held at Upham Woods Outdoor Learning Center on the banks of the Wisconsin River. It was a beautiful setting…even after dark! Photo by Emily Stone.

Light from the dining hall at Upham Woods Outdoor Learning Center spilled out, down the hill, under the pines, and onto the bank of the Wisconsin River, where a handful of environmental educators were waiting for a night hike to begin.

I almost hadn’t joined the group. This was the final night of the Wisconsin Association of Environmental Education annual conference, and I had a long drive home the next day. Being sleepy for that wouldn’t be ideal. But it had been years since I’d been on a night hike, and I didn’t want to miss out.

“Have you ever been on a night hike?” asked one of the activity leaders, who were all graduate students at UW-Stevens Point. “Hasn’t everybody?” asked one young woman, who, by way of explanation, told harrowing tales of following her big brother into the dark for numerous childhood adventures. In this organized context, a few of us explained, night hike means something a little more educational…and safe.

I’d become adept at leading night hikes when I worked at a science camp in the redwoods of Sonoma County, California. The combination of few mosquitoes and temperatures that rarely dropped below freezing made being outside at night there far more pleasant than most of my midwestern experiences. Each week, I’d have a new trail group of 15 to 20 fifth or sixth graders, often from a big city. Each week, I’d take the kids on a night hike where we’d spend an hour or so experiencing the night and doing little experiments to highlight animal adaptations to darkness. I loved it. I’d never stopped to consider how the students felt, though.

After a quick introduction in the light of the dining hall, the hike facilitators led us down a trail. The tread was wide and flat, and I relished the chance to practice my old technique of “seeing with my feet” by placing my steps carefully and sensing where the packed trail became soft edge. At a wide spot, we paused and gathered in a circle.

The instructors introduced the idea of predators using their sense of smell to find prey in the dark. Then they passed out little paper envelopes filled with something scented. There were three packets of each different scent, they told us. Our job was to find all of the people with the same scent. No flashlights allowed!

I sniffed my own envelope, and discovered what was definitely a flavor of tea leaves. Maybe vanilla chai? This immediately brought back memories of raiding the tea selection in my camp’s dining hall to freshen up my set of paired scents. Back then, I had explained the activity as male moths finding females by following their airborne pheromones, but it was basically the same.

As I milled around the Upham Woods group sniffing everyone’s packets to find a match, my nose quickly became overwhelmed. This was harder than I expected! I wondered if the tea scents I’d chosen back in the day had been as distinct to the kids as they’d been to me when I was choosing them in the well-lit dining hall?

Flashlights snapped on again as we started moving farther down the trail. My first reaction was to be frustrated. I’d always loved the challenge—and then the awareness gained—from walking without a light. But as the trail grew rougher, and the drop-off grew steeper, I softened my opinion of the lights, and made sure to fall into step near someone who’d remembered to bring a flashlight. Walking in the dark had been a lot easier on familiar trails.

We hiked for a while, making a few more stops before finding ourselves back in the yard of the learning center dorms. We were instructed to partner up, and choose which one of us was predator, and which was prey. Meanwhile, a grad student set up a playing field with orange cones at the four corners and stuffed animals scattered around. The activity facilitator was holding blindfolds.

This wasn’t an activity I recognized, and for a second, a touch of anxiety bubbled up. I was glad to have a friend nearby who I could trust as a partner, but still I worried. What would we have to do while blindfolded? Would I succeed? Would I be safe? And then I wondered—is that how my students felt back in the redwoods? Did I make them nervous with my odd activities that I thought were so fun? In the end, my friend and I came up with a code of chickadee calls for the sighted partner to direct the blindfolded one to pick up the stuffed animals. We didn’t win the game, but our system worked, and we had fun.

As all the night hikers formed a circle to wrap up the experience, the leaders asked us what we’d learned. The science wasn’t new to me, and most of the activities weren’t unfamiliar either, but I still learned something big: empathy. The experience of being in control of a night hike in familiar territory was far different than being a participant in a new place. Next time I lead a night hike, I’ll make sure that my students aren’t quite so in the dark.

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. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Ptarmigans on Top of the World

Author’s Note: This week I’m at a conference, but on recent hikes, I’ve been seeing a lot of grouse. In 2018, I spent the entire summer in Alaska, and got to meet ruffed grouse’s weird cousins. This article was first published back then. Enjoy! – Emily

Damp oak leaves crinkled under my boots, but few other sounds broke the North Country Trail’s tranquility. Then the whump-whump-whump of a ruffed grouse drumming filled my chest. It’s a sound usually associated with spring, but this male had a legitimate purpose. As young males leave their brood and seek a territory, established males reassert their claims, effectively telling the youngsters to move on. 

The noises of grouse—even the startling ruckus they cause when flushing—are a quintessential part of the Northwoods. But I wonder if they would sound odd to an outsider? This summer in Alaska I met some cousins of our ruffed grouse, and boy did they sound odd to this outsider!

The day dawned frosty and clear. I continued driving north along the Taylor Highway and then east on the Top of the World Highway. As I neared and then crossed the Canadian border, it became clear that the road was aptly named. The views across rocky, round-topped hills were spectacular and generally unobstructed by trees. I pulled over at every opportunity, and at one turnout I found a dirt road scraped into the tundra that disappeared over a distant edge. With the childhood favorite “The Bear Went Over the Mountain” running through my head, I started walking. 

Top of the World Highway just across the border into the Yukon.

Soon another sound cut in. An odd series of hollow little clucks and rattles emanated from a patch of lichen-crusted rocks. Was there a friendly alien hiding nearby? Or maybe a Star Wars character that only Han Solo can understand? With short, jerking movements, the camouflaged chatterboxes revealed their identity: ptarmigans.

Our ruffed grouse grow comb-like bristles on the sides of their toes to provide snowshoe-like floatation and traction on icy aspen twigs. In contrast, ptarmigans have feet so fuzzily covered in feathers that their genus, Lagopus, means “hare-footed.” They are well-suited to the tundra habitats they prefer.

Close-up of a rock ptarmigan's feathered feet. Photo by Emily Stone.

Look closely at the feet of this spruce grouse--you can see the pectinations on his toes! Photo by Emily Stone.

Can you see the fringe of pectinations on the sides of these ruffed grouse toes? Photo By Emily Stone.

All grouse and ptarmigan seem well-adapted for snow-shoeing.

Alaska is home to three species of ptarmigans. White-tailed ptarmigans seek out alpine neighborhoods with marmots, mountain goats, and Dall sheep. Their range is limited to North America. Willow ptarmigans prefer the lush vegetation of streamsides and marshy tundra. Rock ptarmigans inhabit high elevations and latitudes where sparse vegetation reveals their namesakes. Both willow and rock ptarmigans are circumpolar, and can be seen in Scandinavia, Russia, Japan, Scotland, and the Alps.

A willow ptarmigan in Denali National Park.

Peering through my camera, I could barely pick out birds among the rocks. Fine bars of dark and light brown, flecked with white, draped over one bird’s top half, while pure white pantaloons peeked out underneath. A scarlet eyebrow labeled that one as a male. Most other birds in this flock of a dozen or more lacked that conspicuous eyebrow and had brown patterns extending much lower—females and young. Based on the location, and the fact that willow ptarmigans would have been more rufous brown, I guessed that these were rock ptarmigans.

Male rock ptarmigans keep their white feathers longer into the breeding season. Photo by Emily Stone.

Ptarmigans seem tricky to identify by their plumage, though, because it is always shifting with the seasons. Most birds have just two different plumages per year—breeding and non-breeding. Ptarmigans molt three times a year in order to stay camouflaged in the ever-changing tundra. A pure white winter coat is the classic look for all rock ptarmigans. Only the outsides of their tails and a stripe from eye to bill remain dark. When spring winds whisper, males don an avian tuxedo in the form of dark feathers on their head and neck, and they strut about with red combs inflated. Meanwhile, females fade into the background with mottled brown and flecks of white. They are so well-camouflaged that Arctic foxes have been observed walking right past them.

Female rock ptarmigans have such amazing camouflage that they are hard to spot from even a few feet away. Photo by Emily Stone.

As the snow melts, the remaining white feathers on males’ bellies really stand out. In fact, their breeding plumage may be a little too eye-catching. The predation rate on male ptarmigans skyrockets during breeding season. That’s probably why they roll in the dust as soon as their mate begins egg-laying. Using this style of camouflage, bachelors and polygamous males can precisely customize how long they stay sexy in order to maximize breeding opportunities. Once they’re safely dirty, a full molt into summer browns can proceed at their leisure. Finally, both males and females gain grayish feathers for fall and then almost immediately turn back to white for the winter.

Of course I didn’t know all of that as my eyes were going crossed trying to see these amazingly camouflaged birds among the rocks. I just enjoyed their odd sounds and the “Where’s Waldo” game of trying to spot them. Although the ptarmigans were nearly invisible, they also were pretty tame. It’s no wonder that they are an important game bird in the far north and have been named the official bird or game bird for Nunavut, Newfoundland, and Labrador. 

Ptarmigans were also important to gold miners trying to survive brutal winters in the late 1800s. Earlier that morning I’d passed through an old gold mining town that wanted to honor the tasty birds who kept them alive through long winters. Unfortunately, Ptarmigan proved too hard to spell, so they ended up naming their town Chicken—just one more thing on the tundra that sounds odd to an outsider.

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. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

A Beautiful Orange Day

The wool of my favorite old rusty orange sweater felt warm and scratchy as I stuffed it into my backpack next to a jacket and camera. The low gray clouds hung onto their rain, but wind gusts flung water drops off the trees as I walked to my car. As soon as I turned onto the gravel road, though, I knew I’d made the right decision. The much-needed rain had washed dust off the autumn leaves and saturated their colors. This was a perfect day for a scenic drive through a rainbow forest.

The sky began to drip just a tad as I pulled into the parking lot for Morgan Falls and St. Peter’s Dome in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, so I dug the jacket out of my pack before ambling down the wide, flat trail. The pink, purple, and yellow wildflowers were bedraggled from the rain, and a motionless bee clung to one of them, too cold to move.

The hike up was beautiful, too. Even though this trail is rocky enough that I had to look down a lot, there was a carpet of colorful leaves and vibrant patches of happy moss to admire. I even spotted a fat little short-tailed shrew scurrying around the same hillside where I often find fat little bumble bees in May. Both species have venom, although at opposite ends of their bodies.

Gray clouds still hung low when I reached the overlook, but below them was a spectacular tapestry of orange. I visit this overlook every fall, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it quite so orange. In Crayola’s words, the shades included mango tango, atomic tangerine, macaroni and cheese, neon carrot, and my personal favorite, burnt sienna. In science’s word: carotene.

All summer, orange carotene pigments in the leaves captured wavelengths of light that the green chlorophyll could not, and then transferred that energy over to help fuel photosynthesis. Yellow xanthophyll pigments absorbed dangerous excess energy in the leaf and dissipated it as heat. This prevented cell damage, and warmed the surrounding environment. All summer, vibrant green chlorophyll was the star of the show, and outshone all the rest. As chlorophyll breaks down and is resorbed, though, its trusty sidekicks are revealed.

I snapped several photos before the sound of raindrops on leaves told me that it was time to hike back down.

Despite the vibrant colors in the tree canopy, the unfrosted understory was still very green. That’s why two little dots of bright orange at about knee height caught my eye. Looking closer, I discovered that they were orange fruits on a green plant. The fruits were the size of small marbles, and each had a tiny tuft of leaves on top like a strawberry. They sat snugged up on either side of the stem, right on top of two broad leaves with wide petioles. A few inches down the stem, the scene was repeated, but with the leaves and fruits rotated a quarter turn. Below that, a third set of leaves and fruits matched orientation with the top ones.

Ah ha! I’d never met this plant in person before, and the fact that they were growing here, on one of my favorite trails, irked me just a little. I hike here multiple times a year, and often teach about spring wildflowers. Why hadn’t I noticed them before? Why did I finally see them that day? The second question was much easier – three people asked me to identify photos of this plant in the past month!

Orange-fruited Horse Gentian is a member of the honeysuckle family, Caprifoliaceae. The Northern Fly Honeysuckle growing nearby was small and delicate in comparison, though. The cousins share the traits of leaves arranged oppositely around the stem, smooth leaf margins, and roundish, orangish fruits. Fly honeysuckle has delicate woody twigs and much smaller features, while my new acquaintance had leaves the size and shape of bunny ears. In fact, its these big leaves, more suited to a tree than an understory herb, that earns the descriptor “horse,” which often denotes coarseness or a large size.

Northern Fly Honeysuckle

When they bloom in late spring, Orange-fruited Horse Gentians produce 2 to 6 brownish purple, tubular flowers in each leaf axil, where the fruits now sit. The flowers of true gentians are also tubular, and also have 5 petals, but that’s the extent of the similarity, despite the name.

Here's a gentian I found in Alaska. 

This plant isn’t common in northern Wisconsin, because they prefer to grow in rich soil. Still, I will be on the lookout the flowers next spring! My hunch is that they bloom after the mosquitoes have hatched, which makes botanizing much harder. The bright fruits, appearing after the mosquitoes have diminished and colored with orange carotene pigments just like the autumn leaves, may always be easier to find.

You know, I’ve always heard that carotene, especially beta-carotene, is good for eye health. I wonder if there are any benefits from simply looking at it? On this beautiful orange day, I think I might have absorbed some happiness through my eyes.

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. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Paddling Among Icebergs

Author’s Note: This week I’ve been busy leading field trips, but I’ve been dreaming of a time when I was a participant. In 2018, I spent the entire summer in Alaska, and had two chances to paddle near glaciers. Enjoy! – Emily

After hiking up to the Harding Ice Field in Kenai Fjords National Park, I wanted to do more than just look down onto the complex world of glacial ice from high above. Through a friend from Northland College, I discovered that Adventure Sixty North, a guide service in Seward, runs sea kayak trips to the toe of a calving glacier.

I was glad for my brand-new, bright green rain jacket as I boarded a water taxi the next morning in the cold, steady drizzle I’ve come to expect from Alaska. Back at the Adventure Sixty North shop, our guides, Sunny and Nick, had outfitted us with dry bags for our stuff, and supplied any other gear we didn’t already own. After two-and-a-half months in Alaska, I was well-prepared with the ubiquitous brown Xtratuf boots, rain pants, and my cheerfully green jacket.

The water taxi ride itself was spectacularly filled with sea otters, orcas, two kinds of puffins, rocky cliffs and crags, sea lions, a bristle-thighed curlew, hot coffee, and good conversation. We landed on the gravely beach of a glacial moraine about two miles from the current glacial terminus to switch from one type of boat to another. Then we began paddling among bobbing chunks of glacial ice in kayaks.

As we glided through the maze of mini-bergs, Neoprene pogies—which are little hand pockets that Velcro around the paddle shaft—kept our hands warm despite the ice water. About a half-mile from the glacier’s front we paused and floated, admiring the huge, pale-blue tongue of ice that reached down out of the clouds and into the sea.

Suddenly, thunder rumbled. A little bubble of excitement rose up in my chest. I love thunderstorms, and I’ve missed them while in Alaska. This was even better. The ice was rumbling. We searched the blue cliff at the water’s edge for movement, but found none. The movement must have been farther up the glacier, or deep within. After a few moments, thunder rumbled again. This time we watched a chunk of ice tumble into the sea. A small white avalanche of crushed ice poured in behind it, and a wave spread out from the glacier. We gasped and cheered.

Glaciers are constantly moving; that’s what makes them glaciers. During the hundreds of years that snow built up and compressed older snow beneath it, pressed out all the air bubbles, and caused the crystals to reform into dense ice, it wasn’t a glacier. Finally, when that huge mass of ice began to flow downhill or out toward their margin under their own weight, a glacier was born.

Aialik Glacier, the one we were scanning for action, moves forward two to four feet per day. Under pressure, ice can bend and flow. Near the glacier’s surface, however, the brittle ice must crack to accommodate the hidden topography below. A glacier’s speed is due to a combination of the ice’s thickness, the gradient of its valley, and the presence of water at its base. Add in the fact that Aialik is a tidewater glacier that ends in warm, constantly fluctuating seawater, and you have a very dynamic system.

We studied the heavily crevassed surface of the glacier, and all made guesses about which section would go next. Sunny had explained that the spires of ice formed by intersecting crevasses were called seracs. Three out of the seven paddlers in our group pointed to the same, precarious-looking section. Minutes later, thunder rumbled and that heavily fractured serac splashed into the sea. After several minutes more, we bobbed on its wake.

Thunderous calving into the ocean was exciting, but I still wanted to get up close and personal with big icebergs. A few days later I filled the last spot on another kayak trip, this time with Anadyr Adventures in Valdez, Alaska. This adventure skipped the water taxi and delivered us by van right to the shore of a little proglacial lake right outside town. The Valdez Glacier had scoured a deep valley, dammed one end with a moraine, and melted back. Even though this lake wasn’t affected by tides like Aialik Glacier, water still lubricated turmoil at the toe.

Our morning at Valdez Glacier Lake began in thick fog. This canoe soon launched full of four grown men, two of whom carried huge camera lenses. Photo by Emily Stone.

We launched inflatable kayaks onto mirror-calm water in a dense fog. Huge icebergs loomed in the shallows. Someone made a joke about the Titanic, but that didn’t stop us from paddling up for a closer look. Most bergs were heaped with blankets and piles of wet, brown sediments, which indicated that they were floating upright, in the same orientation as when they’d been attached to the glacier. Where chunks had broken off to reveal their inner ice, though, the crystals were huge, sparkling, and made luminous patterns of white and blue.

Up close, the broken and melting sides of the icebergs were a luminous blue. Our inflatable, sit-on-top, tandem kayaks felt very stable and maneuvered easily for a closer look. Photo by Emily Stone.

Glacial ice is dense, with very little air. As light passes through it, the wavelengths of red and yellow light are absorbed, and blue light is scattered and reflected back to our eyes. The deeper the light penetrates into the ice, the more blue it appears. Snow and ice with more air among their crystals scatter light back from their surface.

A few bergs were pure white, at least from a distance. Those had rolled over, exposing their cleaner core of ice (which gains air as they melt, making them white instead of blue), and dumping their sediment load into the lake. Today, the ice dripped placidly, melting bit by bit. Our guide, though, has watched these behemoths split, roll over, and shatter. As I ran my hand along the smooth, wet side of one berg, I was grateful for the contrasting lack of thunder on this adventure.

Although our day began in thick fog, blue sky hovered above. Seeing the lake and icebergs in both lights was a fun part of the experience. Photo by Emily Stone.

After lunch, the fog burned off and revealed a brilliant blue sky. We scrambled up a canyon wall to get a better look at the glacier. The brown and white striped river of ice flowed from around a corner and into view. At the terminus lay a jumble of broken, dirty ice chunks, in the process of detaching fully into the lake. With bright sun illuminating everything, the lake seemed small; in the fog, we might have been on an endless sea.

One of our group explored near two icebergs that have rolled over, exposing clean ice and dumping sediment into the lake. Behind the left hand iceberg you can see the deep canyon containing the Valdez Glacier. Photo by Emily Stone. 

Valdez Glacier is a river of ice, with a healthy dose of rocks and gravel mixed in. It seems to flow relatively smoothly back in the canyon, but becomes unstable and breaks up as its terminus hits the lake it created. Photo by Emily Stone. 

Ever since I discovered how to read the glaciated landscape of Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, I’ve been fascinated by these massive forces of nature. Admiring them from afar, seeing them up close, paddling among icebergs, touching their ice…glaciers are even more amazing than I’d expected…and I’m not done exploring them!

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. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

A Gift of Geology: Artesian Wells

Elliot Witscher, guest author, was a Summer Naturalist Intern for the Cable Natural History Museum last summer. Photo by Elliot Witscher.

In May, Elliot Witscher graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a degree in Geological Sciences. As part of their experience as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Cable Natural History Museum, Elliot participated in a Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteer Training. This fall, they began work at an outdoor school in Illinois.

In the bright sunlight and heat of the afternoon, the cool, fresh, flowing water from a pipe in Prentice Park in Ashland, WI, was a welcome treat. I wasn’t expecting to find a unique geological feature in an unassuming city park. But walking down the hill from the parking lot, we found a plain metal pipe, surrounded by gravel, with water gushing from it.

Standing in a circle with the 20 other people also taking the Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteer Training, I learned from Professor Tom Fitz that this was a flowing artesian well.

Professor Tom Fitz teaches about artesian wells in Prentice Park, Ashland, WI.
Photo by Emily Stone.

This random pipe in the middle of a city park doesn’t come from the city’s water system; it taps directly into the groundwater beneath our feet. There is no pump. Nothing brings the water up to the surface except for the pressure that it’s under naturally…with a little help from the glaciers.

That day began at a gravel pit about 30 miles to the southwest, as the crow flies, near the town of Cable, WI. At the intersection of geology and industry, our Master Naturalist class learned how the gravel pit provides various sizes of sand, pebbles, and even small boulders that are used for road fill, landscaping, and foundations.

In the gravel pit. Photo by Emily Stone.

Thousands of years ago, a glacier covered this area, and this gravel was brought here by a power river of meltwater flowing under the ice, creating a sinuous ridge of material called an esker. This is just one of many glacial landforms in the area that is built from sandy, rocky materials. [Learn more about eskers from Emily Stone during a hike on November 9. Find out more at cablemuseum.org.]

Next, Tom Fitz led us north toward Ashland, and we found ourselves traveling forward in glacial history. As the ice retreated north, water pooled up to its south, and Glacial Lake Duluth formed, covering the western half of what is now Lake Superior with much deeper water. Meltwater flowing off the glacier brought clay and other sediments into the lake.

Clay particles are very small, and can stay suspended in water for a long time, especially if wind or currents keep the water stirred up. But away from shore, where the water was calmer and winter ice cover kept out the wind for long periods, the clay settled to the bottom, creating a thick layer. All around the current shores of Lake Superior, this clay layer covered the gravel that was previously deposited by the glaciers. Iron in the clay turned the soil red.

Tom Fitz teaches the group about clay. Photo by Emily Stone. 

In the uplands of Bayfield County, inland and away from the lake, the glacial gravel is exposed to the surface. When it rains, water quickly and easily enters this permeable layer and moves downhill toward Lake Superior. In the lowlands, near the lake, the layer of clay from Glacial Lake Duluth covers the gravel. The water moving through the gravel layer becomes trapped under the impermeable layer of clay. All of the water from the uplands pushes down on the water under the clay in the lowlands, and pressure builds up.

When a well, like the one in Prentice Park, is drilled through the clay layer into the gravel layer, that pressure pushes the water up toward the surface, creating a flowing artesian well—a well that flows from confined groundwater to the surface due to pressure.

These wells are amazing sources of water, but they are limited by one major reality: if too many of them are punched through, the pressure created by the clay layer will be diminished until eventually the pressure will drop too low and the wells will stop flowing. These amazing natural phenomena are limited. If we try to develop too many, they will all be at risk.

Last summer, as I explored the backroads of Bayfield County, I found myself occasionally stumbling across little handwritten signs or Google Maps locations titled “artesian well.” I smiled to myself, thinking about the geologic marvels that led to this important resource. And then I stopped, filled my bottle, and enjoyed some clear, cold water.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Four Out of Five Loons Agree

Author’s Note: I’m traveling quite a bit this month, which means I’ve been reminiscing about past trips. In 2018, I spent the entire summer in Alaska, and saw a few new species of loons. This article recounts those sightings. After leading Loon Pontoon Tours for 14 summers, this was a real treat! Enjoy! -- Emily

The haunting wail of a Common Loon drifted through my barely cracked window one night last May. Amid leaning towers of books and clothes that would soon be headed to Alaska, I gave a wistful sigh. Of all the things I was sad about leaving for a summer, the loons on Lake Namakagon and my duties as naturalist on the Cable Natural History Museum’s weekly Loon Pontoon Tours were near the top of my list.

A Common Loon on Lake Namakagon. Photo by Emily Stone. 

After seven years [now 14!] of studying loons’ adaptations and interpreting their behavior for visitors, I’ve developed a much deeper appreciation for these charismatic fish-eaters. Common Loons are just the most southern-ranging (and therefore the most visible) of five different species of loons, though. Despite their name, they aren’t even the most numerous!

To my delight, Common Loons were a regular fixture in lakes along the highways I traveled during my sabbatical. As I drove from Haines, AK, through a narrow arm of British Colombia, I gawked at my first treeless tundra of the trip. I also spotted two Common Loons, their bills tucked away against the cold, as they floated on a chilly lake.

It was mid-July before I added to my list of loon species. Ed Berg, a retired ecologist and geologist from Homer, had just taken me across Kachemak Bay to see the Grewingk Glacier. As our water taxi motored into the harbor, a gray-headed water bird floated around the corner of a barnacle-crusted rock. I snapped two quick photos, then zoomed in on my screen.

Pacific Loons are the most numerous of the five loon species. Photo by Emily Stone.

The profile was unmistakably loon. Their pale gray head, black and white stripes down the side of their neck, and smaller checkered patch on their back distinguished them from our Common Loons, and narrowed the ID down to a Pacific or Arctic Loon. The two species look almost identical, and Pacific Loons were only classified as their own species in 1985! The range maps for each species made ID easy, though. Pacific Loons are found throughout Alaska, while Arctic Loons are rare visitors.

Other than being slightly smaller than the Common Loon and nesting on lakes above tree line, the life history of Pacific Loons is very similar to our familiar ones. They nest on shore, eat a variety of small fish, need a long runway to take off from the water, and are clumsy on land. In a unique twist, the ones who winter off the coast of Japan have been observed cooperating with each other to concentrate schools of fish.

Having spotted one new species of loon, my interest in seeing the others grew. The afternoon that I arrived at the Toolik Field Station to prepare for doing caribou research, I took a short walk around the base to get a feel for the area. The tremolo of a loon flying overhead sent a thrill down my spine, and I watched the large bird land on the far side of Toolik Lake. Were they a Common Loon? They sounded similar. But the logo for Toolik features a Yellow-billed Loon, and I was sure the scientists would have chosen them deliberately.

During my return trip across the Toolik Lake Inlet and back toward the dining hall, I spotted a couple of loons fishing at the mouth of that little creek. Using my camera’s zoom again, I examined the black and white plumage—exactly like a Common Loon’s—and peered excitedly at the pale-colored bill where I usually see black. Not only were these my sought-after Yellow-billed Loons, but the pair was feeding their chick little minnows, in exactly the same way that I’ve watched Common Loons feed their young on my Loon Pontoon Tours! I later read that a pair raises chicks there almost every year.

Yellow-billed Loons are close relatives of our local Common Loons, with similar breeding and feeding behaviors. Photo by Emily Stone.

It’s no surprise that these pale-beaked loons feel so similar to my old friends. Scientists theorize that Common and Yellow-billed Loons only diverged into separate species during the last glacial period, 100,000 years ago or so. Ice separated loons living in the continental U.S. from loons living in the far north along the Arctic Ocean. Many of their breeding, feeding, and behavioral traits remain similar. The Yellow-billed Loon is the least numerous of the five loon species, as well as the largest. And, probably due to their larger size, they also have a deeper voice than our Common Loons.

Now that I’d seen the most similar loon to the ones I’d left back home, my last goal was to see the most different loon. Red-throated Loons were probably the first loon species to evolve their current form, about 21,400,000 years ago. They are also the smallest, and weigh only 2-6 pounds compared to the Yellow-billed’s 9-14 pounds. Due to their size, Red-throated Loons can use smaller ponds, take off directly from water or land without a runway, and breed even on the northernmost coast of Greenland.

Tessa and I had barely started our second day of driving the caribou transect together, when I spotted a suspicious bird on a puddle a mile or so south of Deadhorse. I zoomed all the way in and steadied my camera on the truck’s open window, snapping photos until the bird took off in a shower of water droplets. Eager to find caribou, we got going, too. It wasn’t until I loaded the photos onto my laptop that I noticed the loon’s red throat.

Red-throated Loons can be hard to find in the U.S., but are actually the most widely distributed loon and range across the far north of North America, Europe, Greenland, and Asia. They can get airborne without a long runway, which allows them to use smaller bodies of water. Photo by Emily Stone.

Look as we might on three more days of driving, I never caught sight of that Red-throated Loon again.

Maybe someday—while I’m out looking for gray-headed chickadees in Scandinavia, Russia, or northern Japan—I’ll be lucky enough to spot an Arctic Loon as well. In the meantime, I was happy to return home in time to see the Common Loons on Lake Namakagon. My journey has ended, and their fall migration has begun.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at 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. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.