Natural Connections

Turtle Dreams

2012-03-01T12:55:00.002-08:00

All winter long, I have been watching the most graceful swimmer. She uses her arms and legs in perfect concert, making subtle motions to move up and down, hang vertically, or even spin quickly through the water. The path of her webbed toes is similar to the sculling motion of a canoe paddle that experienced boaters use for side slipping, or the hand motions of a human treading water. It almost looks as if she is caressing the water. For many long minutes, I get lost in her movements, dreaming of spring ice-out.

This aquatic ballerina is Shaun, our pet turtle. She is a red-eared slider, the most common species of pet turtle in the world. Native to the south-central United States, Shaun will be active and highly entertaining all winter, especially when we have extra minnows or worms to feed her. In the wild, red-eared sliders and many other types of turtles hibernate.

Most of Wisconsin’s eleven turtle species spend the winter underwater. This is an amazing feat, since reptiles are air-breathers. Even in the summer, turtles stay underwater for long dives. Winter ice cover simply means an extra-long dive. Because they are cold-blooded, hibernating turtles cool down with the water and have a very low metabolic rate. This lowers their need for oxygen, and with their lack of movement, also reduces the production of lactic acid in their muscles.

Some gas exchange may occur directly through their thick, leathery skin, helping to provide some oxygen and release some waste gases even without breathing. To make absorbing oxygen through their skin most effective, you would think that turtles would try to hibernate in the most oxygen-rich water possible. In fact, map turtles (named for the markings on their shells) do hibernate on the river bottom where fresh water can flow over them.

In contrast, painted turtles bury themselves in the mud. Painted turtles that live in the north are better than southern turtles at surviving long hibernation dives with low oxygen. As acid accumulates in their blood, they buffer the pH by increasing basic cations like magnesium, calcium, and potassium.

Snapping turtles spend winter in a low-oxygen environment similar to painted turtles– under mud in the shallows of small ponds. While the lack of oxygen is stressful, the shallows may warm up faster in spring and reduce the length of their hibernation. As it is, turtles do not feed much when the water temperature is below 65 degrees. Up here, this means that turtles may spend the entire school year hardly feeding if at all!

Turtles have amazing strength and tenacity. For many months, their breathing, movement, and almost all heart activity stops. Then in spring, they resume life where they left off. For 200 million years or so, turtles have done this and prospered with few changes.

In many Native American creation myths, the turtle is a central figure. It is told: When the early world was still covered by water, Great Turtle dove deep to bring up mud on his strong back. All the continents grew from that first bit of soil.

Great Turtle’s long dive culminating in the birth of the world is not unlike our present turtles emerging from hibernation into the awakening spring.

Until then, I get to enjoy Shaun’s aquatic ballet while dreaming of summer when her relatives will emerge, and we, too, can swim!

For over 44 years, the Museum has served as a guide and mentor to generations of visitors and residents interested in learning to better appreciate and care for the extraordinary natural resources of the region. The Museum invites you to visit its facility in Cable at 13470 County Highway M. The new exhibit, The Joy of Birds: Feathers in Focus opened in May, 2011. Find us on the web at www.cablemuseum.org to learn more about our exhibits and programs. Also discover us on Facebook, or at our blogspot, http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/.

Mouse Snacks

2012-02-22T07:36:00.001-08:00

The light dusting of snow we received the other night was the perfect substrate for mouse tracks. The morning light revealed a mouse freeway leading from the stack of flower pots to the mess of seed under the bird feeder. Their tiny tracks look like a smaller version of red squirrel tracks. Mice and squirrels both hop by placing their smaller font feet down first, then bringing their larger hind feet around the sides. As the hind feet hit the ground in front of the front feet, they give a mighty push for the next hop. Rabbits also move in a similar way.

You can decipher an interesting bit about the ecology of a hopping track-maker by the placement of their front feet. Arboreal animals, those who spend a lot of time in trees, will place their front feet right next to each other, perpendicular to their line of travel. Squirrels do this, and a little surprisingly, deer mice are excellent tree climbers and therefore are sometimes paired-front-foot hoppers. Rabbits and hares, who are not often observed in trees, place their front feet with one ahead of the other, at an angle to the direction of travel. Can you decipher all the tracks in your yard?

The appearance of deer mice – light brown back, white belly, and big ears – is reminiscent of a white-tailed deer. Mice have much longer tails, though, which aids in their tree climbing. Deer mice have a closely-related and almost indistinguishable cousin, the white-footed mouse. To tell them apart, experts look at a difference in the amylase molecules of their saliva. You might remember amylase from biology class when you chewed on crackers until they tasted sweet. Amylase is an enzyme that breaks carbohydrates into simple sugars.

Food is especially important during the winter for these tiny active critters. Mice will cache food (including weed seeds, birdseed, berries, and my cookie crumbs) in the fall, and throughout the winter. Several times I have curiously brushed the snow off of an abandoned bird nest and discovered a tidy little mouse pantry. Earlier this winter I accidentally left a Mason jar with birdseed in it on the patio. I found it a few days later, with the contents spilled onto the snowy path. Squirrel tracks, mouse tracks and tunnels surround the windfall as they busily hoarded the treat.

Eating plenty allows the mice to run their metabolism on full speed to keep warm. In the winter they add new red blood cells with more hemoglobin to fuel their roaring metabolism. After creating all that heat, mice do their best to conserve it through the day when they are not active. Body temperatures may be allowed to drop as they snuggle in next to other mice in a cozy woodpecker hole, thatched-grass nest, bluebird box, or the warm micro-climates of our homes.

Peering out of my home early one morning, I witnessed a bit of natural drama. My local gray fox stood on the path by the corner, in person, not just in tracks! He was just ten feet away, standing over the remnants of spilled birdseed. In the shadowy pre-dawn, I watched as he nuzzled the snow and came up with a limp mouse hanging from his jaws. With a flick of his head, the mouse disappeared in one gulp. The fox trotted nonchalantly down the path leaving delicate tracks in the fresh dusting of snow.

In December, the fox tracks whispered “Listen…it is music to run over the hills” Now he adds: “Death itself is a music…It is flesh and bones changing shape and with good cause. Mercy is a little child beside such an invention.” (Straight Talk from Fox in Red Bird by Mary Oliver).

Love is in the Air

2012-02-22T07:35:00.001-08:00

Its mid-February, near Valentine's Day, and love is in the air. Literally. Many animals are anticipating or are in the midst of their breeding seasons right now, and they are advertising it through air with sound and scent. You've probably heard a few eager chickadees singing their "hey sweetie" love songs despite below-zero temps. They won't breed until April, but it doesn't hurt to get a head start impressing the ladies, right?

If you have owls near your home you may be hearing their eerie calls more often. Great horned owls and barred owls both mate this time of year, and are calling back and forth to communicate both with potential mates and potential competitors. One of the great horned owls' prey species, the wild turkey, has also been noticed strutting to impress the ladies recently.

Wolves have already been thinking amorous thoughts for a month or so. You may have heard them howling along with the owls. Within a pack, typically only the top male and the top female (the alpha pair) mate. They will announce their intentions with a "paired RLU." This is where the male initiates raised leg urination (RLU) to leave a scent mark, and the female then urinates next to his. If the female is in estrus, you may see a few drops of blood on the snow.

Bobcats are typically a solitary species, but this time of year the males and females will strike a tentative truce for mating season. Males and females will increase their scent marking behavior, which may help them learn about potential mates, and find each other when the time is right.

Two of the bobcats' favorite prey species, gray squirrels and red squirrels, are also starting to feel amorous. You may have noticed that the squirrels have been extremely active recently. Their mating rituals begin with a chase, as up to ten males compete for one female. Their arboreal acrobatics can be quite entertaining. Male squirrels can smell when a female is in estrus and ready to mate. This is a useful skill, since she is only fertile for one day.

Often in mid-winter I will notice little splotches of red in the squirrel tracks around my bird feeder. I haven't been able to find any information relating directly to this, but my guess is that it's a sign that a female is in proestrus, and, just like the wolf, is leaking a little blood. As spring keeps peeking at us from around the corner, we will continue to see even more amorous behavior in the woods.

What are your plans for Valentine's Day? Perhaps you will consider wooing your date with a sweet song or a designer perfume!

Ode to the Glaciers

2012-02-22T07:34:00.003-08:00

What do you love most about Northern Wisconsin? Rolling hills traversed by some of the best trails in the country, winding back roads, sparkling lakes, and shady green forests are some of my favorite features. Have you ever wondered why all these wonderful things come together in Northern Wisconsin? Maybe you know that this region was shaped by glaciers, but have you ever really sat down and appreciated all that the glaciers did for us?

I love glaciers. I have never seen one in person, and yet they have vastly improved my quality of life. Whether you realize it or not, you also know the joys of glaciers whenever you whiz down a rolling ski trail, hike merrily up and down hills, enjoy the stomach-dropping exhilaration of catching air on your snowmobile, or boat and fish on one of Wisconsin’s more than 10,000 lakes.

The landscape around Cable and Hayward was shaped during the Wisconsin Glaciation (named for us!) of the Quaternary Ice Age (which is still going on in Greenland and Antarctica). It began about 100,000 years ago, hit its maximum extent about 21,000 years ago, and the last glacier had retreated out of Wisconsin into Canada by 10,000 years ago.

The very recent (geologically speaking) visit of a glacier here has had a profound impact on what the landscape looks like. As glaciers advanced across the land they scraped and carved and plucked up rocks from their path, and carried them along within the ice mass. Like a conveyor belt, they brought tons (literally) of sediment south with them. Two lobes of ice flowed into our area, and their lateral margins met somewhere near Cable.

Where we really start to get interested is when the climate warmed and the ice began to melt faster here at its toe than new snow from Canada could replenish it. Huge chunks of ice were left behind from the melting edges of the glacier, and then glacial outwash rivers carrying meltwater and debris off the glacier buried those ice cubes. Well-insulated, the ice lay hidden under a flat surface of sand, gravel and cobbles for many years.

As the ice melted, basins of all shapes and sizes were left behind where the ice had been. Sometimes these basins, called kettles, filled with water and became lakes, others are perched far above the water table and stay bone-dry. The landscape of sandy, rocky soil pockmarked by kettles is called a “pitted outwash plain.” The Rock Lake ski and mountain bike trails east of Cable are a prime example of this topography, and in my opinion, a prime place for recreation because of it. The Birkie Trail takes advantage of the varied topography so much that its hills are legendary.

In places, the glacial conveyor belt stagnated for a while, leaving a line of jumbled sediment where its margin had been. This is probably what created the wacky shoreline of Lake Namakagon – with many shallow bays and great fish habitat.

Even the towering spectacle of Mount Telemark owes its existence to the glaciers – rivers flowing on top of the melting ice carried rocks into a large crevasse. When the glacier melted, a 1,700-foot-tall pile of sand called a “kame” was left behind. It is the tallest kame in Wisconsin.

Not only did the glaciers shape the physical landscape, they, by extension, continue to impact the human uses of it. Unlike regions to the south and north, we don’t have extensive farming. Not only are there too many hills, but the soil just keeps growing more rocks. First, water to percolates underneath buried rocks. When it freezes, the ice crystals lift up the bigger rocks and sand falls underneath. Over many freeze-thaw cycles, the rocks come to surface, right in your carrot patch! Happily, many trees grow just fine in this type of soil, so our local crops are forests instead of corn.

The next time you’re out for a spin on a lake, road or trail in Northern Wisconsin, take a moment to appreciate the wonderful legacy of the glaciers.

Subnivean Chronicles

2012-02-03T08:54:00.000-08:00

Adventures in the woods lately have revealed fewer species than earlier in the winter. Have you noticed a change? Tracking stories these days are mostly written by little feet, and many of the stories lay hidden below the surface. Now that we actually have a thickness of snow on the ground, a new world develops beneath our feet. This ephemeral habitat is called the Subnivean layer. Since I first learned about this hidden zone as a bright-eyed college freshman, it has taken on a mythical quality in my imagination. Subnivean sounds like it could be a region of Narnia ruled by the White Witch, or perhaps an outpost neighboring Rivendell in Middle-earth.

The Subnivean layer, like so much of life on Earth, owes its existence to the unique chemistry of water. When frozen, water becomes light an airy, a wonderful insulator. Just as down feathers in your jacket trap a layer of air next to your body, retaining the heat you radiate, a six-inch layer of snow traps air that retains heat from the Earth. We don’t have hot-rock geothermal here, no geysers or hot springs. Our ground warmth, used in many local geothermal heating and cooling systems, comes not from radioactive decay in the Earth’s core, but simply from sunlight absorbed into the upper layers of soil and stone.

Because of this insulation and radiating heat, a thin zone opens up under the snow, right at the surface of the ground. As water freezes, it releases a tiny bit of heat, and as it melts, it absorbs a tiny bit of heat. In this way, the temperature in the Subnivean zone is regulated at a pretty stable 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Compared to -20 with a 15mph wind at the surface, that feels pretty balmy!

Many tracks are now being pressed invisibly into the leaf litter that carpets the Subnivean layer. Shrews, voles and mice, small mammals depend on this habitat for food, warmth, and protection from predators. Their presence is betrayed where the tiny jumping tracks of a deer mouse connect small trees with fallen logs. The tunnel of a shrew will suddenly exit the snow at the edge of a ski trail or where snowshoes have packed down a trough. The impossibly small holes can be not much wider than ½ inch. Sometimes shrews and voles will tunnel through the surface of the snow, especially the fluffy stuff, leaving a winding trough that ends in another hole when they again descend into the fabled Subnivean layer.

Although soft and concealing snow may seem like a perfect security blanket, the fat and juicy prey are not safe from their wily and well-adapted predators. Owls can hear mice through the snowpack, triangulate the sound with their asymmetrical ears, and bust through the crust with fisted talons. Foxes and coyotes can also hear and pounce through the crust, thus securing a meal without even seeing it. Our three smallest weasel species – long-tailed, short-tailed and least, are long and skinny with short legs for a reason. They can snake their way through mouse and chipmunk tunnels to catch the critters right in their own dens. Then the weasel will feast and nap at the warm hearth of its meal before going out to eagerly search every tree, log, rock and stump for another tasty treat.

You may also have noticed the prolific squirrel tracks, connecting trees to small holes littered with leaf shards and pine cone scales. Red squirrels will tunnel to find food caches stored last fall, and often put a big hole in the ski track in the process.

Grouse also make use of the warm blanket that snow provides. When the snow is deep enough, they may “roost” by doing a swan dive, leaving no tracks that would lead a predator to their warm bed. In bad weather, a grouse may stay in its burrow for a few days. Back-country skiers and snowshoers tell stories of grouse flushing from these secret burrows just inches in front of their next step.

While many tracking stories are hidden these days, it’s fun to imagine the complex chronicles unfolding in the Subnivean world. What lies beneath the smooth white surface? More than we will ever know.

Seeing Things

2012-01-20T07:18:00.001-08:00

As I came around the corner, a dark blob at the edge of the road caught my eye. You know how we are always seeing things that aren’t there? Mailbox reflectors turn into deer’s eyes in our headlights. Tall stumps look like black bears. Clumps of leaves take on the shape of an owl. The dark blob was less than three feet tall. It had pointy ears and a sloped back. It was black against the bright mid-day sunlight and white snow. Then, in an impossible moment, it went leaping back into the tangled fir thicket.

Bobcats aren’t rare in Wisconsin, but I’ve only found one set of their tracks in all the miles of trails I’ve hiked and skied in Wisconsin. Actually seeing an animal make tracks is an excellent learning opportunity, so of course I stopped the car in an open stretch of road, put on the blinkers, and went over to check out the disturbed snow. Since the flakes were light and fluffy, none of the four toes were visible in the tracks. I could tell generally where the wild feline had walked calmly up to the edge of the road, sat down for a bit, and then hurried off with big poufy bounds.

If I hadn’t seen the actual cat, I don’t think I could have identified its tracks. I could tell, by the size of the body and size of the tracks, that this was not a lynx. Canada Lynx, with their four-inch wide, snowshoe-like feet, have never been abundant in Wisconsin, since they prefer the deep snow and thick conifer habitat of their favorite prey—snowshoe hares. Some years, when the snowshoe hare population in Canada crashes, lynx will wander down to Wisconsin to find food. There hasn’t been a sighting in Wisconsin since 1992, and only 28 verified records since 1870. Because lynx are so rare here, they are listed as a Protected Wild Animal, but not as a State Endangered Species. They are on the federal list. Bobcats can be trapped and hunted.

A few weeks ago in Minnesota’s Cascade River State Park, I watched as a bobcat walked up the trail toward me. It chose a soft place in the pine needles and laid down for a catnap, or perhaps it was waiting in ambush for a squirrel. Some minutes later it stood and stretched. Maybe it wasn’t hunting as much as digesting, since it paused then to squat and deposit a long, dark hair-filled scat. With that business taken care of, it walked daintily down the trail. A string of oval tracks just smaller than my lip balm were pressed into the light dusting of snow.

Don’t you believe me? I watched it happen, just like a movie, in my mind’s eye. The body print was just so on the pine needles, the four tracks of a squatting position had an extra sharpness due to added pressure and time. The scat was positioned exactly where you’d expect it to be. Poet Mary Oliver tells a similar tale from deer tracks in The Pine Woods, and challenges us, saying “But I don't believe only to the edge of what my eyes actually see in the kindness of the morning, do you?”

Was I seeing things? Absolutely, and that is the very essence of tracking.

Constructive Interference

2012-01-20T07:17:00.001-08:00

“Oh wow! Look at the size of that turkey! I never realized how beautiful their feathers are – check out the iridescence.”

The mount of a wild turkey in flight is one of the most-exclaimed about objects in the Museum’s Collections Room. The 5,000 feathers on a turkey are worth noticing, with their rich browns, shimmery copper, iridescent blues and greens, and elaborate black designs. Some of the colors are a result of pigments, those molecules that absorb certain wavelengths (colors) of light and reflect others. Melanin is a common pigment in nature, and does more than make things appear brown. It can also protect against bacteria and fungus, UV radiation, and high temperatures. A certain type of fungus appears to be able to use melanin to capture the energy of gamma rays for photosynthesis!

Melanin can’t make a turkey, or a seashell, or a butterfly, or a soap bubble shimmer, though. The vivid, shifting, enchanting colors of these objects are caused by the structures themselves, not a type of pigment. Remember that light travels in waves, and the color of light is determined by its wavelength. Red light has longer wavelengths, while purple light has shorter wavelengths. The rest of the colors fall between in rainbow order.

When light passes through a thinly layered substance, the light bounces off the back surface toward your eye, and joins light bouncing off the upper surface toward your eye. Where the waves of light overlap, they interfere with each other. The interference can be either destructive, where the waves cancel each other out (so you see black on an iridescent object), or constructive, where the waves amplify each other.

I experienced constructive interference on a macro scale last fall on a sea kayaking trip in Maine. As we paddled along the seaward side of an island, waves bouncing off the rocky shore grew bigger and bigger as they overlapped with constructive interference. The color of my face changed from pink, to green, to white, as waves striking me from various angles tossed my kayak gawkily. Iridescent colors also change when you alter your angle relative to the object, because the wavelength of light that reaches your eye changes.

Turkeys in Wisconsin have experienced destructive and constructive interference before, and not just in their feathers. These large game birds are native to southern Wisconsin, but were hunted almost to extinction by 1881. Major reductions in their habitat due to logging and farming, plus diseases introduced in domestic fowl were also culprits of their decline.

In 1976, the Wisconsin DNR made a trade with Missouri to bring wild turkeys back to Wisconsin. We gave them ruffed grouse in return. From the initial release site in Vernon County, turkeys recovered enough to move naturally and with help to other suitable habitats across the state. Many other states have similar stories. The turkey population in United States was once down to about 30,000 birds. Now it is over 7 million!

It’s no surprise, then, that many Museum visitors have reported turkey sightings this winter. Their favorite times to forage are morning and evening, which corresponds nicely to most of our commutes. There are two flocks just in my 10-mile commute on County Hwy M. After the holidays, I returned home to a whole flock of turkey tracks in my driveway and around our bird feeders.

Although northern Wisconsin isn’t their traditional habitat, we do have plenty of oaks for acorns and large white pines near water for roosting. While you might feel sorry for turkeys during harsh winters, the DNR does not advise feeding them. To provide a turkey with enough to food to impact its survival would take a lot of food! Any winter mortality is easily made up for by high breeding success. Feeding can actually harm turkeys, because concentrated groups spread disease more easily, and become easy targets for predators. If you want to help these beautiful birds, think about managing your forest for mast trees like oaks, and big pines and hemlocks for roosting.

The wild turkey was once lauded by Benjamin Franklin as a more respectable national symbol than the bald eagle, who eats road kill. Franklin wrote: “He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.”

Bark

2012-01-09T10:17:00.000-08:00

Finally, we're past "stick season" and snow makes it feel like true winter.The long slant of afternoon sunlight illuminatesintricate patterns of tree bark.Instead of a haze of green, trunks stand out as individuals.Some say that a tree's bark is as unique as your fingerprint.While I have yet to find a study that proves it, I have noticed that bark, even within the same species of tree, is incredibly variable.The age of a tree, its health, its growth rate, and its habitat all have an effect on the pattern of its bark.

While skiing or hiking through the forests around here,I tend to entertain myself by identifying plants while zooming down hills.Bark patterns among different species are fairly distinct once you know what to look for.In general, the fissure pattern in bark is a result of the genetics of the tree species, and the way trees grow.

Here's a riddle:If a pirate buries treasure underneath a tree and marks the tree with an X five feet above the ground, and the tree grows one inch taller per year, how high will the X be in 100 years?

The answer, of course, is about five feet, depending on local soil erosion.Trees only grow taller from the tips of twigs.Trees do get bigger around, but only by adding new layers of cells just under the outer bark.And there lies the key to bark patterns.

The center of a tree is dead; in fact, most of a tree is dead!In the trunk there are several layers of different cells.Xylem and phloem are two types of transport tissue. Xylem, which is dead at maturity, carries water and minerals up from the soil. Old xylem becomes what we think of as wood, and makes up the bulk of a tree's mass. The living phloem carries sugars down from the leaves. They have a layer between them called the vascular cambium, which creates the new xylem and phloem cells. Cambium is made of undifferentiated cells that can become anything - like stem cells. These three layers are considered the "inner bark."

Outside the phloem is the cork cambium.Just like the vascular cambium, the cork cambium produces a layer of cells inside it (living phelloderm cells), and outside it (dead, air-filled cork cells).These three layers make up what we call "outer bark."

As the cambium layers create new cells, the tree expands just under the cork layer.Since the cork is dead, it can't stretch or grow to accommodate the larger girth.The bark cracks instead, and eventually sloughs off like dead skin.I think that paper birch has such smooth bark because it peels off instead of cracking.

Why do trees need bark anyway? Outer bark is the armor of a tree, and it protects the inner bark.There is something very tasty hiding in the inner bark.Think ahead to maple sugaring season and you'll know what I mean.Insects, fugus, bacteria, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, deer, moose, snowshoe hares, porcupines, humans and many other things want the sugar created by photosynthesis and transported in the phloem.

Outer bark, like our skin, can help keep these invaders out, or scar over an injury when they break in.Also like skin, bark slows water loss, allows certain gasses to be exchanged, and protects from intense sunlight. The pigments in colorful bark, like on red osier dogwood, act as sunscreens; while greenish bark, like on aspens, can photosynthesize. Bark can also protect trees from extreme cold andheat, including fire.

One of the "active ingredients" in bark is a chemical called tannin.You may have encountered tannins in the way your mouth feels dry and puckery after drinking wine or eating unripe fruit.Tea also contains this bitter brown chemical, and the tea-colored water in bogs is the result of plants steeping in water and releasing the soluble tannins.

Tannins provide a unique defense mechanism against herbivores.Condensed tannins bind with proteins and inhibit digestion.That's one reason that animals tend to eat the newest twigs and softest bark - they have fewer tannins.The ability to bind with proteins made tannin useful to humans, too.We used it for many years (and some primitive skills buffs still use it) in the tanning of hides to produce leather.The tanning process makes leather more flexible and resistant to bacteria. Hemlock bark was once a source of tannin for the leather industry.

Bark from various species also supplies us with spices (cinnamon), medicines (quinine), resin, latex (rubber), poisons, landscaping mulch, and cork (for that wine!). We can also fashion it into cloth, rope, canoes, roofing,dyes, and baskets.

So when the sun's rays sweep through the afternoon forest, take a moment to enjoy the wonderful colors, textures, and patterns of the beautiful, protective, and very useful bark.

Success

2012-01-09T10:15:00.000-08:00

Tracks crisscrossed almost every foot of the path as we hiked 4.8 miles to a campsite on the Superior Hiking Trail. The large prints of snowshoe hares were most common in balsam fir thickets, and tiny mouse tracks perforated the snow in grassy areas and near fallen logs. Dainty paired weasel tracks bounded impressively through the brush exploring those same fallen logs, and the linked chains of grouse steps wandered through shrubs. I love the snow for its ability to hold information and show us just how alive the woods are, even in the depths of winter.

As the trail descended to the Cascade River, we started following the paired tracks of some member of the weasel family. At just under two inches long they were too small for a fisher, too large for a mink, and the tracks bounded up and around trees, over roots, and along logs. These were the tracks of a pine marten. I live just north of a pine marten recovery area in the Chequamegon National Forest, but I haven't seen any sign of them yet. Last year researchers in Wisconsin only found evidence for 9-10 martens, and it is a state-listed endangered species. In Minnesota, however, their population has recovered from almost zero in the 1920's to over 10,000 animals today. Biologists used to think that these tree-climbing, bird-eating weasels only lived in conifer forests. Now we've learned that they can live in deciduous forests, too, so I'm hoping that Minnesota's abundant martens will find it easier to expand their range to the southeast!

Martens are not the only animals to benefit under state and federal endangered species protection. Bald eagles were delisted in 2007, and are once again a common sight. Gray wolves were extirpated from Wisconsin after extensive bounty hunting in the early 20th Century, but Minnesota always had a small population. With the help of protection under the Endangered Species Act, wolves in the Western Great Lakes Region are fully recovered. The Wisconsin DNR estimates that around 800 wolves now live in the Wisconsin.

On December 28th, 2011, the USFWS published a document that delists wolves in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. The rule will take effect on January 27th, 2012, after a 30-day waiting period when the public can comment. If all goes as planned, wolves will join twenty-three other species that have been delisted due to recovery. This is not the first time that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has attempted to delist the wolves, but perhaps now they've tweaked enough of the details to make it stick.

Wolves haven't recovered their entire historical range, and may never do so. I can sense a difference in a forest where they are and a region where they are not. Even in the primeval redwoods of California, or the rugged mountains of New England, I feel a sense of loss because I cannot even hope to see wolf tracks.

On this recent backpacking trip I was not necessarily eager to see the tracks of a large carnivore, but there they were. Lined up down the center of the trail, going our direction, were four-inch, four-toed, four-clawed wolf tracks. My skin tingled and the little hairs on the back of my neck stood up. More tracks joined the first, and for most of our hike we walked beside them as the pack traveled, explored, split and rejoined.

Wolves elicit many different feelings in folks, from respect and awe to fear and loathing. I'm in the first camp. I never tire of measuring their large paws against my own hand, or trying to interpret their hunting strategy from their tracks. Still, I was happy to notice that the tracks did not follow the trail all the way to our campsite.

Long after dark, warm in our sleeping bags, we listened intently to the night noises as the wind picked up. Far off, on the other side of the river, a lone wolf howl rose up on the wind. I shivered nervously, happily, in my shelter of thin nylon. Aldo Leopold, a great conservationist with strong ties to Wisconsin, was perceptive when he observed that "only a mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf."

Other Tracks

2012-01-09T10:11:00.000-08:00

This morning I followed my fox down the hill to the lake. By "followed," I mean I walked next to his footprints, and by "my fox," I only mean the local one who lays dainty beaded necklaces of tracks all over my yard and across my doorstep. Since we haven't had much fresh snow, tracks of many ages were visible. The newest ones seemed to be the tidy foot pads pressed into the smooth snow of my Mukluk prints. Older ones, messy and deep, were made when the snow was fresh and soft. Some tracks show where he floated across the crusty snow, and those were dusted lightly with graupel snow like powdered sugar on gingerbread.

Last week, behind the garage, I found a mess of his tracks around a small lump of leaves covered in snow. Two bright yellow dabs of urine indicated that this was a scent mound, used for marking his territory. Male members of the dog family, Canidae, will use raised leg urination (RLU) to let others in the area know that this territory is taken and defended.

You may think I'm crazy, but I got down on my hands and knees and sniffed the urine. Red fox and gray fox urine each have their own unique scents. Both are slightly skunky, but the red fox smells much sharper and stronger, while the gray fox's scent is mellower. The smell test confirmed that I've been tracking a gray fox. This scent marking is also why I've been referring to my neighbor as "he." By the end of last winter I had noticed enough side-by-side fox trails to be confident that my yard housed a pair of foxes. I don't have enough evidence yet to be sure that the female is still around, but this is the beginning of mating season, so I may know soon.

Back at the lake this morning I found a gray fox highway. Perforating the snow were at least eight different sets of tracks going in many directions along the edge of the ice and up onto shore. Some could be the vixen's tracks, although I don't have a good way to tell since male and female gray foxes are essentially the same size. One of the trails was very different, definitely not a fox.

The odd trail looked like Morse Code, with clumps of dots connected by five-foot long dashes. The dots were tracks, each a little less than three inches long. Five toes dug in asymmetrically above each rounded foot pad. In the troughs, three grooves paralleled the direction of travel. This pattern embodies the playful spirit of an otter running a few steps to push off, and then sliding belly-first across the ice. The grooves were from forelegs, held tight to its sides, and its tail, which acts as rudder both on land and in water. One of the many sets of fox tracks was placed neatly down the center of each otter slide, facing in the opposite direction.

"He has no words, still what he tells about his life is clear..."

This "run, run, slide" is one of my favorite tracking stories, and the one I was hoping to find last week on the opposite shore of Lake Namakagon. I have yet to see the otter making his (or her) tracks, but I have laughed with friends trying to imitate these playful creatures. Mary Oliver also interprets Otter's life through his body language, and in her poem, "Almost a Conversation," she infers:

"He does not own a computer...

He wonders, morning after morning, that the river

is so cold and fresh and alive, and still

I don't jump in."

Tracking Stories

2011-12-16T09:16:00.000-08:00

With fresh snow on the ground I am eager to get out and read the stories of the forest. The deer are following their same patterns, the squirrels are frantic as usual, and a curious vole has been exploring my waterfront, leaving a trail of miniature walking footprints. The foxes are hunting, and in the dainty trails woven through hemlocks, along fallen logs, to and from the compost pile, and zigzagging down the driveway, I hear poet Mary Oliver give my wild neighbors a voice…“Listen, says fox, it is music to run over the hills” (Straight Talk from Fox in Red Bird)

Music…reading…both are wonderful metaphors for animal tracking. These recent snows are an excellent tracking medium, and noticing tracks can make the woods come alive. On a recent cloudy afternoon (we’ve had so many of them!) I took a friend exploring in the woods on Lake Namakagon. We tromped directly to the shoreline, drawn by water’s universal pull. Others had gone this direction not long before.

A foot-wide swath of heart-shaped hooves confirmed that many deer escaped hunting season with their tenderloins intact. Neatly pressed into the wet snow down the center of the deer trail was a narrow line of square-ish, four-toed prints. Tiny claws had made dimples in the snow. Each track equaled the length of my pointer finger to just above my second knuckle. Rarely remembering a ruler, I often measure tracks with body parts, or my lip balm. Had these tracks been a little longer, reaching to just below my second knuckle, I would have guessed their maker to be a red fox. I often see one at dusk along County Highway D not far from here. Instead, these smaller tracks, with their almost cat-like appeal, probably belong to a gray fox.

Tracking is always a “probably” kind of game. Any animal can do any gait, and foot size overlaps among many species. While habitat, behavior, scat, kill sites, and many other clues can help with identification, there is always an element of uncertainty. The sense of a mystery that might not be solved is what keeps me hooked.

The next tracks we found reinforced the uncertainty factor. Large (as long as my entire pointer finger) and with five toes arranged asymmetrically, these tracks bounded along the bank in the 2x pattern. This is a common track pattern in the Mustelidae or weasel family, and we can find ½ inch tracks from the least weasel all the way up to 4 inch tracks from the river otter and fisher arranged two-by-two down trails in this area. Each set of tracks is the result of the back feet landing exactly in the prints left by the front feet. Squirrels can also leave tracks in this 2x pattern, especially in deep snow, but their tracks are perpendicular to the direction of travel, while weasel prints are at an angle to the direction of travel.

Being so close to the lake, I expected the animal to suddenly break into a slide at any moment. River otters will often slide over leaves, mud, ice, or snow, leaving long, foot-wide troughs between short groups of tracks. I walked faster as we followed the trail over logs, down near alders on the shore, and under balsam fir branches. Not once did they break from the 2x pattern. So, in my notebook, I would record these large weasel tracks as “likely fisher.” These large, dark brown weasels, with a reputation for being inquisitive and ferocious, are an important predator of porcupines in the region. I see fisher tracks regularly and even spotted one from my bedroom window last winter. Hunters often share stories of seeing fishers while sitting quietly.

As the tracks of the fisher faded in the thin snow under thick hemlocks, we turned our tracking eyes to other things. Frozen jelly fungus, vibrant orange with a little snow cap, practically glowed on a fallen log. Tiny birch seeds dotted the snow’s crust, using the smooth surface to disperse farther from their parent tree. The strobili (reproductive structure) of one little green club moss released a bright cloud of yellow spores onto the white drift.

The stories of nature are not confined to animal trails; every object adds a few notes to the symphony or leads to a new chapter of discovery. Red-cheeked and warm from the walk, practically dancing with joy at the chance to read new stories, I have to say I agree with the fox: it is music to travel over the hills.

Snowy Owl Irruption!

2011-12-16T09:15:00.000-08:00

By Katie Connolly, Naturalist at the Cable Natural History Museum

Hello! This is Katie, Naturalist at the Cable Natural History Museum. This week I’m going to take a turn writing Natural Connections, because there is something just way too cool happening right now in the Northwoods! I always get excited about raptors and bird of prey, so you can imagine how much my curiosity was piqued by news of a Snowy Owl irruption this winter.

Snowy Owls spend their summers on the Arctic tundra, raising their young and hunting small rodents like lemmings. Lemmings on the Arctic tundra go through “boom and bust” cycles. Some years there are more than enough lemmings to feed Arctic predators and in other years there are hardly any. The availability of prey dictates how far south Snowy Owls will travel in the winter to find food. The fewer lemmings there are up north, the farther south these owls will go. From the high number of Snowy Owl sightings being reported across the state of Wisconsin, scientists have deduced that this is an irruption year. Irruption years caused by lemming shortages occur in a somewhat regular cycle of four or five years. The last irruption Wisconsin experienced was in 2006.

Birders should be on the look-out for this large owl. They are most often seen in areas that resemble their native tundra home, such as large open fields or wetlands. As their name suggests, they are white with black, grey, or dark brown spots and bars. They are also diurnal (most active during the day) so your chances of seeing one are better during daylight hours.

A word of caution: If you do see a Snowy Owl, do your best not to disturb them. The reason they are here is because they are hungry and looking for food. Give them space and admire them from a distance, so they can hunt and catch prey without disruption.

Owls in general capture my attention with their solemn, peaceful stance and their commanding gaze. Their large, liquid eyes seem to delve straight into my soul. Snowies are no exception, with their amber gaze peering through the thick piles of alabaster feathers. No human jacket or parka compares to how efficiently an owl can conserve its body heat, with fluffed up down feathers trapping precious degrees of warmth. Even their feet are insulated with thousands of tiny feathers, covering their bare skin down to the very tips of its talons. The guard hairs around its beak give me a chuckle because they remind me of a thick, bushy, white mustache.

Ornithologists are predicting that these Snowy Owls will be in our area until as late as March. I’ll be keeping my “owl eyes” sharp, in hopes of spotting one of these predators during their winter vacation to Wisconsin!

Nature's Decorations

2011-12-07T09:43:00.000-08:00

By Lois Nestel, Original Naturalist at the Cable Natural History Museum

From Wayside Wanderings II

How they brighten the winter days, these small fragments of life. What human decorations can rival those of nature; dark trees trimmed with seeds and cones and snow and graced by living birds of red and gold.

The day had been lowering and dark with, now and then, a drift of mist or swirl of snow in the air. A leaden sky above, pearly snow below and a general gray haze blurring the outlines between, made the day as neutral and uninspiring as swamp water. But as most dark days have their bright spots, so did this one, in the form of birds.

The box elders were decked with ornamental evening grosbeaks, antique gold and black males and the softer, muted tones of the females and immature birds. The heavy greenish beaks methodically stripped the meaty seeds, letting ravaged wings drift to the sterile snow. An occasional loud voiced group would whirr off to a neighborhood feeder to freeload on expensive sunflower seed and, as freeloaders do, squack loudly for more.

Quieter and more subtly attired, rosy plumaged pine grosbeaks brightened the shadowy spruce and pines as the gleaned seeds from the remaining cones. Their sweet whispering voices kept a constant murmured conversation through the forest as the flocks moved steadily along, foot by foot, tree by tree. Where, in autumn, honeysuckle bushes had hung heavy with red fruit, the branches now drooped with the weight of plump, rosy birds feeding on the blackened, shriveled berries.

In apple trees where wizened, frozen fruit still clung, white-winged crossbills gathered in the rusty clusters, swirled to the ground on white-barred, dusky wings and rose to the trees again to dine on the winery remnants; then into the spruces where their strangely twisted, scissor-like beaks easily pry seeds from cones. These pinkish crossbills are less frequently seen than the red crossbills that are often seen in the pines and on roads where they appear to be picking at the gravel and salt of which they are especially fond. Red crossbills may be distinguished by the absence of white wing bars and by the dull orange to brick coloring.

Crossbills and Irruptions

2011-11-23T08:59:00.001-08:00

Winter often brings interesting things down from the North. Snow, for one, floats in on cold arctic air that sweeps down from Canada. Earlier in the fall we saw many migrating birds on their way south for the winter. They often stop in our wetlands and forests to eat and rest. We may also notice retired “snowbirds” migrating on the same routes, zooming along in motor homes and refueling at the nearest Holiday station. Many birds, and snowbirds, migrate along the same routes every year, and their timing is so precise that phenologists can predict the arrival of the first and the departure of the last of each species to within a few days.

Other species are not so orderly, and seem to migrate helter-skelter in regards to date and location. Snowy owls, redpolls, and crossbills are a few examples of these “irruptive species.” To irrupt means to enter an area suddenly, in contrast to the lava erupting out of the volcano suddenly. We don’t see these irruptive species every winter, at least not in any quantity. Most migrations are driven by food availability, and these are no different. Have you ever noticed that our fair-weather bird friends are the ones who eat a lot of insects, especially flying insects? Think of all those warblers, flycatchers, and robins! They skedaddle about the time I put away my insect repellant.

Our year-round residents tend to eat seeds or meat, which are easier to find in the winter than mosquitoes. Goldfinches and house finches are seed-eaters that we can enjoy all winter long. Chickadees must eat the energy-equivalent of about 250 sunflower seeds per day in winter! They don’t just eat seeds, though. You may have seen them at your suet feeder or pecking at the fat on road killed deer.

Crossbills are finches that can survive almost anywhere and nest in any season, as long as they have plenty of spruce or tamarack seeds. They are a classic irruptive species, which is why Katie Connolly, the Museum Naturalist (and my house mate), was so excited to see a white-winged crossbill in our yard this last weekend! A quick check on the Wisconsin Birding List (http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/WISC.html), where lots of birders post their sightings, revealed that a hundred or more of these red birds with black and white wings were seen on the Bayfield Peninsula around the same time.

Crossbills are fascinating creatures that I love to show visitors in the Museum’s Collections Room. In the cabinet of drawers that says “Please Open,” where we keep our study skins (dried bird skins stuffed with cotton), there lie two red birds with funny bills. Just as their name suggests, their bills are crossed. The lower mandible curves under the upper mandible. They can be either “right-beaked” or “left-beaked,” but just as in humans, right-beaked birds are more common.

To eat, the crossbill slips its beak under the tightly shingled scales of spruce cones and then twists its head, using the curved tip to provide leverage. The scale is lifted just enough for the crossbill to grab the seed. Crossbills often twist a cone off the tree and take it to a perch. They extract seeds while holding the cone in one foot and rotating it like an ear of corn. A single crossbill can eat up to 3,000 seeds a day!

During this time of year it is common for flocks of humans to irrupt as well, often congregating in large and gregarious flocks where there is plenty of food. As winter closes in, we are reminded about what it means to share the bounty of this beautiful Earth, and to give thanks for all we have. Happy Thanksgiving!

Flashes of Red

2011-11-17T07:41:00.001-08:00

Now that the trees are stark and bare, the leaves nowhere except, as poet Mary Oliver writes, “underfoot, moldering in that black subterranean castle of unobservable mysteries…” things hidden from us all summer become visible again. The angles of twigs are drawn precisely against the gray sky, with hornet nests, vireo nests and gouty oak galls as their only adornment. Withered ferns settle down to reveal the subtle shapes of the forest floor. Steel gray glimmers of open water weave their way through the trunks and remind me of places I have yet to explore.

The beauty of “stick season” as I learned to call it in Vermont, is subtle to say the least. After leaf-off and before snow the landscape seems more melancholy. It’s easy to develop tunnel vision and stop noticing the woods. If we let them, these days of gray skies and brown ground can make us appreciate the bursts of color even more. Have you seen the winterberry holly in the swamps!? Bright red berries adorn every inch of every twig on female Ilex verticillata shrubs. The male flowers occur on separate plants, and can’t produce fruit themselves. Botanists and Greeks call this characteristic “dioecious,” meaning “two houses.” Being low in fat, the berries last until late winter for two reasons: they don’t go rancid quickly, and they aren’t eaten until other more energy-dense fruits are scarce. Forty-nine species of birds eat the berries, from bluebirds and catbirds to our old friends the cedar waxwings.

I’ve seen other flashes of red lately, too -- on my chilly cheeks, in holiday decorations, and on the crests of pileated woodpeckers. It’s always thrilling to hear their wild laughing call, and see the brilliant flash of their white wing linings as they swoop through forest clearings. My ornithology professor called them “monkeys of the Northwoods” because of their raucous call. Twice last week, (when I was still braving twenty-degree dawns to bike to work,) I saw a pair darting across Highway M, and another pair on Garmisch Road.

Pileated woodpeckers mate for life, and hold their territory year-round. The female that startled me out of reading yesterday morning by swooping in for lunch at the base of an oak tree is the same one I eagerly photographed from a second-story window last spring. You’ve probably noticed their large, rectangular holes in both softwood and hardwood trees. They’ll drill anywhere they can find carpenter ants, which they extract with their sticky foot-long tongue. Sometimes the hole is so large and the tree is so small that the trunk snaps right off!

It’s no surprise that scientists and wildlife managers consider them “ecosystem engineers.” Especially beneficial is their aversion to using the same nest cavity twice. Every spring the pair will hollow out a new tree, often with two entrance holes, and the abandoned cavities are quickly re-purposed by ducks, squirrels, owls, bats, other woodpeckers, and wasps. Pileated woodpeckers are the main source of large tree cavities in the forest! It’s as if one family in the housing development built a new house every year and gave their old one away.

During the period of heavy logging near the turn of the last century, the populations of these crow-sized woodpeckers declined As forests have recovered, so have the birds. Though their numbers are slowly increasing, they still face hazards. In younger forests, pileateds tend to use the oldest, largest trees for their roosts. These taller trees are lightening rods, and can be dangerous to the young families.

Once snow falls it will be easy to track the woodpeckers’ eating habits. Fresh woodchips around the base of a tree, or in the ski tracks, are a good reminder to look up. Not only might you see a striking bird or their fresh excavations, you will jolt yourself out of tunnel vision and be ready to notice the next burst of beauty.

Treasures of the Secret Bog

2011-11-10T11:05:00.000-08:00

As a young girl I loved the story of the Secret Garden. I wished for a secret place all my own, where I could watch things grow and change. At that time, roses and other cultivated flowers seemed romantic. These days I still love to find out-of-the-way places where I can watch the seasons come and go, but I much prefer native wild plants to roses. Instead of a Secret Garden, I visit a secret bog! Tucked away down a 100+ year old logging road, to get to this bog you must push through thickets of balsam fir and climb through tangles of birch and aspen deadfalls. You must brave ticks, wipe spider webs off your face, and get your feet wet. The treasures I find are worth every stick in my eye.

Last weekend was my first visit to the bog in a couple months. Gone were the spring peepers and wood frogs, gone were the slender green leaves of fen sedge, gone were the mosquitoes and black flies! Present were the tamaracks with their golden glow, the fluffy Truffula Tree-like seeds of cotton grass, and the gracefully-twisted dried seed pods of blue flag iris.

Bogs are unique natural communities. In Wisconsin, they have been forming for 10,000 years in sandy bowls left by the glaciers. The bowls were formed when huge chunks of ice broke off of the main glacier ice and were buried in sand and gravel by the many streams draining the melting ice mass. The sediment insulated the ice for a while, but it still melted slowly, eventually leaving a low area where the ice had been. Geologists call these glacial kettles. The high mounds of sand and gravel around them are known as kames. It’s this process that helped create the rolling topography we love on the ski and mountain bike trails all around the Cable area!

Their unique formation has a big impact on the hydrology of bogs, or the way that water flows in an out. Basically, it doesn’t. True bogs don’t have inlets or outlets, and are perched high above groundwater influence, too. All their water comes from rain and snow. Rain and snow are both slightly acidic, and as dead leaves soak in the water, more acids are released. The process is very similar to your morning cup of tea. (In fact, several bog plants make delicious tea!) Without flowing water, there is little oxygen. Organic matter decays slowly or not at all, forming black soil called peat. Sphagnum moss, leatherleaf and many other plants build up a thick mat of vegetation until the bog is almost dry. Sometimes the mat quivers like a waterbed and hides open water underneath.

Some nutrients and oxygen do reach the margins of the bog through rainwater runoff. This causes a narrow band with higher decomposition rates, allowing open water in a ring around the bog. Last May the moat was deep and squishy, and a class of seventh graders almost didn’t make it across (due to squeamishness, not danger). Now the moat is mostly solid and grassy.

As I step out into the golden-brown heath, my mission is to find treasure. Not silver or diamonds, they don’t taste very good. Today, I’m seeking cranberries! Displayed attractively on emerald mosses, the ruby-red fruits do look like jewels. And a hunt it is for this treasure! I scour each hummock for fruit, sometimes finding none, sometimes one, sometimes a dozen. With bent back I nose on to the next mound of moss and twigs. The high places around small tamarack trees seem to be productive. I find one patch of berries tangled in the dried thatch of grass. Some of the little globes have fermented, and burst between my fingers. Others, buried so deep in moss they haven’t been frosted, are still only pale cream with red speckles.

The picking goes slowly. This is partly because the cranberries are few and hidden. It is mostly because I get distracted easily by the other treasures I find! In one flat mossy patch there are about a dozen dried flower spikes, each about eight inches high. Dry weed ID is a fun challenge, so I poke around their bases looking for clues. I find a tiny cluster of mini leaves. Curled tightly like fern fiddleheads they can only be the hibernaculum of a sundew. Sundew are carnivorous plants, well-adapted to the nutrient-poor habitat in bogs. In summer, tiny drops of “dew” glisten on the tips of hairs that cover small spoon-shaped leaves. The sticky mucilage “dew” traps insects and then digests them. Essential nutrients (especially nitrogen) are absorbed through the leaves. Just like trees have prepared for next year by forming leaf buds that will weather the winter, these sundew are ready and waiting for next spring.

Pitcher plants, the other carnivorous plant in our bog, have also shut down for winter. I split open one bright-red leaf (they change colors for fall, too!) and find a bug-cicle inside! The insects caught in the sweet-smelling digestive juices of the pitcher-shaped leaf will have to wait until next spring to be digested. Ice fills every leaf in the cluster of plants.

After about two hours of searching, I have one quart of cranberries, and two cold feet. Back at home, I warm up quickly as a cake bakes and the cranberries simmer with honey and cinnamon. That was the stated goal of my expedition: chocolate cake with cranberry sauce. I could have just gone to the grocery store, but I found so much more than fruit in my secret bog.

Visit our Facebook page to see photos of bug-cicles, hibernacula, and so much more! Watch our Calendar of Events for naturalist-led explorations of this bog and other secret gardens!

Wild Tea

2011-11-10T10:54:00.000-08:00

This is not the season for most wild edibles -- the salad greens of spring are long gone, even the berries are either consumed or dried up. There are still many wild teas you can gather from the winter woods. Here is a list of my favorites that are still available this time of year:

white cedar leaves
balsam fir needles
Labrador tea leaves
wintergreen leaves and berries
Sweet gale leaves and twigs
Sweet fern leaves and twigs
Rosehips
yellow birch twigs

My favorite way to prepare them is to stick whole sprig in a cup, pour boiling water over it, and wait until it's cool enough to drink. Then I fish out the leaves and enjoy the tea! Cedar and rosehips both have lots of vitamin C, so they are excellent choices to help ward off the winter sniffles.

Rainbows

2011-11-04T05:00:00.000-07:00

The vibrant colors of the rainbow were perfectly outlined against the slate gray sky. Trees across the lake looked orange and purple through the vertical leg of the rainbow that ended precisely at our boat landing. It’s so rare to actually get to see the end of a rainbow, and even more rare for it to end precisely in your own yard! Watching the liquid silver surface of the lake as it reflected leaden clouds and skeleton trees, I decided that it had been too long since I’d paddled.

As I dug out long underwear and put on thick wool socks, I noticed a change in the sound. Looking out I could see thick raindrops falling heavy and straight. After a second they became bigger and white, and bounced when they hit the ground! I paused a moment in my dressing to check the weather radar – the storm was no bigger than Lake Namakagon itself, a tiny green blip on the screen. By the time I had my dry top, spray skirt and life jacket on, the small white chunks of graupel were melting in the grass.

Graupel is one of my favorite early winter phenomena. It must have been cold enough to form snowflakes in the upper atmosphere, and as the flakes fell they encountered supercooled water droplets. Special atmospheric conditions (don’t ask me which ones!) allow the drops to remain liquid even below the normal freezing point of 32 degrees. When the droplets contact the snowflakes, they stick on. This process is known as accretion. Although graupel looks like small hail, it is much softer and more irregularly shaped. The first snows of the year are often graupel, and it looks like millions of tiny snowballs are falling from the sky!

The maple leaves on the path were just wet, and the precipitation dwindled to a light mist as I hauled my kayak down to the shore. I bought it precisely for times like this – when I want to go out on the water NOW, without having to convince someone to help paddle my favorite canoe. Even the cold and wet aren’t a problem with a waterproof top and an insulating life jacket. The spray skirt holds in my heat and keeps out the rain. Do you have a similar scheme for independence?

I paddled slowly out into the lake, admiring the wispy pink and purple clouds of sunset. Delicate birch twigs and feathery white pine branches reached up to tickle the underbelly of sky. The water surface was still thick with green algae. This late-season algae bloom may be caused by the lake’s “fall turnover.” During the summer, sun-warmed surface waters don’t mix much with the cold, dense bottom water. As the season cools and winds increase, the two layers start to mix again – the “turning over.” Nutrient-rich bottom waters are brought to the surface, stimulating algae to grow in the sunlight. A melon-colored birch leaf floats among the bright green film. Life and death are never-ending cycles.

Across the channel on Burgundy Point I glide into a little boggy bay. The dried leaves of Sparganium (a group of plants commonly called bur-reeds because of their spiky seed heads) stand guard at the entrance, and the ragged leaves of dying water lilies cling to the surface. The bow of my kayak slips in among the wiry stems of alder, leatherleaf, and sweet gale with its tiny cone-like buds all ready for next spring. Just beyond stands a clump of Carex lacustris, or lake sedge. Its long spikes of seeds bend gracefully among half-green leaves. Further in I can see the small spires of black spruce and golden tamaracks.

With the nose of my kayak stuck in the weeds, my own nose is enjoying immensely the fresh, sweet, damp, cool smells of fall. “It begins/to rain, /it begins/to smell like the bodies/of flowers” (From Rain by Mary Oliver).

Despite the cold, and the wet, and the melancholy of death and dormancy, autumn is a lovely time of year. Although I barely paddled half a mile, I found plenty of treasure at the end of my rainbow. We’ve had lots of rainbows lately, what treasures have you found?

Cedar Waxwings...Continued

2011-10-28T06:48:00.000-07:00

Last week I wrote about a dead cedar waxwing that was killed in a collision with our window. As I wrote, the rest of the flock chattered and whistled their high-pitched calls in the chokecherry trees (Prunus virginiana) above me. This week the trees are silent and bare. Did our windows kill them all? No, thank goodness, it’s natural for cedar waxwings to be an exciting presence one day, and gone the next. These large, gregarious flocks are facultative migrants – they move around as their food supply requires. One day you may have several dozen descend on your bushes, the next day they may be gone. These songbirds dine heavily on many kinds of berries, and also the tiny cones of Eastern redcedar trees, hence their name.

As a kid in Iowa, I remember late winter days when colorful flocks of waxwings gathered in the highbush cranberry hedge (Viburnum trilobum) outside our kitchen window. The tart berries with a high acid content last well through the winter, and provide a much-needed food source when less-hardy berries have dried out or spoiled. How fun it was to watch them pass berries bird-to-bird down a row if the cluster of fruit could only be reached by one at a time! The birds’ lemony-yellow feathers, rakish black mask, and bright red wax spots captured my mom’s heart, too, and helped guide our Christmas shopping for her.

Since cedar waxwings prefer edge habitat like fields and riverbanks, they have adapted well to human-altered landscapes like my yard and the Museum’s Outdoor Classroom. Their population is stable or even increasing despite the heightened dangers of windows and cats in suburban settings. Brown-headed cowbirds share some habitat preferences with waxwings, and are also doing well in fragmented, edgy habitats. The problem is that cowbirds are nest parasites who lay their eggs in the nests of other species, and force other birds to raise their young. The cowbird chicks grow fast, and usually smother or push the host nestlings out of the nest. Cedar waxwings have a simple solution: they eat so few insects that brown-headed cowbirds in waxwing nests die from a lack of protein. [Although waxwings can go through stretches of strict vegetarianism, they are also excellent flycatchers. While paddling various rivers, I’ve admired their aerial acrobatics as they feasted on summer’s abundance of insects.]

Eating berries has other benefits and consequences, too. Overripe fruit may ferment, causing waxwings to become intoxicated, or even die when they eat too many. Perhaps the birds who crashed into our windows last week were a bit tipsy. A more benign outcome is the waxwing’s tail tip, which is usually yellow, may become orange if it eats the berries of Morrow’s honeysuckle, an introduced species, while the feathers are growing. The pigment rhodoxanthin (a red carotenoid pigment) is responsible for the color change.

As the birds fluttered between clusters of chokecherries last week, I caught glimpses of their bright red waxwings. Used to attract mates, the red is actually flattened extensions of feather shafts colored with a carotenoid pigments – similar to the pigments in carrots and autumn maple leaves. The waxwings obtain the color by modifying pigments acquired from their diet of red and orange berries, and the color increases with age. These birds maximize their nesting success by mating with other birds of similar age and experience levels – information gathered at least partially by comparing the number of red wax tips. Yet another reason why color is not just pretty!

Where is that gregarious flock now? Are they eating YOUR chokecherries? Have they started in on the mountain ash berries and crabapples already? Watch for these year-round residents to visit a yard (and hopefully not a window) near you!

Cedar Waxwings

2011-10-21T09:46:00.001-07:00

The feathers are glossy brown and streaked with white. The tip of the tail looks like it was dipped in paint made from golden aspen leaves. A jet-black mask outlined by white extends from eyes forward to the nostrils. The warm body is limp and still. This beautiful young cedar waxwing died in my hands just now.

As I pulled up to the back of the Museum on my bike, exhilarated from the delicious air and golden morning sunlight, a loud thunk sounded from the window above my head. At my feet dropped this lovely creature. I observed it for a second to see if it would rouse on its own. It lay still, beak open, so I stooped to pick it up. As I held it the beak opened and closed one last time. The lower eyelid slid up to cover one shiny black eye, and the body slowly cooled.

While saddened by this death, I am thankful for an opportunity to examine such a beautiful bird up close. I often admire the adult cedar waxwings in our Collections Room, and show visitors their lovely yellow tail-tips, rakish black mask, silky lemon breast, and brilliant-red wax droplets on the wing feathers, but this one in my hand is different. Many birds change their plumage for the breeding season and then again for winter. Goldfinches are one of the most common and distinctive examples of this. Cedar waxwings, on the other hand, look the same all year round, and even males and females look virtually identical. Only immature cedar waxwings during their very first summer and fall look any different.

One of the purposes of museum collections is to represent and preserve the diversity of nature. Larger museums may have dozens of specimens of the same species representing various ages, sexes, seasons, and habitats. These can be used for research and study. While our tiny Museum doesn’t have the space to collect quite so extensively, we use our wide variety of specimens to help visitors with identification, and to illustrate concepts.

So, although we already have two adult cedar waxwings preserved in our collection, this immature bird will be labeled with the date and location of its death, and stored in our salvage freezer. This winter, Katie Connolly, the Museum Naturalist in charge of Collections, will mount it or preserve it as a study skin. Watch our Calendar of Events for taxidermy observation days.

While we have the capacity (and the state and federal permits) to salvage dead animals for educational purposes, we still feel saddened and shamed that our windows cause so many deaths. Millions of birds each year die in collisions with windows. Some are just stunned, and if you hold them for a minute they may soon fly away. Others, like my cedar waxwing, suffer brain trauma or break their neck. The main issue is that windows reflect the trees, and birds try to fly right through them.

There are several things you can try to keep birds from hitting your windows. Window clings and silhouettes are somewhat effective, although you may need to attach them to the outside of the glass. Dangling things in front of windows can also help. We have pretty feather-shaped windsocks on our lower windows, but the not upper ones. Shiny ribbon, mirrors, glass beads, old compact disks, and other pretty trinkets can be hung in front of windows. Fine mesh netting can be stretched outside windows. This both reduces reflection and softens the impact. Today I will spend time hanging more ribbons on our windows.

If a bird dies in a collision with your window and it is fresh and in good shape, you can call and ask us if we need it for our collection. Then stick it in a plastic baggie in your freezer until you can bring it to the Museum. As long as you contact us, you will be covered under our permits until we make the transfer. While the death of something wild and beautiful is always sad, knowing that it can be used to teach hundreds of people about nature and conservation makes it just a little less tragic.

Color: It's more than just pretty

2011-10-20T06:41:00.000-07:00

Biking along Highway M on my way to work, I am dazzled by the gorgeous rainbow of color. It started with the red maples in the swamps. They turned scarlet several weeks ago, brightening up the landscape like nothing else can do. The interrupted ferns and bracken ferns in the ditches turned yellow, and then a rapid cascade of other plants changed into their fall wardrobes. Now the forest is mostly orange and gold – from the thick litter of leaves on the ground, all the way up to the crowns of the trees. In gloomier falls I often quip that this is the season when the sun shines from the ground up. Recently we’ve been completely surrounded by sunshine, with not a cloud in the sky.

While the colors this fall have been stunning, I like to think about how useful the colors are, too. Green plants, for example, get their color from chlorophyll, the powerhouse of photosynthesis. Chlorophyll captures the energy of the sun, uses it to make sugar out of water and carbon dioxide, and supports the entire food chain. Including us. We have all known this since grade school science class, but it never ceases to amaze me.

The yellows and oranges finally revealed during the past couple weeks were always there. They were just masked by the greater amount of chlorophyll. When the plant stops producing new chlorophyll, the old is broken down into a colorless chemical, and the other colors shine through. Yellow and orange aren’t just useless underdogs -- they have important jobs to do, too.

Yellow colored xanthophylls are found in most plants, and they help keep the machinery of photosynthesis from being damaged by absorbing too much light. Animals get xanthophylls from their food, and we can see them in the color of egg yolks, butter, fat, skin, and even the macula lutea – a yellow spot in our retina where the pigment helps protect our eye by absorbing UV light.

Orange carotenoids (as in carrots) also absorb extra UV light. In addition, they are antioxidants that capture renegade oxygen molecules. They are important to human health in the form of vitamin A.

Red anthocyanins aren’t revealed in the same way that yellow and orange are. They are created from the breakdown of sugars once phosphate has been sucked from the leaf down into the twigs. Sunlight is necessary to create anthocyanins (and more anthocyanins are needed in sunny weather), which is why sunnier autumns have more brilliant colors. We see the red color again in the new leaves of spring. During both seasons, the pigment protects against damaging light at low temperatures.

Anthocyanins protect humans, too, and have been shown to help stave off cancer, inflammation, diabetes and bacterial infections. One study even showed that anthocyanins cause cancer cells to die faster! We don’t eat red maple leaves for our health, of course, but we do eat blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, and many other fruits with plenty of red in their skin and juice.

Speaking of red skin, kayaking on Lake Namakagon for three hours in the sun reminded me about the importance of melanin. This brown pigment not only protects us, bacteria, and fungus from UV light (it creates our summer suntan), it is also important in the immune systems of invertebrates.

While I think the biochemistry of color is fascinating, there are many other ways that colors provide protection. As a gray-brown deer materializes from the shadows at dawn, camouflage comes to mind. The short-tailed weasel (aka ermine) skins in our Collections Room also show this quite well: the summer fur is light brown, and the winter fur is bright white. In contrast, a bright-orange monarch butterfly fluttering by my paddle vividly warns birds that it would be a bitter mouthful, simply through its colors.

The pale, smooth trunk of a paper birch also has protective coloration – this time from heat. In winter, trees freeze very carefully to make sure their cells are not damaged by ice. Darker trees may thaw and then freeze again too quickly, while birches stay cool and safe.

Paddling close to a loon, I am struck by the vibrancy of its glowing red eye. Even that has a specific purpose. Since we perceive color based on the wavelengths of light that are reflected off a surface, the loon’s eye is reflecting red light and absorbing all others. Under the water, red is the first light to be filtered out, allowing the loon to still gather as much light as possible with its eyes.

My brown eyes are taking in as much as possible. Despite my love of science and explanations, I think one of the most wonderful uses of color is the rejuvenation of our hearts and souls in the presence of natural beauty.

Living the Life...of an Apple Maggot

2011-10-01T07:10:00.000-07:00

By: Lacy Sellent, Writing Fellow at the Cable Natural History Museum

A classic sign of the end of summer and the beginning of fall is apples ripening on the trees in our yards, along back roads, and in orchards. Throughout the state, thousands of apples are ready to pick, and some are already in a bowl on my table! Fallen and rotting apples can sure make a mess (that deer and wasps love!), but if you want non-wormy apples for eating, then you might want to keep the area around your favorite trees clean. Leaving fallen apples beneath a tree may cause an insect infestation. One of the biggest pests to apple trees is the apple maggot (Rhagoletis pomonella).

The annual life cycle of the apple maggot begins in July, usually after a good rain. This is when the adults emerge from their winter pupal form and make their way up out of the ground. Although named for its larval stage, adult apple maggots are actually flies. Each five millimeter long fly has black and white colored wings and a distinctive white dot on its back. With a little imagination, black markings on the wings resemble the letter “F.” The apple maggot adult’s coloration resembles the forelegs and pedipalps (grabbing and sensing mouthparts) of one type of jumping spider. This method of defense, where a harmless species mimics one that is better protected, is called Batesian mimicry. Viceroy and monarch butterflies are a classic example of this.

After being above ground for close to a week, female flies will begin the search for a place to lay their eggs. Although adults can fly up to a mile, they don’t usually travel far from the trees that they were burrowed under. Apple maggot flies originally deposited their eggs in thornapples (hawthorn), but have gained notoriety by also laying their eggs in domestic apples. It is not a very healthy experience for the apple. Wherever the apple maggot fly lays her eggs, that area of the apple will stop growing. This causes the apple to look all lumpy. Then, newly-hatched maggots munch and burrow their way out. Wherever the small white maggots tunnel, the apple begins to rot. Brownish trails appear throughout the apple’s flesh. It is this tenacious tunneling that earned apple maggots the nickname “railroad worm.”

After the maggot-infested apple falls to the ground, it is time for the next stage. Maggots exit the apple and enter the soil. Once safely burrowed several inches below the surface, the maggots form a brown, quarter-inch long, oblong case called a puparium. This pupal form allows them to go into a type of hibernation over the winter. They don’t eat until the next spring, when they emerge from the ground as apple maggot flies—bringing the cycle full circle.

The apple maggot is native to North America, but its original range was confined to the eastern United States. It fed mostly on the fruit of hawthorn trees, sometimes know as “thornapples,” which look like tiny apples. About 150 years ago, some of the hawthorn-eating flies began to eat domestic apples planted by settlers and our old friend, Johnny Appleseed. What fascinates scientists (and me!) is that the apple maggots eating domestic apples are adapting to their new host plant, and not reproducing with the apple maggots still feeding on hawthorns. They are suspected to be in the early stages of diverging into two separate species. This process, known as speciation, is usually thought to happen because of a physical barrier – like a mountain range or an ocean – dividing a population. There is no physical barrier in this case, so it is an example of “sympatric speciation.” This is a unique opportunity for scientists to study the genes of these critters as they are in the process of changing!

Unfortunately for us and our many orchards, apples provide more protection from predators for the apple maggots than hawthorns do. Two species of wasps parasitize the maggots by depositing their own eggs inside the maggot, giving the wasp larvae a protein-rich meal when they hatch. In hawthorn fruits, apple maggots feed close to the surface, partly because several species of caterpillars prefer to eat the core, and partly because the smaller fruit just doesn’t have as much area away from the skin. In domestic apples, the maggots can feed farther in, out of range of the wasp’s ovipositor. This means that there are fewer natural predators for the apple-eating population of Rhagoletis pomonella. Removing dimpled apples from your orchard before the maggots exit into the soil can help reduce their population.

As the old joke goes, the only thing worse than finding a worm in your apple is finding half a worm. Next time you see a small white apple maggot tunneling through your fruit, I hope you’ll take a moment to appreciate the interesting life history of this tiny pest!

For over 44 years, the Museum has served as a guide and mentor to generations of visitors and residents interested in learning to better appreciate and care for the extraordinary natural resources of the region. The Museum invites you to visit its facility in Cable at 13470 County Highway M. The new exhibit, The Joy of Birds: Feathers in Focus opened in May, 2011. Find us on the web at www.cablemuseum.org to learn more about our exhibits and programs. Also discover us on Facebook, or at our blogspot, http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/.

The Rosy Apple

2011-09-22T13:19:00.001-07:00

By: Lacy Sellent, Writing Fellow at the Cable Natural History Museum

An apple tree grew along my childhood driveway. I passed by this tree each morning on my way to the bus stop. Sometimes I would race past it without much thought -- besides that I was going to beat my brother to the bus. Other days I would walk slower down the gravel and think of how few people got to appreciate the world at six-thirty in the morning. Taking my time, I would make my way over to the apple tree and grab a few rosy-red apples. Then I’d give a little whistle and walk over to the horse pasture.

It wouldn’t take long for the horses to spot me and they’d come trotting across the dewy grass to see if I had any goodies for them. I’d stretch my arm out across the fence; keeping my hand flat as they approached. With a little sniff or a slight stomp, one would come up to take the first bite. My hand would be full of horse slobber but I didn’t care. It was worth it to hear the satisfied crunches as the horses bit into their apples. What a lovely thing to have an apple tree so conveniently located!

Apple didn’t always grow here. The apple tree (Malus domestica) is a species that originated in Asia. We’ve loved it and changed it for so long, that there are over 7,500 known cultivars of apples in the world today! Their fruits can range in size from smaller than a golf ball to larger than a tennis ball.

Apple trees probably arrived in America in the 1600s. When colonists moved here, many brought seeds to plant in the New World—including apple seeds. After several years of hard work, the colonists managed to set up the country’s first apple orchard near Boston in the 1620s. When people began to move westward they often took small sacks of seeds with them. One pioneer, John Chapman, became famous for doing just that. You may know him as Johnny Appleseed.

Born in Massachusetts, John Chapman made his way from the east to the west. In a kindly gesture, he would journey ahead of other pioneers and plant apple trees along the routes he assumed they would take. In 1797, when Johnny was only twenty-three, he planted his first nursery along Broken Straw Creek, in Pennsylvania. That was only the beginning. He went on to plant seeds in Ohio and Indiana as well.

With apple trees already growing in Indiana during the early 1800s, it was only a matter of time before the trees spread from there, across Illinois and into Wisconsin. Whether through the dispersion of seeds by animals or the planting of seeds by pioneers, the apple tree made its way to Wisconsin. By 1850, Wisconsin was home to several apple orchards.

Many of those first orchards didn’t produce tasty apples that you would want to munch on. Apple trees that grow from seeds are often wildly different than their parent trees. Most uncultivated apples are far too tart for eating plain, but are just right for making cider. That is exactly what many of Johnny Appleseed’s first orchards were used for. In order to grow the consistently sweet apples we enjoy today, clones of the parent trees must be made by grafting twigs, called scions, onto other rootstocks.

Although apples aren’t native to North America, many of their relatives are. Apples are in the Rosaceae (Rose) family, which contains about 2,830 species worldwide. In Wisconsin, members of Rosaceae include: wild plums, chokecherries, black cherries, strawberries, raspberries, thimbleberries, serviceberries, cinquefoils, mountain ash, and hawthorn. Many of them, like apples, are edible and beautiful. Understanding their history can help us appreciate the amazing variety of apples we will find in farmer’s markets, produce isles, and along driveways next to horse pastures this fall!

The Grand Old Badger

2011-09-15T10:53:00.000-07:00

By: Lacy Sellent, Writing Fellow at the Cable Natural History Museum

It was early in the morning. The dew still clung to the grass as I ran down our deserted country road. I was concentrating on my breathing, and just putting one foot in front of the other, when I came upon it. I don’t know how long it had been sitting there, but by the time I saw it, it was less than ten feet away. I jumped sideways as I saw it looking at me with intimidating eyes. It growled. I froze. I wasn’t sure what to do but I decided I needed to do something. I flung my arms into the air and began yelling and flailing like some kind of crazy person. It worked. The badger seemed to stare me down for a few seconds; then he turned and ran. Like with any wild animal, it needed space. It was a rare and exciting chance encounter, but I would rather have seen him from a safer distance.

Although badgers are known as aggressive fighters, they are more likely to flee if given the opportunity. If a badger is confronted near a hole, the badger will quickly burrow into it—all the while flinging dirt at its foe. It may also release a strong musty smell in hopes of stinking out the assailant. If a badger does happen to be grabbed by a predator (such as a coyote), its fur is so thick and its skin is so loose that the badger is able to turn on its attacker and fight back. Claws that aid the badger in burrowing can also be turned into powerful weapons. When cornered, the badger earns its fierce reputation.

For the most part, badgers don’t have to worry about predators. An eagle may grab a small one, but not many animals are willing to take on this thirty-pound fighter. Badgers are part of the weasel family and therefore are related to another aggressive fighter—the wolverine. Unlike the wolverine, badgers typically prey on smaller animals and are more likely to dig up a burrowed animal than to chase one down. Sometimes, after the badger digs up its burrowed prey, it decides to inhabit the old burrow. Now that’s efficient!

The American badger (Taxidea taxus) is a mammal that uses burrows for just about everything. Burrows are good for protection, shelter, food storage, and raising young. A burrow can be over twenty feet in length but may have an entrance that’s not even one foot wide. The burrow has a mound of dirt outside, and if threatened, the badger may use it to plug up the entrance.

Wisconsin has been unofficially nicknamed the “Badger State” since the 1800s, when lead miners found shelter in old mine shafts, just like a badger taking over other animals’ old burrows. In 1957 a small group of schoolchildren suggested that, because of this history, the badger should be the official state animal. So, while the white-tailed deer is Wisconsin’s state wildlife animal, the dairy cow is the state domesticated animal, it is the badger that is the overall state animal of Wisconsin. In the words of the state song, this is the “grand old badger state!” I’m so glad to have met one in person on that dewy morning.

Happy Trails

2011-09-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

By: Lacy Sellent, Writing Fellow at the Cable Natural History Museum

Fall—the season of change and brightly colored leaves. I smiled to myself as I made my way down the rocky trail. It had been awhile since I last set foot on the North Country Trail—mainly because of the constant cloud of mosquitoes. I’d barely take two steps into the woods, when the grey mass would begin to circle my head and hum in my ears. In my opinion, nothing can ruin a hike faster than a bloodsucking swarm of persistent mosquitoes. That’s part of the reason why I enjoy fall hiking so much—cooler temperatures mean fewer mosquitoes. The far-reaching views and glistening streams of northern Wisconsin are wonderful, too.

The North Country National Scenic Trail (NST) is on its way to becoming the longest such trail in all of the United States. Over a hundred miles are already completed across northern Wisconsin. These segments take hikers down valleys, past waterfalls, and into beautiful forests. One 60 mile section even goes through the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.

There are many segments to choose from. For a short but eventful hike, Copper Falls State Park (northeast of Mellen, Wisconsin) offers a two mile jaunt down the trail. While there, visitors can view old lava flows and rushing waterfalls. The Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest immerses hikers in its woodland realm. Deer, rabbits, and grouse are quite common. It was from this northern segment that the trail’s name—North Country—originated.

And then there’s the Porcupine Mountains. Located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the Porkies (as the Porcupine Mountains are sometimes nicknamed) also have access to great scenery. Hikers can see the Black River waterfalls, the Sturgeon River Gorge and a section of trail known as the Trap Hills segment. Although this bit of trail is in a remote area (located at the eastern end of the State Park), the location combined with the fall colors makes it quite the gem.

Another fascinating location the trail passes through is the Penokee Mountain Range near County Highway GG. It may not look like a mountainous location today, but seven hundred million years ago it was. Back then, the area would have looked as rough as the Rockies. Over an immense amount of time, the mountains withered away from the effects of such damaging forces as wind and water. The land changed a lot in the following several hundred million years. At one point, it was all under water. As of two hundred million years ago, the land began to become more like what we see today. Hiking the North Country Trail means hiking in the mountains, sort of. It’s mind boggling to think about.

As I walked along the trail, I thought of these things. It made me feel small but also full of awe. I listened to the sounds of the forest. I could hear the creak of the birch as they swayed with the breeze. I could hear the pitter patter of squirrel feet. I could hear that I wasn’t being followed by the constant hum of the mosquito. Thinking of this made me smile again—no mosquitoes, how peaceful. This beautiful fall weather is the perfect time to get outside and enjoy the local woods and trails that make this area so great.

The Romance of Fall

2011-09-02T11:55:00.000-07:00

By Emily Stone, Naturalist/Educator at the Cable Natural History Museum

There’s something in the air this time of year. The sunshine is especially golden, red leaves are beginning to appear on the trees, and “Mosquito Hour” is reduced to “Mosquito Five Minutes.” It’s easier than ever to spend quality time outside with loved ones. There is love in the air, as some species prepare for winter by finding a mate before they hibernate. Many insects do this, including bees and bald-faced hornets.

Bald-faced hornets (Dolichovespula maculata) are ¾ inch-long wasps with black and white markings. The queens are the only ones that survive the winter, and now is the time when they are preparing for hibernation. Newly-hatched queens will mate with a male drone, and then the mated females will burrow into the ground, an old tree stump or squeeze behind a nice comfy flap of tree bark to spend the winter. All the rest of the colony (the male drones, female workers and old queen) die of old age or freezing temperatures.

Late fall is a good time to find the abandoned nests, long after all the nest-defenders are gone. The nests are as large as a basketball, shaped like a football, and usually attached to a twig in a shrub or tree. If you cut open an abandoned bald-faced hornet nest you’ll notice several papery layers of insulation surrounding the nursery combs. Paper wasps have similar habits, but their nests are open, with no insulation surrounding the combs.

Early next spring, in April or May, the queens will emerge from hibernation and begin the life cycle anew. Each queen will make her own nest by chewing up wood fibers and mixing them with her sticky saliva, making paper. The colony starts with just a few paper cells arranged in a honeycomb-like structure attached to a twig. The queen lays one fertilized egg in each six-sided cell, and once the eggs hatch she feeds the larvae with a high-protein baby food of chewed up insects. At some point, when the larvae have had enough, they spin a white silk roof over their cell to pupate. They later emerge as infertile female workers.

Once the queen raises the first generation of workers, they take over all the nest-building and child-rearing duties, and she spends her time laying eggs. As adults, the hornets don’t grow, because their exoskeleton is hard and fixed. They mostly eat sugary foods like nectar and rotten fruit for energy.

When workers are in the nest they shiver to produce heat. The heat is retained by the layers of insulation, allowing the larvae to develop more quickly, and the adults to stay at the 95 degree body temperate required for fast flight and nest defense. If you accidentally bump a nest in the summer, the thin paper shell will rip and hundreds of hornets may fly out to sting you. They don’t have barbs on their stingers, so they can each sting multiple times. This fierce defense is necessary, because the larvae in the nest are tasty, protein-rich treats for birds, bears, foxes, skunks, and raccoons.

In late summer and early fall the queen lays two different types of eggs. One set will be unfertilized eggs that hatch into male drones. Wasps, bees, and ants don’t have X and Y chromosomes to determine sex like we do. Instead females hatch from fertilized eggs, and are diploid (having two sets of chromosomes like us), and males hatch from unfertilized eggs, so are haploid (having only one set of chromosomes).

The final set of fertilized eggs pupates into fertile females with more fat stores and chemicals to protect them against freezing damage – the new queens. They mate with a drone and then hibernate until the next spring, when the cycle begins again.

Spring and fall are the seasons when we are reminded again and again of all the cycles present in nature. As the heat subsides, the humidity falls, and the kids go back to school, take a deep breath and appreciate the beauty of the season.

Wild Ricing, A Tasty Tradition

2011-09-02T11:52:00.001-07:00

By: Lacy Sellent, Writing Fellow at the Cable Natural History Museum

I remember when I went ricing for the first time. I was excited because my mom and dad said we’d get to take the canoe out. I loved going out in the canoe and skimming across the water. Fun like that was not to be missed! After the great feat of lifting the sixty pound aluminum canoe onto the back of the truck, we were ready to go.

When we arrived at a lake there were several other people already standing around on shore. I wondered what was going on. As it turned out, we had arrived early and had to wait until the exact time the season opened. Apparently, it’s not even legal to rice between sunset and ten in the morning. So we waited. After a few minutes, and a unanimous vote that the season had started, we all headed out. At first it didn’t seem so different—we were just paddling after all—but then we found the rice. It looked a lot like oats. The narrow, greenish yellow stalks grew nearly four feet above the water. Wild rice is a close cousin to the common rice that is indigenous to Asia. Both are in the grass family, Poaceae. Explorers in the 17^th and 18^th centuries encountered seven foot tall wild rice that grew so thick that it posed a challenge to navigation. I just wondered how we would get the rice into the canoe.

As we approached the edge of the rice, my dad quit paddling and took out one very long stick, which he called a duckbill. It had a “V” at one end, and if I used my imagination, it did look a lot like the bill of a duck. He used the pole to push us forward, making it easier and less damaging to move forward through the stalks. It is illegal to use a motorboat for ricing, since the motor would really tear up the rice beds.

My mom grabbed two short wooden poles, each less than three feet in length, and swept a bundle of rice across the side of the canoe with one pole as she gently knocked the rice into the bottom of the canoe with the other. No wonder they are called knockers! The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) requires knockers to be rounded, so that the rice stalks are not as damaged in the ricing process.

The rice began to rain down—some falling into the canoe, some falling into the water. At first this worried me; we weren’t catching all the rice! But then my parents told me that it was okay. Wild rice is an annual plant, so it grows from seed each year. When the rice falls into the water, it is being replanted for the following year. Despite knocking many seeds into the lake, we ended up with forty pounds of rice. This was enough for us, while still leaving plenty for others. Wild rice is an important food source not only for humans, but also for muskrats, deer, and at least sixteen species of birds.

Humans and wildlife have eaten wild rice from Wisconsin’s lakes and streams for many hundreds of years. It was first gathered by indigenous people such as the Ojibwa, Menominee, and Sioux. Now it can be harvested by anyone willing to learn how. Thanks to regulation by the DNR and representatives of local tribes, ricing can be carried out safely and sustainably. By regulating which lakes and streams can be riced when, there is less of a possibility that an area will be overharvested.

After collecting the rice, there are still a few more steps to go through before making a meal. First, the rice needs to be parched. This means that the rice is heated up and dried out. Once it is no longer wet, it can be thrashed in order to break open the hulls. The hulls are a type of casing around the rice—you could eat it, but must people just want to eat the rice on the inside. That’s why the casings need to be broken and then winnowed. By winnowing the rice, the broken hulls are blown away. This process may be performed several times in order to make sure all the hulls are off of the rice.

The ricing season may be open anytime from mid-August to mid-September. Since each lake and stream is different, look for postings at public access points and check with the local DNR service center for information about when areas are open to ricing. Before heading out on the water, it is also necessary to acquire a permit from the DNR (which costs less than $10).

Even if all you do is cook up some wild rice from the store, you can still appreciate the history of this tasty tradition.

Cloud Clarity

2011-08-19T09:19:00.001-07:00

By: Lacy Sellent, Writing Fellow at the Cable Natural History Museum

Like many others, I often catch myself cloud gazing. Some days I can’t help myself. Days with bright blue sky and fluffy white clouds are the best. I might find myself looking at a rabbit or a mouse—noticing how one part of the cloud looks like a mouth or how other parts looked more like ears.

I always thought it might be fun to be able to name all the different clouds. I knew a few of the cloud types—cirrus, cumulous, cumulonimbus—but which word goes with each cloud? With so many varieties (all sounding slightly similar), I sometimes felt like I was playing some sort of name game. Then my inquisitive side got the best of me and I decided to do a little research. Here’s what I found.

First, the cirrus cloud. These clouds form high—drifting across the sky at some 18,000 feet. That is more than three miles! They are mostly made up of tiny ice crystals. These crystals, like the water droplets that form clouds at lower elevations, are created through the cooling of humid air. As the humid air cools, the water vapors in the air begin to condense. Depending on the temperature and humidity, this process may take place at different elevations. When this happens at higher elevations (10,000-20,000 feet), cirrus clouds are formed.

The cirrus cloud does not produce rain and can be found in the sky on many sunny days. It is a thin, wispy cloud. In fact, it is because of its wispy appearance that cirrus clouds have also come to be known as mare’s tails. Now, whenever I look at a cirrus cloud, I can see the tail of a horse racing across the sky.

Cumulus clouds are big and fluffy and hang much lower to the ground than cirrus clouds. Some can form as low as just 330 feet above the ground. The bottom stays flat while more layers of clouds pile on to create a billowy top. Appropriately, the word cumulus literally means “pile” in Latin.

When a cumulus cloud continues to build higher and higher, it is no longer just a cumulus cloud anymore…it is a cumulonimbus. The top of a cumulonimbus cloud can tower more than 40,000 feet above the ground—that’s over seven miles high. Some cumulonimbus clouds have even reached nine miles in height! As the cloud continues to build higher, it may eventually come in contact with the winds at higher elevations. When the cloud meets the wind, the wind blows across the top of the cloud—stretching it out and giving it a flat-topped appearance. This cumulonimbus characteristic has been dubbed the “anvil cloud”.

Cumulonimbus clouds, especially with anvil tops, are the harbingers of thunderstorms. They possess the power to make windows rattle and to turn trees upside down. With them can come some of the most severe weather in Wisconsin. When a cumulonimbus rolls in, it comes with a presence that demands attention. These are the clouds that give me the greatest feeling of awe.

Whether it is the wispy cirrus, the fluffy cumulus, or the thunderous cumulonimbus, I have come to find that each cloud has something different to offer. Or, to anyone working outside on a sunny day, most any cloud in general may have a great deal to offer. Well, maybe not the cumulonimbus. You might get more than you asked for with that one.

Naturally Important

2011-08-12T09:47:00.000-07:00

By: Lacy Sellent, Writing Fellow at the Cable Natural History Museum

In the past, children seldom thought twice about going outside to play. There were always things to do—no matter the weather or the time of year. Rain was great for puddle jumping. Snow was great for fort building and tunneling. Even the wind could be counted on to provide fun. Nature brought something new and exciting each day.

The bond a child forms with nature is one that will not be broken quickly, even into adulthood. Being outside can teach lessons in patience, calm, and respect. Now that many of today’s generation no longer go outside, people are realizing just how important nature’s role has been.

One man in particular has researched and written about nature’s importance in our lives. His name is Richard Louv, and he is the author of the national bestseller, Last Child in the Woods. In the book, Louv explores the many benefits of time spent in the outdoors. He also presents studies that show the negative effects of sitting in front of a television.

One such study was done by Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, Washington. It found that “each hour of TV watched per day by preschoolers increases by 10 percent the likelihood that they will develop concentration problems and other symptoms of attention-deficit disorders by age seven.” As with many things, moderation is the key. A little television may be educational—a lot of television may be disruptive.

This is part of the reason why nature is so important to us. Another reason is that it can be a great stress reliever. While interviewing children across the United States, Louv found that many of the kids who went outside enjoyed a sense of freedom there. There was freedom from school and chores. There was freedom from scheduled activities. There was freedom from time itself. When given true “free time” to explore and experience the outdoors, kids (and adults too) really begin to relax. They can sense their own power and potential. Their imaginations can take off. Some kids learned about engineering indirectly while building tree houses. Others learned about ecosystems while playing along lakes and streams.

Nature can be a great educational tool, and an effective stress reliever. Problem is, we’re losing our connection to the natural world. A study at the University of Maryland found that kids between the ages of nine and twelve spent fifty percent less time outside in 2003 as they did in 1997. In a survey (from Manhattanville College in New York) of eight hundred mothers, seventy one percent said they played outside everyday as a kid. Sadly, only twenty six percent of these same mothers said that their children play outside every day.

It’s not just kids who could benefit from having more contact with nature. Louv recently published a second book, called The Nature Principle, because of the overwhelming response his first book received from adults. “It’s not just the children!” they said. Adults reap all the same mental, physical and emotional benefits from time in nature that kids do, and we also feel many of the same negative effects when there’s a lack of nature in our lives.

It is clear that many people are missing out on the benefits of the outdoors. Luckily, up here in the Northwoods we can still enjoy wild nature right outside our doors. Fall is one of the best times to be outside in Northern Wisconsin. Mosquitoes aren’t as plentiful, the air is cool and crisp, and the sunshine is still warm. Don’t take it all for granted. Get outside and enjoy the season!

Blueberry Smiles

2011-08-05T10:04:00.001-07:00

By: Lacy Sellent, Writing Fellow at the Cable Natural History Museum

A few years ago my friends convinced me to head north on a blueberry expedition. We took the back roads and kept driving until we ran out of pavement. Then we drove some more. I have yet to tell anyone where we went. Like a fisherman that never gives up his secret fishing hole, I cannot reveal the secret berry picking spot. Which may or may not be due to the fact that I had no idea where we were in the first place. After the drive, we found ourselves in the middle of a blueberry paradise. There were so many berries that, at first, I just stood and stared at them all.

Some berries were small; no bigger than a pencil eraser. Other berries were bigger than baby toes. Before long, we began checking to see who had found the biggest blueberry. This involved a little eye rolling when someone purposely held up their puniest berry. We laughed a bit to think of all the animals we were scaring away with our little ruckus. Then we quieted down. All I could hear was the creaking of the trees as they swayed in the breeze and the soft plop of blueberries into our buckets. What a great way to spend summer days.

Healthy on cereal, tasty in smoothies—blueberries make the perfect summer treat. These scrumptious little morsels can be picked from mid July into August. Depending on what the temperature has been like, blueberries may bloom at slightly different times each year. Some years the peak of the blueberry season is in July. Other years the peak may be in August. Each year it varies.

The blueberry bushes native to Wisconsin (Vaccinium angustifolium) are short, rarely getting to be much more than foot tall, but can live in a colder climate. They prefer rocky or sandy soil and grow throughout the state. Some highbush blueberry varieties can only grow further south. This is because the plant can’t survive more than a hundred and sixty days of frost. In northern Wisconsin, there may still be frost in May. Then, as early as September, the frost may be back again. That makes quite a few days of frost.

Picking blueberries doesn’t take a lot of skill. There is no height requirement. This is the kind of activity that anyone from kid to grandparent can partake in. Not to mention it’s rich in outdoor fun. I don’t know what it is about picking blueberries that I like so much. I can’t quite put my finger on any one thing. All I know is that, when I finally close my eyes after a day of berry picking, I see nothing but blueberries…and I can’t help but smile.

For over 44 years, the Museum has served as a guide and mentor to generations of visitors and residents interested in learning to better appreciate and care for the extraordinary natural resources of the region. The Museum invites you to visit its facility in Cable at 13470 County Highway M. The new exhibit, The Joy of Birds: Feathers in Focus opened in May, 2011. Find us on the web at http://www.cablemuseum.org/ to learn more about our exhibits and programs. Also discover us on Facebook, or at our blogspot, http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/.

The Truth Behind Daddy Longlegs

2011-07-29T10:26:00.001-07:00

By: Lacy Sellent, Writing Fellow at the Cable Natural History Museum

Growing up, I heard a lot of “facts” about the natural world. One particular “fact” about daddy longlegs really stuck in my head. The rumor was that if daddy longlegs had mouths big enough to bite humans they would the most poisonous spider in the world. This is something I believed for quite some time—until I learned the real truth…

One problem with this legend is that daddy longlegs (also known as harvestmen) are not poisonous to humans. In fact, they have no venom whatsoever. However, it is true that their mouths are too small and their jaws are too weak to bite humans. Apart from not being venomous in the first place, another reason why daddy longlegs are not the most poisonous spider in the world is because they’re not even spiders! Daddy longlegs and spiders are more like cousins to each other.

Scientists classify all living things in a hierarchical system with seven or more different levels. Organisms are put into groups based on shared characteristics, which often reflect how closely they are related to each other. The top category is the broadest and then each subsequent category gets more specific. Spiders and daddy longlegs both are in the kingdom Animalia, the group to which all animals belong. They also share the phylum Arthropoda with insects and crayfish. They share the class Arachnida with ticks and scorpions. The next category is order. All spiders make up the order Araneae, while daddy longlegs make up the order Opilione. That order is divided further into families, genera, and finally into over 6,400 individual species of harvestmen has been discovered worldwide.

Both spiders and daddy longlegs have a hard outer shell called an exoskeleton instead of a backbone, eight jointed legs, and segmented bodies. Unlike spiders, daddy longlegs are not capable of spinning webs. They don’t even have any silk glands! And while spiders have eight eyes, daddy longlegs only have two. They also differ from spiders in their eating habits. Daddy longlegs catch food and eat it outside their mouth, because that’s where their teeth are located. After a meal, daddy longlegs clean up from the messy task. After a quick swipe of their legs through their jaws the daddy longlegs is clean and ready to get on with its day. Or, rather, its night.

Daddy longlegs generally hunt at night—searching through leaves and other debris. Daddy longlegs will eat anything from plant matter to worms and small insects. They can be handy around a garden, because they’ll help keep pesky insects, such as aphids, away. The name Opilione (to which the daddy longlegs belongs) is Latin for “aphid sucker.”

While out looking for food, daddy longlegs use their legs to sense danger. Any vibration made by approaching trouble is picked up through their extra-sensitive legs. These legs are also used for tasting and smelling. If a daddy longlegs finds itself in trouble, it has two legs that can give off a nasty odor. Not many predators care for a smelly dinner.

They also have another trick—when trapped, they can release the captured leg! Once a daddy longlegs realizes there is no other way out, it uses a special muscle to dislodge the leg from its body. Then the muscle closes around the stump and the daddy longlegs scurries off to safety. Meanwhile, the foe is left with a squirming leg. The lost leg may twitch for several minutes. This distracts the predator—ensuring the daddy longlegs a safe getaway.

Daddy longlegs are harmless creatures that are often misunderstood. They are not poisonous, and they are not spiders. We don’t need to fear them. We just have to get to know them.

For over 44 years, the Museum has served as a guide and mentor to generations of visitors and residents interested in learning to better appreciate and care for the extraordinary natural resources of the region. The Museum invites you to visit its facility in Cable at 13470 County Highway M. The new exhibit, The Joy of Birds: Feathers in Focus opened in May, 2011. Find us on the web at http://www.cablemuseum.org/ to learn more about our exhibits and programs. Also discover us on Facebook, or at our blogspot, http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/.

The Stick that is Not a Stick…

2011-07-29T10:25:00.000-07:00

By: Lacy Sellent, Writing Fellow at the Cable Natural History Museum

Before heading off on a hike in the great outdoors, you may want to learn more about walking sticks. Knowing the typical length of a walking stick, along with knowing where to look in order to find one, are both good places to start. It also may be beneficial to know what they eat…Wait, what?

As you may have noticed, I’m not talking about a wooden walking stick. No, I am talking about the actual creepy crawly insect in the order Phasmatodea. The walking stick is an insect that tricks predators, such as birds, into thinking that it is just a stick—not a tasty meal. Depending on the species, the walking stick may be green or brown. The green species match the color of the leafy bushes that they hide in. The brown ones can blend in among the twigs and branches of trees.

These insects (at least the ones in Wisconsin) range in size between half an inch and several inches—depending on the species, gender, and age of the insect. The male is shorter than the female, but both sexes can reach some amazing lengths. Some species from across the globe have been known to grow as long as twenty-one inches! Here in Wisconsin we won’t be seeing any twenty-one inch walking sticks, but we can still observe their amazing natural disguise.

The walking stick, like most living things, has excellent physical and behavioral adaptations that help it survive in its habitat. One clever behavioral adaptation of the walking stick is to sway back and forth when perched on a twig or leaf. The swaying motion helps it to better mimic how a tree branch moves in the wind, and adds accuracy to its disguise. Not only does the walking stick have the benefit of physically looking like a stick, but it also acts like one!

During the day is when you would be most likely to spot one swaying with the breeze. This is because the walking stick is an insect that does its moving around mostly at night. At night it will “branch out” to forage for food. This insect is an herbivore, so it’s not uncommon for them to feed from the same plants that also provide them with shelter.

The distinguishing characteristics of this insect don’t stop at its use of camouflage. The walking stick is also one of the few species to reproduce without the aid of a male. All a female has to do is lay the eggs and they will all be born female. The males are not only smaller in size, but also fewer in number. If a male does happen fertilize the eggs there is still only a fifty-fifty chance that some of the eggs will be male. Because of this unique characteristic, there are some species of walking sticks that are entirely female.

The walking stick is truly a fascinating insect—and it is one that lives in your own backyard! The next time you walk by a bush, look closely. With a watchful eye, you may be able to spot the stick that is not a stick.

For over 44 years, the Museum has served as a guide and mentor to generations of visitors and residents interested in learning to better appreciate and care for the extraordinary natural resources of the region. The Museum invites you to visit its facility in Cable at 13470 County Highway M. The new exhibit, The Joy of Birds: Feathers in Focus opened in May, 2011. Find us on the web at http://www.cablemuseum.org/ to learn more about our exhibits and programs. Also discover us on Facebook, or at our blogspot, http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/.

Leaves of Three

2011-07-29T10:22:00.000-07:00

By: Lacy Sellent, Writing Fellow at the Cable Natural History Museum

As a kid, there was one plant that my parents always warned me about—poison ivy. It never looked all that bad to me. For the most part the leaves were only about two or three inches long. The plant didn’t even look sharp or prickly like a thistle. Well, it didn’t take me long to learn to follow my parents advice—that when I saw “leaves of three,” I needed to “leave them be”.

All it takes is one little brush against your leg and within a few days you’ll break out in a nasty rash. It will itch and may even ooze a bit. Yeah, I know, it’s not very pleasant. This is actually a type of allergic reaction. It’s caused by urushiol, a type of oil made by the plant. The leaves, the stem, and even the roots all have this pesky stuff on them.

On the bright side, if you realize you’ve come in contact with poison ivy you may be able to spare yourself from its not-so-nice side effects. By washing your skin with alcohol—within ten minutes after touching it—you can still rid yourself of the oil. Washing with water will also help. If you are not able to wash your skin within ten minutes (or don’t realize that you’ve come across any poison ivy) then the oil is already soaked up into the skin. At this point, it can no longer be washed off. The main thing is to try to wash everything that touched the plant as soon as possible. This includes your shoes and clothing.

Your clothes can not absorb the urushiol in the same way that your skin can. Because of this, the oil on your clothes can cause rashes for months after your first contact. Although many believe the rash itself is catchy, the rash is more likely to be spread through fabrics. A shared pair of gardening gloves may be to blame for the spread of a rash from one person to another.

Another good thing to know is that not everyone who touches poison ivy will break out in a rash. But there’s a catch. The more times you come in contact with poison ivy, the worse your reaction may become. For example, the first time you touch poison ivy, you may not see a rash until over a week later (if you ever see one at all). After a few more run-ins with poison ivy, you may start to see a rash in as little time as a day or two.

What’s really creepy about poison ivy is that, according to Dr. Lewis Ziska (from the U.S. Department of Agriculture), it has begun to grow larger and more poisonous than ever before. Poison ivy plants are now capable of growing twice the size today as they were back in 1901. This is partially due to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Since carbon dioxide is what plants eat, poison ivy (among other nuisance plants, such as poison oak) is able to produce more food. When combined with the results of logging (which opens up a forest—giving more light for the poison ivy to grow) and other land use activities, we could be creating the perfect environment for poison ivy.

On the flip side, poison ivy is a native plant to Wisconsin and, therefore, has its part to play in the Northwood’s environment. Everything from bluebirds and robins to turkeys and crows either eat the berries of the poison ivy plant (which are present in late summer) or they use the plant as cover. Even deer will munch on poison ivy, only they’ll mostly eat the leaves. In some cases, people like having a bit of poison ivy around because then the deer eat that instead of their garden.

As you explore the woods this summer, keep in mind that nature can be fun and we also need to be aware of its dangers. Now that you know more about poison ivy, get out there and enjoy your summer—just stay away from those leaves of three!

For over 44 years, the Museum has served as a guide and mentor to generations of visitors and residents interested in learning to better appreciate and care for the extraordinary natural resources of the region. The Museum invites you to visit its facility in Cable at 13470 County Highway M. The new exhibit, The Joy of Birds: Feathers in Focus opened in May, 2011. Find us on the web at http://www.cablemuseum.org/ to learn more about our exhibits and programs. Also discover us on Facebook, or at our blogspot, http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/.

Flash of the Firefly

2011-07-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

By: Lacy Sellent, Writing Fellow at the Cable Natural History Museum

One of my favorite activities to do in the summer is to set out on a lightning bug ride. On a calm, peaceful night my mom and I will make our way to the barn, saddle up our horses, and head out into the night. The sharp crunching of hooves on gravel turns to a light thudding as our horses make their way from the barn to the hay field. I take note of the immense darkness in which I am a part of, though do not fear. Within that darkness there are tiny specs of light…

I can feel the grass brush against my legs as we continue to move forward. I look up and see a vast array of stars lighting up the sky—then I look around me and I see that, like the sky, the field has become scattered with little lights. The lights surround us. Everywhere we look there are lightning bugs—the field is alive with them.

Blink. Blink-blink. Blink. If watched closely, the flash of each firefly repeats a special pattern. These patterns are used by fireflies (also known as lightning bugs) to communicate with each other. The flashing pattern changes depending on the temperature and the species of firefly. On cool summer nights a male may only emit light every ten seconds. In contrast, warmer weather increases the speed of the blinks. The females notice the blinks, and respond by mimicking the flash pattern of a chosen mate. It is through this process that fireflies continue to exist—the flash of the firefly is not only fun to watch, but it also plays an important role in the survival of this unique beetle.

Today new research is pointing toward one danger that could jeopardize the lives of fireflies. That danger comes in the form of light pollution. From our fourteen-watt patio lights to the little lights that brighten our garden paths—all these lights make it difficult for the fireflies to communicate. These artificial lights shine brighter than the much dimmer light of the male firefly, making it hard for the female to find the male.

In a situation such as this, you may wonder: what can I do? How can I help the fireflies? One way would be to remove the light sources from your yard. This can be done by taking out the garden lights, turning off patio lights, or by pulling the shades of a lighted room. If you want to see the actual beetle itself, you could grab some blue tissue paper and wrap it over the lens of a flashlight. This creates a blue light which is not as misleading to the fireflies.

The way you landscape your yard is another way to create a welcoming environment for the fireflies. Fireflies find safety in long grass, so it may be beneficial to set aside a section of yard for the fireflies. Also, since one of the earlier stages of a firefly’s life is a grub, it may be a good idea to refrain from using pesticides (which target and kill grubs).

This summer I encourage you to embrace your inner child and head outside. See how many fireflies you can spot! If you catch any of the fireflies, it is important to remember that they need to stay moist. Putting fireflies in jars may dry them out. To prevent this, place a damp paper towel in the bottom of the jar.

By following these tips, we can help protect the fireflies of today in hopes of preserving them for the generations of tomorrow. The next time you visit the great outdoors, be sure to keep an eye out for the flash of the firefly.

For over 44 years, the Museum has served as a guide and mentor to generations of visitors and residents interested in learning to better appreciate and care for the extraordinary natural resources of the region. The Museum invites you to visit its facility in Cable at 13470 County Highway M. The new exhibit, The Joy of Birds: Feathers in Focus opened in May, 2011. Find us on the web at http://www.cablemuseum.org/ to learn more about our exhibits and programs. Also discover us on Facebook, or at our blogspot, http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/.

Everything else in the Universe

2011-07-01T12:58:00.000-07:00

I arrived in northern Wisconsin in the dead of winter. It was the last week of this past January. Snow blanketed the ground, with bare twigs poking through and gray clouds hovering above. I wasn’t fooled. Having spent four years in Ashland as a Northland College student, and having lived in several other wintery places, I have come to appreciate the joy of the changing seasons. You’ve all been reading about those seasonal changes, known as phenology, in NatureWatch articles for the past 20 years. As the new Naturalist/Educator, I am honored to begin writing the Museum’s weekly column.

With a new voice comes a new name. Throughout my life as an educator and naturalist all across the U.S., one theme has been consistent: connections. I love discovering connections in nature: how algae and fungus work together to create lichens; how mosquitoes benefit from the bug-catching skills of the carnivorous pitcher plant; how yellow-bellied sapsuckers provide food for the early spring hummingbirds; how blueberries, wintergreen, and Pacific madrone trees are related by genetics and habitat. But knowing about these connections is an empty accomplishment if I can’t share my excitement for nature with others. So my interest in connections also manifests itself in a desire to connect people, including myself, to nature. Gathering wild edibles, enjoying silent sports, gardening, and just experiencing wonder at the world make me feel a part of nature, instead of apart from it.

One of the natural connections I’ve made since moving back to Wisconsin is with the students, faculty and staff at Northland College. Many of my friends and classmates at Northland were interns and Naturalists at the Museum. They all received excellent mentoring and gained valuable experience. I hope to continue that tradition. In my short time here I’ve already hired three different Northland students for various internships and fellowships. One of those is Lacy Sellent, a senior in Humanity and Nature Studies with a minor in Writing, from Cumberland, WI. She will be writing the Natural Connections column for several weeks as a part of our Focused Fellowship program. It has been my pleasure to work with her, I’m sure you will enjoy her writing.

This fall, before the snow blankets the woods once again, I will return to share my favorite connections with you. Making connections is natural, and once you begin to see them, you see them everywhere. In the words of John Muir: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."