The Heron's Plan

Turkey vultures and black vultures circled above the trees. As expected, I’d spotted my first turkey vulture of the year the day after I wrote the article about them. Then, I promptly headed south to meet their migration.

Now, here I was on the entrance road to Huntington Beach State Park in South Carolina, which follows a causeway through the salt marsh. Richard, a park volunteer who leads birding walks each Wednesday morning, patiently detailed the identification clues for the vultures in his New Jersey accent. Turning back to the shallow channels exposed by a falling tide, our group of about 15 regulars and vacationers focused binoculars on greater yellowlegs, willets, snowy egrets, great egrets, and more. With every sentence, Richard’s information gave me more confidence in birding this strange new ecosystem.

Out among cordgrass, finally I spotted a bird I didn’t need help identifying. The elegant silhouette of a great blue heron towered above the rest of the shorebirds. I’ve observed herons from coast to coast, since they thrive in a wide variety of wetlands. This bird lacked the striking black crown and head plumes of a mature adult, and the bit of mottled brown mixed into their plumage further gave away their youth. They stalked diligently, but unsuccessfully, for a meal.

I stalked the mudflats, too, but not for fish. Someone had pointed out the oyster beds being exposed by the receding tide, and told us to watch for the fountains of water they squirt at random intervals. They were excreting waste, but purifying the water in the process. It felt like winning the lottery every time I caught a squirt in my binoculars.

Then, with a whoosh, our attention returned upward. Another great blue heron, seeming huge in their proximity, swooped in on their six-foot wings and landed near a small, wooden observation pier. I admired the pale highlights on their slate-gray body feathers while sunshine highlighted their yellow beak and graceful black head plume. With fully adult plumage, this bird must be at least three years old.

The heron seemed to hold their breath as they peered into the shallow water, seeing things hidden from us by the glint of ripples. Feeling the bird’s intensity, I held my breath too. Then, in a swift motion, the heron’s legs bent backward as they leaned forward. It’s a strange sight, since we expect the joint in the middle of a leg to bend like our knees. But birds’ knees are hidden up near their body, and the knob halfway between feathers and feet is equivalent to our ankle. Herons’ necks have an odd hinging system, too. A pivot point between their sixth and seventh vertebrae allows their neck to double back in an S shape while at rest, then shoot out with lethal force.

When the heron straightened up, a fish at least as big as the bird’s own head was clasped in their ferocious beak. Patiently, the heron gripped tight while the fish thrashed. I’d read that herons will sometimes whack a fish to stun it, or drop it back in the water to try for a better grip. This heron just held on, their huge yellow eye appearing to bug out a little from the effort.

The fish appeared to be a striped mullet, a common species of coastal waters. At first, the mullet appeared to be winning. They flopped and slipped father through the herons bill, surely about to escape the final grip on their head. Then the heron’s plan became apparent. All the movement was maneuvering the fish’s head to aim aerodynamically into the heron’s beak. With one last toss of their head, the fish disappeared. The heron straightened their neck to help the bulge slide down, then gulped water, wiggled their long pink tongue, and snapped their beak. A few silver fish scales glinted on their lower mandible.

Watch my Facebook Reel of the event here! 

We moved on to get out of the midday sun, but I’ve read about what the heron would do next. Catching fish can be slimy business, and to keep themselves clean, herons use comb-like claws on their middle toes to preen “powder down” through their feathers. This removes slime and grime. The powder comes from the tips of down feathers that break into dust. These feathers are never molted, they just keep growing as they are used.

Despite the dozen or so new species of birds I spotted in the salt marshes, beaches, and forests of South Carolina, witnessing the amazing behavior of this familiar friend stands out. Black vultures, great egrets, and white-eyed vireos, will probably never be part of my daily life, but herons could be. And every sighting teaches me something new.

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! The Museum is closed until May 12 to allow for construction of our new exhibit, The Wetland Way. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Spring Cleaning with Turkey Vultures

PSA: you might want to finish eating your breakfast or lunch before you read about turkey vultures eating theirs!

Mesmerized, I paused in the warm, South Carolina sunshine to watch a kettle of turkey vultures circle lazily, their wings tracing the invisible movements of air. From a nearby tree line came the lusty singing of a brown thrasher, and the sweet trill of a pine warbler. The week I spent at Loon Camp on Lake Jocassee in early March was a delightful preview of spring.

Most people probably don’t associate turkey vultures with spring—or even realize that vultures may have flown as far as South America for the winter—but they are one of the earliest returning migrants. “What blazes the trail,” wrote Mary Oliver, “is not necessarily pretty.” Vultures need warm weather so that the smell of their food can rise skyward, and because it’s far easier to eat fresh roadkill than frozen dinners.

Of course, food spoils more quickly in warm weather, and eating the putrefying flesh of deer, raccoons, and other beings who’ve met their demise has its dangers. Getting hit by cars is an obvious one. Plus, rooting around in rotting meat would make you or me very sick. Despite their gross diet and appearance, every adaptation of the turkey vulture is aimed at cleanliness, and they have some ingenious ways of staying healthy.

For example, they defecate on their own legs, using the super acidic liquid as a disinfectant and to cool their body as it evaporates. The bare, red skin of their heads not only gives turkey vultures their name, it also allows the sterilizing effects of ultraviolet radiation from sunlight to kill bacteria. That’s very useful after sticking one’s head in a rotting carcass. UV sterilization works on their feathers to some degree as well. Especially after damp weather, you may notice them perched with their wings spread to the sun.

On the inside, turkey vultures’ intense stomach acids can kill the microbes that cause botulism, anthrax, cholera, tuberculosis, salmonella, and rabies. How appropriate that the birds’ scientific name—Cathartes aura—means “purifying breeze.”

Their digestive system is so powerful that it even destroys the DNA of their food. Isn’t that normal, you may wonder? Not at all. In fact, wildlife researchers often test the scat of their target species for the DNA of their prey to determine what they are eating. It even works for humans. Scientists have found it’s more accurate to test the DNA in a stool sample than to rely on people to self-report what they eat each day when doing dietary studies. That wouldn’t work for vultures.

At a roadkill, though, venison isn’t the only thing on the menu. Even if vultures find a dead animal quickly, they may eat on it for a few days. In that time, plenty of other critters join the feast—the meat will be colonized by a host of potentially pathogenic bacteria and invertebrates. Plus, if an animal’s tough hide wasn’t breached by the cause of death, vultures may need to use an existing hole to get inside, putting them in contact with feces, too. Despite the effectiveness of bare skin and sun baths, one study identified roughly 528 different types of microorganisms living on a vulture’s face.

See how the turkey vulture's eye looks cloudy? Like many birds and other animals, turkey vultures have a third eyelid called a nictitating membrane. It acts like goggles to protect their eyes while feeding. Photo by Emily Stone. 

What’s even more amazing was that only 76 (14%) of those microbes survived the vulture’s stomach and made it to the large intestine. It takes a very special microbe to make that journey intact!

In particular, researchers from Denmark discovered in 2014 that there are two groups of pathogenic bacteria possibly acquired from carcasses, that thrive in a vulture’s stomach. Clostridia bacteria cause food poisoning, lockjaw and malignant edema in people and cattle. Fusobacterium are flesh-digesting bacteria that would make most critters very sick. It’s thought that the vultures have developed a symbiotic relationship where they allow microbes who were starting to decompose the carcass to continue their work on into the vulture’s stomach, thereby assisting with digestion and releasing nutrients where the vulture can absorb them.

While this idea would once have been far-fetched, scientists continually uncover more examples of symbiotic relationships in nature. It’s not at all uncommon for an animal to rely on microbes to help digest their food—that’s how our stomachs work, too. And it’s also common for parents to pass those partners on to their children. Since vultures feed their chicks through regurgitation, they likely get a dose of those bacteria even before they start feeding on carcasses by themselves.

As of March 27, I still haven’t seen a turkey vulture in the Northwoods, but soon they’ll be showing up on the wind and helping us out with a little spring cleaning!

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar opens for registration on April 1st at 9:00 a.m.! The Museum is closed until May 12 to allow for construction of our new exhibit, The Wetland Way. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Thrasher Concert

The air was cool but not crisp as a small group of loon researchers gathered in the morning light outside the villas at Devil’s Fork State Park on Lake Jocassee in South Carolina. “There’s a loon!” someone exclaimed, as they pointed through the screen of trees toward a familiar silhouette bobbing on the rippled surface. Since we had all gathered as part of Loon Camp—the week-long loon research experience for adult volunteers—this was an appropriate first bird of the morning.

First loon!

But spotting loons wasn’t our main goal, at least not yet. Each morning of Loon Camp beings with a land-based birding walk for anyone willing to wake up early. The cloudless blue sky of our first day made it truly feel like spring—and sound like spring, too! An eastern phoebe repeated their rough, two-note fee-bee! call from among the villas. As we ventured onto the pine-lined park road, the evergreen canopy came alive with the tiny, squeaky toy noises of brown-headed nuthatches. A northern cardinal scolded harshly from the brush, then posed briefly in a sunny tree to show off his scarlet crest. A pair of eastern bluebirds posed on their nest box.

Brown-headed nuthatch

Northern Cardinal

Eastern Bluebird

Those of us who had traveled from the still-wintery lands of Northern Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ohio, reveled in the cacophony. And then it got louder. From the top of a leafless oak tree commenced a steady stream of whistles and warbles that sounded as if an entire flock of flickers, vireos, titmice, cardinals, and wood thrushes were all taking turns. Just one robin-sized bird perched there, though. Listen

Brown Thrasher

There are three “mimics” common across North America. These birds all increase their repertoire of songs and show off their skills to the ladies by copying from other birds. Northern mockingbirds repeat each stolen phrase several times. Brown thrashers tend to repeat each phrase twice. Gray catbirds say each phrase just once, and pepper their concert with a distinctive, cat-like mew.

With some imagination, I could hear the mnemonic plant a seed, plant a seed, bury it, bury it, cover it up, cover it up, let it grow, let it grow, pull it up, pull it up, eat it, eat it, in this bird’s song, and quickly identified him as a brown thrasher. Depending on who you believe, brown thrashers have a repertoire of over 1,000, over 2,000, or over 3,000 song types that they can string together in one run-on overture.

Brown thrashers are special not only in the variety of phrases they can sing, but the types of sounds they can make. Birds have a two-sided voice box called a syrinx, and by controlling each side independently, thrashers can harmonize with themselves!

We smiled at his enthusiasm, and then turned around so we wouldn’t be late for our first day of counting loons on Lake Jocassee—an experience I wrote about last week.

Later in the week, I set out by myself on an afternoon nature walk. As usual, the birds had stopped singing. The relative quiet made a rustling in the dry leaves even more noticeable. Pausing, I watched for movement, then zoomed in. Behind a screen of twigs, I glimpsed the striking black back, orange sides, and white breast of an eastern towhee. Barely a foot away, I spotted the rusty back and striped chest of the brown thrasher. Although these two birds are not closely related, they share a habit of living in brushy places, and scratching loudly through leaf litter to find insects, worms, lizards, frogs, fruits, and seeds. We’ve captured both of them during our Wisconsin Master Naturalist bird banding experiences in the Moquah Barrens—which is another similarly brushy habitat.

Eastern Towhee

Brown Thrasher

Amused, I watched as the brown thrasher used their long, curved beak to toss aside sticks and leaves with gusto. Their yellow eye with its large black pupil appeared to be open extra wide as if anxious not to miss any potential snack they had just uncovered. Once, they picked up an acorn and seemed to assess its value before tossing it aside.

Every single morning of Loon Camp we were treated to a concert from at least one, and often two, brown thrashers singing their hearts out, competing for females and territories in their own version of American Idol. As soon as the pairs start nesting, the guys will quiet down and focus their energy on more important tasks, like assisting with incubating their 2-6 eggs. These birds likely spend all year in the favorable climate of South Carolina, but across the Southeast are other brown thrashers who will soon be migrating north, just a little bit behind the loons. Their concert tour continues! Plan to attend one of their performances at dawn in your local shrubbery.

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar opens for registration on April 1st at 9:00 a.m.! The Museum is closed until early May to allow for construction of our new exhibit, The Wetland Way. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

The Loons of Lake Jocassee

Loons bobbed on the early morning ripples as our pontoon boat sped across the open waters of Lake Jocassee, South Carolina. “First loon!” someone exclaimed gleefully, but otherwise we ignored them. At least for the moment.

When Brooks Wade, our host and pontoon captain, crossed an imaginary line at the divide between the big, round lower lake and the narrow arms of the upper lake, he cut the engine. The sudden quiet gave Jay Mager a chance to explain our task. “We’re counting all the loons in our half of the lake,” he said. “The other pontoon will count the lower lake.” Brooks pointed out the imaginary center line of the upper lake, and we began puttering up the west side, counting all the loons between the center line and our nearest shore. We’d tally the east side on the way out.

Looking at a map of Lake Jocassee, it’s easy to tell that this was once a watershed of steep stream gorges cutting deep into the “Blue Wall” or the southern escarpment of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Eons of water erosion—not glaciers—carved deep wrinkles in the landscape.

Then, in 1968, when Duke Energy began building the Oconee Nuclear Station, they dammed the confluence of four rivers to create a reliable source of cooling water for the plant. The 350-foot-deep-lake filled, and the atoms began splitting, in 1973. The plant is still providing electricity to one of the fastest growing states in the nation, and today, a network of dams in this watershed creates hydroelectric power, too.

The outstanding water quality of Lake Jocassee also provides excellent winter habitat for Common Loons. Brooks got a major case of loon love in February 2010, when he began his job as a campground host by walking down to the edge of the lake and hearing a loon wail. Although they were newly married and had just moved from Florida, he told his wife Kay that they were never leaving.

Scientists used to think that almost all our Common Loons spend the winter on salt water. From across the northern lakes, loons migrate to both coasts and the gulf each fall to avoid ice-up. After starting a business giving pontoon tours, Brooks began to think that the number of loons he saw each winter on this freshwater lake was significant.

In 2016, Brooks searched out LoonWatch at Northland College online and sent then-coordinator Erica LeMoine photos of wintering loons on Lake Jocassee. She put him in touch with former Northland College professor Jim Paruk, who by then was working for the Biodiversity Research Institute in Maine. Within a matter of weeks, Jim flew in and partnered with Brooks to capture and band the first Lake Jocassee loon, which someone named Bob.

Bob is identifiable by colored bands on his legs. His frequent preening allows researchers to observe the bands and identify him. We were very glad to see him again this year!
Photo by Emily Stone.

The next year, Jim brought in his colleague, Jay Mager, an expert on loon vocalizations teaching at Ohio Northern University, and together with Earthwatch they hosted week-long loon research experiences for adult volunteers for three years. By then, Brooks and Kay had started their own non-profit outdoor education program, and they took over the organization of the “Jocassee Loon Camp,” with Jay Mager and Jim Paruk each leading a different week of research.

The first day of Jay’s week begins with a count of all the loons on Lake Jocassee, which is why I was now puttering through the upper lake on a pontoon boat with Jay, Brooks, and five other “loonatics” for the second year in a row. With eyes scanning and binoculars at the ready, we spotted solo loons fishing in the deep water, rafts of loons preening near shore, and gaggles of smaller waterfowl like horned grebes, too. Jay kept the tally on his data sheet, and we were free to be amazed by the loons.

Here, on their winter habitat, the loons are finishing up a “catastrophic molt” where they replace all their feathers, including flight feathers, and are water-bound for the duration. As a result, the loons here can look pretty scruffy. Many of their heads are grayish brown, and their black checkerboard backs are uneven. Stray feathers stick out at funny angles, and discarded feathers float on the waves after strenuous bouts of preening each day.

Loons molt their flight feathers while on their winter habitat. Photo by Emily Stone. 

One particularly avid preener’s antics showed off a specific combination of silver, red, blue, and yellow bands on his legs. This was one of just a few loons banded on Lake Jocassee five or six years ago. He yodeled when they captured him, which is how the researchers know that he’s a male. This loon was spotted in the summer on Upper Cormorant Lake in Minnesota. He was back on Lake Jocassee again to demonstrate that at least some loons return to the same winter habitat each year. Gathering this type of information is one of the main goals of banding birds.

The loons of Lake Jocassee don’t look like the Common Loons we know from summer in the Northwoods because they are in the middle of molting from winter brown to their snazzy summer tuxedoes. However, this particular loon was captured on Lake Jocassee in the winter, and outfitted with colored leg bands. Then he was spotted again last summer in Minnesota! Long-term research on the behavior of individual loons has been essential in advancing our understanding of their lives and conservation needs. Photo by Emily Stone.

The hours ticked off as we counted a dozen…two dozen…then eight dozen loons! We’d wound our way up and down every single narrow passage in the upper lake, admired cascading waterfalls, and enjoyed a calm winter day with ample sunshine. By the end, and with the tally of a second boat that explored the main lake basin, we counted 139 loons—nine more than last year!

All eighteen of us loonatics headed to shore—wind-burned and happy—ready for the next day’s task: observing and recording loon behavior.

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

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

*Portions of this article were originally published in 2025.

“Whooo” will we see?

After watching Canada jays, red squirrels, and boreal chickadees stuff their bellies with peanut butter at the Admiral Road feeders in Sax-Zim Bog, my family and I wandered over to the Friends of Sax-Zim Bog Welcome Center and took a walk down Gray Jay Way—a trail that was named before Canada jays had their name changed in 2018.

Gray jays became Canada jays again in 2018. Photo by Emily Stone. 

Mid-afternoon is a notoriously quiet time for birdwatching, but we admired the whimsical shapes of the black spruce and tamarack trees in the bog and enjoyed the sunshine of an unseasonably warm day. Hummocks of sphagnum moss, bog rosemary, leatherleaf, Labrador tea, and other bog plants had begun to emerge from beneath the drifts, so I often focused down.

A flutter of movement caught my eye. Crouching low, I spotted a tiny moth crawling on the glass-like jumble of half-melted snow. Brown wings folded over their back in a nondescript robe with a short fringe along the trailing edge. Thin antennae sensed the world. Uploading a photo to iNaturalist, I was amazed when the app provided a fairly confident identification: Acleris oxycoccana. According to Wikipedia, their caterpillars feed on leatherleaf—the plant I’d found them near, and the adults have been observed flying around in nearly every month of the year!

This tiny moth eats leatherleaf in bogs and has been observed in every month of the year! Photo by Emily Stone.

Seeing a moth seemed to signal that evening was coming, and our thoughts turned to owls. Sax-Zim Bog is famous for hosting rare owls. Last year was an incredible irruption year when great gray owls, boreal owls, and snowy owls visited from their homes farther north. This year has been much quieter. A few great gray owls nest here, but lately they’ve been secretive.

This is the southern edge of northern hawk owl breeding range, and sometimes more northern residents migrate here in the winter, too. We’d heard that a northern hawk owl was hunting at the edge of a field on some of the private land that makes up the patchwork of ownership in Sax-Zim Bog Important Bird Area in Northern Minnesota, so off we went!

The line of birders with spotting scopes and giant cameras on tripods was much easier to spot than the owl. She blended in with the brush at the base of aspen trees in the fencerow. Northern hawk owls are relatively small raptors who act more like hawks. She was using her excellent vision to look for voles in the field below. Hawk owls hunt more with their eyes than most other owls, who tend to rely on precision hearing for catching prey under grass and snow.

When she finally swooped down and then back up to a new perch in the aspen tree, we got a better look. Her breast was finely barred with brown stripes and the shoulder she turned toward us was dark brown. Dark feathers outlined her face and highlighted her yellow eyes. After a while she swooped down and disappeared again among the brush.

Northern hawk owls hunt more in the daylight, and more with their eyes than a typical owl. Photo by Larry Stone.

We’d also heard reports of both a long-eared and a short-eared owl hunting in a particular grassy field, so we went to investigate.

Long-eared owls look a bit like great horned owls, with two feather tufts (neither ears nor horns) sticking up above a tan facial disk. While they nest in the Northwoods and throughout Eurasia, somehow they’ve never been on my radar. They are secretive, and very nocturnal. Using precision hearing they can catch prey in complete darkness! During the breeding season only, they give a series of powerful but monotone whooo notes—not nearly as charismatic as the barred owl’s “who cooks for you?” call. The last rays of a setting Sun turned the field golden as we watched. This is where they like to hunt…but where was the owl?

Long-eared owl, Photo by By Pavlen, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80979664

We also hoped to spot the short-eared owl, another hunter of open country. I have seen these widely distributed owls in two very different places. Once, while driving along the Dalton Highway in Alaska, one swooped over the pipeline—not too far from some caribou! And again, at dusk in Haleakala National Park in Hawaii, the local subspecies, called Pueo, soared over the switchbacks in the park road.

Short-eared owls can travel long distances even over the ocean, which is probably how they came to be found in Minnesota, Alaska, Hawaii, and all over the world. A few even breed in Wisconsin! This photo is from Alaska. Photo by Emily Stone.

This is the Pueo, a subspecies of short-eared owl who live in Hawaii!

Scanning the horizon for owls, I finally spotted a black silhouette perched at the top of a far tree. My binoculars were no match for the distance and the dusk, but another birder with a powerful lens stopped to see what we were looking at. As the shape took flight, he snapped a few quick photos. Dark body, shoulders, and wrists contrasted with white trailing edges in a pattern that was unmistakable—a dark morph of a rough-legged hawk.

This is a rough-legged hawk from a different winter, probably a female because of the dark belly band, and probably in Iowa. The one we saw had even darker shoulders with no white mottling...at least that we could see in the dim light. Photo by Larry Stone.

These incredible raptors nest all around the top of the globe and migrate to the middle latitudes for the winter. Feathers all the way to their toes give them their name and the ability to withstand frigid temperatures while hunting lemmings and voles wherever they go.

The rough-legged hawk disappeared over the far trees, and the Sun sank below the horizon. We decided to head home. Thirty-six minutes after we left, more patient birders reported on social media that the long-eared owl came out to hunt. That’s the way it is with birding, and we wouldn’t have it any other way—now we have an excuse to go back to Sax-Zim Bog next winter!

Sunset + birds = joy!

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

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

Peanut Butter Saves the Jay

A cacophony of sweet bird calls added brightness to the sunny morning as my family pulled up to a yard full of bird feeders in Sax-Zim Bog Important Bird Area about an hour northwest of Duluth, Minn. As we watched, the dark line of fir trees came alive with movement, and soon the feeders were lined with the striking yellow, black, and white bodies of evening grosbeaks. After a dim look at just a few grosbeaks outside the Museum a few weeks ago, I was thrilled to see such a flashy flock!

Grosbeaks have a habit of descending on feeders in the morning, and then disappearing by midday. As we watched, groups of ten to twenty birds flushed off the feeders and disappeared into the forest behind us. The cacophony quieted, and we decided to move on.

Our next stop was another set of bird feeders on Admiral Road. Here, staff from the Friends of Sax-Zim Bog keep black oil sunflower seeds stocked, and smear peanut on logs and branches. As I stood up out of the car to get a better view, a soft gray bullet about the size of a robin zoomed right over my head!

Canada jays are one of the northern birds that draw people to Sax-Zim Bog. Here, on about 300 square miles of public and private land, the clay soils of an old glacial lake plain hold water, and the cold, wet climate has perpetuated a thick layer of peat on top. Bog species such as sedges, tamaracks, and black spruce give the landscape a scraggly look, and open areas provide good hunting grounds for rare species of owls. According to the Friends of Sax-Zim Bog at saxzim.org, it’s a “'magic mix’ of habitats that boreal birds love.”

It didn’t take long for the Canada jay and their mate to return to the feeders. They ignored the seeds, though, and went straight for a huge glob of peanut butter. Through my camera’s zoom, I watched a jay fill their mouth over and over with the sticky, energy-rich goo. Blue jays have a pouch in their throat they use to carry acorns and other food items. I couldn’t find a reliable resource describing the same thing in Canada jays, but I snapped a photo of a jay with their throat distended!

Canada jays are opportunistic omnivores, and they consume everything from small mammals, nestling birds, carrion, and arthropods to fungi, fruits, and seeds. They have been observed picking engorged winter ticks off the backs of moose. Anyone who has camped within their range knows that these “camp robbers” are not shy about snatching up a crust of bread off the picnic table, or nabbing a marshmallow before it can become a s’more.

The evening grosbeaks we saw earlier wander great distances to find good food sources in the winter, but Canada jays stay put. In order to survive, Canada jays hide away food all summer and fall. They coat mouthfuls of food in sticky saliva, then glue the boluses in tree crevices, under lichens, in evergreen needles, and behind the flaky bark of spruce and jack pine trees. A Canada jay may hide 1,000 separate caches of food in a single, 17-hour day. “Scatter-hoarding” is the technical term for this technique. “Canada jays have a memory like a Vegas card counter,” writes Joe Rankin in Northern Woodlands magazine, referring to the fact that the jays seem to be able to retrieve 80 percent of their food-filled saliva balls.

At least a portion of the lost 20 percent is due to spoilage. Some boreal tree species may contribute antibacterial compounds that help the food stored under their bark stay fresh. But that’s not enough. Cold temperatures are necessary to prevent cached food, even chunks of meat, from spoiling. One study in Algonquin Provincial Park, conducted by researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario, found that freeze-thaw events in autumn have a “significant detrimental impact on the quality and/or quantity of cached food available to Canada jays” the following winter. At the southern edge of their range, the refrigerator is broken.

Soon, both Canada jays swooped from the feeding station, back over my head, and disappeared into the forest behind me. Were they taking peanut butter to their chicks? These intrepid birds nest in February and March! That’s one reason their food caches are so important. Those same researchers in Algonquin National Park have found that supplemental feeding by humans allows Canada jay chicks to grow faster and fledge earlier. Some people have worried that human-provided food doesn’t offer the same levels of protein and vitamins that birds are accustomed to from their wild diet, but the researchers found only positive impacts.

Globally, Canada jays are common, and seem to be doing fine in the northern reaches of their range. Here at their southern limits, those globs of peanut butter might be the key not only to seeing these beautiful birds today, but also in years to come.

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

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

Fishers Looking For Love

My skis chattered over rough snow on the Valhalla Ski Trails that are perched on the spine of the Bayfield Peninsula. Several loops zoom from dark stands of pines through the lacy twigs of hardwood forests. The groomer had been out earlier that day, but in places where the previous day’s warmth had turned icy overnight, the surface had crumbled.

Still, the snow had enough give that when my ski buddy shouted “Check out these tracks!” I could snowplow to a stop and go back to look. Around the office, we’ve been asking each other the question, “If you could instantly be great at any Olympic sport, which would you choose?” Several people have mentioned skiing, but that doesn’t appeal to me. I prefer to ski slow enough that I can stop and look at tracks.

Male fishers travel widely in search of females in late winter and early spring. This one left a 1-2-1 loping pattern in soft snow at the Valhalla Ski Trails. Photo by Emily Stone.

These tracks went loping off through the forest in a winding trail. Unlike a wolf or a lynx, who usually walk or run in an even pattern of left, right, left, right, this Being had made groups of three or four big tracks separated by longer intervals. Each track showed five toes with pointy claws. This is the classic 1-2-1 lope pattern of a fisher. One front paw landed first, by itself in the back of the group (1). Then the other front paw and one hind paw landed side-by-side in the middle (2). Finally, the last hind paw left a single track at the front of the group (1).

From the depth that the toes had clawed into the snow, and also the smooth surface on the bottom of the tracks, we determined that this big weasel had been wandering around yesterday afternoon or evening, when the snow was still soft. Those long claws, when used in combination with rear ankle joints that can rotate 180 degrees, allow fishers to climb down trees headfirst!

Female fishers may be climbing trees this time of year as they look for a good place to have their young. Hollow trees are common den sites, as are rock crevices, slash piles, abandoned beaver lodges in dry ponds, and old porcupine dens. Inside the female, eggs fertilized last spring have only just begun to develop. A few kits will be born—blind and helpless—in late March to early April. Just a week or two later she will come into estrus and leave the den briefly to mate, but the new embryos won’t develop further until next February. Meanwhile, she will spend four months caring for the kits.

We continued skiing through the mature forest, admiring big trees and snags that the Forest Service has left for wildlife habitat. Fishers prefer closed canopy forests with lots of fallen logs. The cutover era, when most of Wisconsin’s forests were logged and then burned, had a devastating impact on fishers. Not only did these events remove their habitat, the influx of people led to overharvesting fishers for their fur. Fishers were absent from Wisconsin by the early 1900s.

I’ve heard a story that it was foresters who lobbied for the reintroduction of fishers because the number of porcupines had increased so much that they were nibbling the bark off too many trees. Porcupines are well-defended against predators, but the low, slinky posture of fishers allows them to dart in and attack a porcupine’s face repeatedly. Once the porky is incapacitated, a fisher will flip them over and access their unprotected belly. Fishers also eat squirrels, and compete with lynx for snowshoe hares. When fishers eat mice and voles, spores from truffles and other fungi in the preys’ stomachs also pass through the fisher’s digestive tract and may be dispersed far and wide.

Despite their name, fishers don’t really eat fish. The word seems to come from a European term “fitch,” which refers to a similar animal on that continent. The ancestors of fishers likely migrated to North America from eastern Asia between 2.5 and 5 million years ago. Sometimes called fisher-cats, they are not felines, nor have the rumors that they commonly eat cats stood up to scientific inquiry.

On the far side of the ski trail loop, we coasted past another loping line of fisher tracks, almost certainly made by the same animal. Early spring is when male fishers travel widely in search of mating opportunities. I often see their tracks in the softening snow as they tour their 9-15 square mile home ranges that overlap the smaller territories of several females.

Whether the Wisconsin DNR decided to reintroduce fishers for porcupine control, or just because they belong on the landscape, the recovery effort that began in the 1950s was successful. By the 1980s there were enough fishers to allow trapping again, and today their population in the state is estimated at over 10,000. Even so, I rarely see these dark brown weasels, except on my trail camera, or in my imagination as I watch their tracks lope off into the snowy woods.

While there are an estimated 10,000 fishers in Wisconsin, I rarely see them in the wild. Trail cameras are a much easier way to catch a glimpse of one. Photo by Emily Stone.

Emily’s third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

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