Prairie Chickens at Dawn

The sun had set on a lovely, summer-like afternoon…and now it rose on the cold, gray, damp of early spring. Well, at least I assume it did. The only sign of our star’s presence was a gradual decrease in my reliance on headlights.

Thanks to the magic of GPS, I managed to find the school bus parked in a soggy gravel lot in the middle of farm country. I darted through the raindrops and claimed a seat behind a few other groggy people. More straggled on, and as the 6:00 a.m. meeting time arrived, volunteer coordinators Sharon Schwab & Dan O’Connell introduced themselves and took attendance. Seven of about 20 registered participants had decided not to brave the cold rain for a rare chance to see prairie chickens.

This grassland birding bus tour was part of the annual Wisconsin Prairie Chicken Festival. I’d been invited to give a talk at the library in Wisconsin Rapids the night before, and couldn’t pass up an opportunity to see a new bird. While the greater prairie chicken’s cousins, the sharp-tailed grouse, live a little closer to me up in Northern Wisconsin, I’ve always been too busy building exhibits in April to reserve a dauntingly early spot in a bird blind.

April is the best month to view both birds because that’s when they dance.

Prairie chickens and sharp-tailed grouse both start their breeding season with the avian version of a night club. Males get together on open, elevated, flat areas with short grass and good visibility called a lek. These criteria make it easy to spot danger. It also makes it easier for the males to be seen.

Once a group of prairie chicken males has gathered, they all dance like crazy to attract the girls. Not only does dancing together attract more females, it also lets the males compete for attention, and the females can choose the best mate. First, the guys extend orange eye combs, lower their head, and raise two tufts of neck feathers that stick up like bunny ears. Then they stamp their feet, click their tails, and shake their wings to the ground. The most vibrant move comes when they channel their inner frog by inflating bright orange air sacs in their neck…and boom.

We bumped down gravel roads for about 20 minutes before the bus rolled to a stop. The Paul J. Olson Wildlife Area was to our backs, but Sharon and Dan were using binoculars to scan the farm field across the road. “One just flew!” someone exclaimed. And we all looked harder.

Can you see any birds???

Voices called out like popcorn with sightings, and eventually Dan said he could see seven males. I’d forgotten my binoculars, and was relying on the zoom lens of my camera to get a better look. It took some doing, but eventually those bright orange air sacs caught my eye, and I focused on a displaying male prairie chicken.

Not my best photo ever, but that definitely shows a male prairie chicken!

Then someone asked the bus driver to cut the engine.

As the rumble quieted and everyone finished their last sentence, a ghostly sound filtered through the gray mist. Oooo-oooo-oo…the sound of prairie chickens booming.

Listen Here: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Greater_Prairie-Chicken/sounds# 

Eerie though it was, the sound also reminded me of whimsical amusements like blowing across the top of a pop bottle, or swinging a hollow tube through the air. Males make the sound by passing air through their syrinx. The orange air sacs—which are extensions of the esophagus—amplify the sound. Another name for prairie chickens is Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus, or “drummer of love." Another name for this place is a booming ground.

4-21-2023 greater prairie chicken photo by Chrissy McClarren and Andy Reago, iNaturalist.com, CCO.

Whatever they’re called, there aren’t many left—of either the bird or the place. Prairie chickens used to roam the entire state, and now they exist only in a handful of counties in central Wisconsin. Market hunting in the early 1900s was hard on them, but habitat loss is the most critical factor in their demise—and their potential recovery.

We heard lots of red-winged blackbirds, but no more groups of prairie chickens on the remainder of the bus tour. Back at the site of the Prairie Chicken Festival, local famers, conservationists (often the same people), students, and families gathered to learn about efforts to restore habitat for these wild birds.

Greater prairie chickens require the largest grassland areas of any bird in Wisconsin. Within that, their habitat is diverse. In spring, open leks are key. During the summer, females need dense brush for nesting safely and open areas with lots of insects to forage with their chicks. They don’t move far for winter, but benefit from good cover and cropland for foraging. Like their cousins the ruffed grouse, they might also perch in aspen trees to nibble on buds.

For all the efforts being made to save the last several hundred prairie chickens in Wisconsin, their future here is uncertain. But the Wisconsin Prairie Chicken Festival shows that there are people who care.

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

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is closed for construction of our new exhibit: The Northwoods ROCKS! It will open on May 2, 2023. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Spring Arrives with Lois Nestel

All the talk these days is about spring. When volunteers arrive at the Museum to paint or construct or hang up something for our new exhibit (also a sign of spring!) we spend the first few minutes talking about the unbelievable warmth, arriving birds, muddy driveways, the rapidly melting snow, and the plow piles that we suspect may never melt.

With all this chatter, I found myself wanting to contemplate more quietly the things we exclaim about every spring. Going to my bookshelf, I selected a slim volume on cream-colored paper: Wayside Wanderings by Lois Nestel. Lois was the Museum’s founding naturalist and director. Although we never met, I love reading her words, admiring her sketches and photographs, and learning from her quiet wisdom.

About spring, Lois wrote:

“Poor, weary, battered spring, after many reversals, seems to have finally arrived. The time of emergence is upon us. The hibernators are out. Chipmunks, tails straight up, scurry enthusiastically about as if checking up on last year’s unfinished business. Gophers and woodchucks search for succulent green spears or drowse dull-eyed in the sun. The deer have left their wintering yards. The tracks of bears once again mark the forest trails. Skunks dig for grubs in the softening soil and leave muddy imprints of slender paws on receding snow.

“The sap is rising in the trees. The pines have taken on a brighter, livelier hue and the buds of aspen and maple are swelling. On a recent day I watched purple finches drinking sparkling sap droplets from winter-damaged twigs of the box elders. This member of the maple family has sap only slightly less sweet than the sugar maple.

“Insects bask on sun-warmed siding, a mourning cloak butterfly, emerging from winter quarters, flutters aimlessly by and, by night, an occasional moth flutters against a lighted window.

Mourning cloak butterflies spend the winter as adults and are some of the first to emerge in spring. Photo by Emily Stone.

“A swirl of warm, aroma-laden air from a hillside, a draft of cool cleanliness from a hollow may awaken vague stirrings of the spirit; yet we can only appreciate but cannot interpret, as do animals, all that the scented air contains. But thus may we, at no cost and little effort, enrich our lives; if we fail to do so we have deprived only ourselves.

“In this season, when one is keenly aware of the scents of the earth, the fragrance of spring flowers is expected and perhaps taken for granted: The delicate perfume of arbutus and the tiny white violets that grow on moist soil, the richness of wild roses and, later, the heavy fragrance of pyrolas. But there are drifts of odor so elusive that, caught with one breath they are gone the next. The faint tang of newly opening leaves defies description—a touch of spiciness, an intangible freshness that is purity, yet something more.

“There’s a new note in the woodlands these days. It comes, in part, from those noisy beauties, the blue jays. Their extensive repertoire includes the usual raucous cries of “jay, jay” intermingled with clickings and grindings, a shrill hawk-like cry, strange bell tones, and a variety of whistles. Now, though, we hear in addition low, sweet warblings and see the swaggering showoff sidling up a branch to diffidently offer a choice seed or other tidbit to another of their kind. The reason is obvious. The courting season is at hand and neither snow nor cold can long discourage it.

“Other of our resident birds are sharing the same inclination. Increasingly as spring comes on we hear the sweet two-toned call of the chickadee, a drawn-out sound that seems to say “phoebe,” but in a different way from the bird of that name.

“There will be days when spring turns her face away, but her feet are set firmly upon the path and she will progress in her own time. Who are we to insist that the weather meet our demands? We would appreciate the warmth and beauty less if we had not endured the harsher elements. To be aware of the joy and beauty of each day, each season, is the fulfillment of a rich and exciting life.”

Thanks for sharing your wisdom, Lois. May all of our lives be as rich and exciting as the one you once lived day by beautiful day.

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

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is closed for construction of our new exhibit: The Northwoods ROCKS! It will open on May 2, 2023. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

The Glowing Attraction of Spiders

The muggy air turned cool as darkness fell. Armed with two flashlights and a camera, I crept from the quiet street into the yard and hoped no one would see me. Turning on the bigger of the two flashlights, I swept the beam from side to side. Bright stripes glowed, dark circles sucked in the light, and glitter covered everything.

Black-eyed Susan in 365 nm UV light. Photo by Emily Stone.

Illuminated by ultraviolet light, the Museum’s pollinator gardens were magical on that July evening in 2021. Juggling my camera, regular flashlight, and UV flashlight, I captured photos of the patterns on flower faces that are usually invisible to human eyes. While black-eyed Susan petals look yellow in daylight, my UV flashlight revealed a black hole at their center. Impatiens flowers in a pot showed subtle lines that would guide a bee toward nectar. And everywhere, grains of pollen glowed like fairy dust.

Among all these colors and patterns, my eyes kept catching on tiny beings shining like stars. I looked closer. With eight legs and an adorably round cephalothorax each, the luminous spots revealed themselves as crab spiders. I knew that a couple of our local crab spider species camouflage themselves on blossoms by turning yellow or white, and then wait to ambush pollinators. But fluorescent crab spiders? That was new. I stored away the observation and moved on with a busy summer.

Cab you spot the crab spider who is perfectly camouflaged with the flower? Photo by Emily Stone.

Flash forward to a couple of days ago. I’ve been listening to science writer Ed Young’s new book, Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, which just won the 2022 Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award. In the chapter about sight, Young makes a passing reference to the fact that crab spiders may attract more bees to their flowers by fluorescing in UV light. The proverbial lightbulb went off in my head, illuminating memories of my nocturnal foray in the pollinator garden.

With just a little digging, and the help of Google Scholar, I discovered, for starters, that most (or even all?) spider blood fluoresces. It isn’t called blood, though. The technical term is hemolymph. It’s bluish-green in regular light, and sloshes around inside a spider without the constraint of veins.

I wasn’t seeing spider blood in the garden, though. Some spiders use the fluorophores from their blood to make their exoskeleton fluoresce. Since bees and many other insects can see UV light, but don’t necessarily have high visual acuity, the glowing crab spiders seem to appeal to them, and flowers with a crab spider attract more bees than flowers without.

(That particular research was done on crab spiders in Australia, but other studies have found that fluorescence has evolved multiple times in the crab spider family tree, so I’m going to assume that if someone studied our Northwoods crab spiders, they’d find similar trends.)

Spiders further exploit this tactic by making themselves as visible as possible. While we barely see a yellow spider on a yellow flower, some crab spiders choose to sit on a UV-dark part of the flower, so a bee would see a bright spot on a dark background…and mistake it for a nectar guide. Being camouflaged to mammal eyes and highly attractive to insect eyes at the same time is quite a trick!

Not every spider fluoresces on the outside, though. They seem to be able to choose whether or not to let their fluorophores shine through from their hemolymph based on age and sex. Adult male crab spiders don’t fluoresce brightly. They prioritize reproduction over food, and spend most of their time wandering in search of females. They are likely safer being incognito.

Immature crab spiders of both sexes do fluoresce brightly. I saw tons of these tiny ones on flowers in my flashlight beam that night, and knew I could never find them again in daylight. A study from 2017 hypothesized that these small spiders seek out places on flowers where their fluorescence matches the background in order to hide from their UV-focused predators—jumping spiders.

Tiny, immature crab spiders may be able to use their fluorescence to camouflage themselves against similarly fluorescent flowers. Photo with 365 nm UV light by Emily Stone.

Following the original study that Ed Young mentioned in his book, adult female crab spiders are big and bright. They are using their fluorescence to attract the large prey necessary to fuel the production of a large clutch of eggs.

The luminous fluorescence of adult female crab spiders attracts more insects to the flowers where they wait in ambush. Photo with 365 nm UV light by Emily Stone.

There’s more, I’m sure, to be learned about the crab spiders and their glowing blood. For now, I’m thrilled that a single sentence in a book led me to a better understanding of a mystery I’d almost stopped wondering about. Many months after I ventured into that garden with a UV flashlight, it is still illuminating my world.


“The majesty of nature is not restricted to canyons and mountains…To perceive the world through other senses is to find splendor in familiarity and the sacred in the mundane. Wonders exist in a backyard garden…”

--Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us



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

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is closed for construction of our new exhibit: The Northwoods ROCKS! It will open on May 2, 2023. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Wings in Winter

Now is not the time of year I usually think about butterflies. So the brown, leaf-like shape on the giant snow pile outside my kitchen window caught me by surprise. I had to strap on snowshoes to go check it out in the late afternoon sun.

Lovely shades of brown and cream, combined with the rough line of the trailing edge of the wings would have given this butterfly excellent camouflage against fallen leaves on the forest floor. Even the big notch on the wing, likely removed by a bird’s beak, just served to further disguise the insect’s shape.

With temperatures near freezing, the butterfly wasn’t moving. I crept right up to their face with my macro camera and captured bunny-level fuzz from antennae to chest. Photos uploaded to the iNaturalist website suggested an identification of Compton tortoiseshell, Nymphalis l-album. If it had been warm enough for the butterfly to open their wings, I would have seen beautiful orange and brown markings and scalloped edges.

A closer look at my photos showed only four legs instead of an insect’s typical 6 legs. Compton tortoiseshells are part of the brush-footed butterfly group in which the first pair of legs are small, fuzzy, and tucked up against their body. They are sometimes used to clean the butterfly’s antennae.

As I read more about the Compton tortoiseshell’s life history, their appearance so early in spring began to make sense. The caterpillars of this species munch on aspen, birch, and willow leaves during the peak of summer, and then metamorphose into adults in July. The adults rest and feed throughout the fall, storing up fat but staying in a state of diapause where they don’t become fully reproductive right away.

Like bears, butterflies will enter a hibernaculum in late fall. They might find shelter under shaggy pieces of tree bark, in cracks and crevices, or under the eaves of old buildings. The butterfly I found was very close to the eaves of an old, mossy shed, which seems like a cozy place to hide. Some members of this species may cluster in a group, and others may even migrate south to increase their chances at a warm bedroom for the winter.

When overwintered adults emerge in the spring (usually not until April) they are an incredible 10 months old! In contrast, many species of butterflies and moths only live a few weeks as adults. Compton tortoiseshells survive cold temperatures by being fuzzy, by basking in the sun (which is what the one I found likely was trying to do), and by filling their body with antifreeze.

Compton tortoiseshells get their energy by sipping on tree sap from sapsucker wells, juice from rotten fruits, and scat—instead of relying solely on flower nectar. The flexibility of their diet allows these butterflies to survive throughout the Northern Hemisphere from northern Wisconsin to Alaska, Canada, Romania, Ukraine, the Himalayas, and Japan.

They aren’t the only butterfly who overwinters in the adult stage. As I’ve written before, mourning cloaks, eastern commas, gray commas, and red admirals all join that group, as does the famous monarch butterfly. The big difference with the monarch, of course, is that the ones in Wisconsin fly south to Mexico instead of hiding out in the eaves around here.

No matter where the butterflies overwinter, finding shelter is essential. I witnessed that firsthand with a group of Museum members on our trip to the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Michoacán, Mexico, last December. We were amazed by the thick clusters of monarchs clinging to the boughs of oyamel fir trees on the mountain tops. The butterflies choose their winter home to ensure that they stay warm enough to avoid freezing and cool enough to slow their metabolism and conserve limited energy stores.

Monarchs in a cluster on an oyamel fir bough in Mexico last December. Photo by Emily Stone. 

While it would be almost impossible to count the monarchs individually, scientists estimate the population size by measuring the area turned orange by their wings. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the National Commission of Protected Natural Areas in Mexico (CONANP) just released the winter 2022–23 monarch butterfly population counts: they declined 22% from last year.

Illegal logging in the Reserves is often blamed for the decline in the size of the winter population, but this year, more than half of the tree loss was caused by fires, storms, and pests—all symptoms of climate change.

Dr. Karen Oberhauser, director of the UW–Madison Arboretum, contends that the weather monarchs encounter during spring migration in Texas (happening now!) has the biggest impact on their ability to rebound their numbers through breeding. Summer habitat—reduced since the invention of herbicide-tolerant crops resulted in less milkweed—is also essential.

While we may not be thinking about butterflies during this long winter, they are out there surviving…hopefully.

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

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is closed for construction of our new exhibit: The Northwoods ROCKS! It will open on May 2, 2023. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Aurora Magic

My snowshoes sank into drifts softened by the warm day. At the frozen lakeshore, the view opened up to a curtain of lights.

Sometimes I’ve gone out to look for the northern lights and have squinted and wondered if that faint glow was really them. Last night there was no question. Vertical rays of light rose from an invisible line a hand’s width above the horizon. They formed a curtain that rippled as if in a breeze. Now and then a particular ray would brighten and reach higher, and the activity shifted from due north across the lake, to west down the channel, and back east toward a little resort on the point.

I imagined the solar winds out there, rushing toward Earth, transferring energy into our magnetosphere, and pushing electrons there down the magnetic field toward us. As those electrons encountered nitrogen and different forms of oxygen, the excited molecules emitted light like a neon sign.

Northern lights above the horizon of Lake Namakagon. 
10:39 p.m. on March 23, 2023

Although the auroras are always made of colored light, I saw only white…or maybe it was pale green? That’s just a function of my night vision and the sensitive rod cells around the outsides of my retinas picking up light but not color. Cameras, especially with long exposure times, can gather more light than our eyes and help us see the greens, reds, and purples of the aurora more vividly.

Standing out on the cold snow, I texted a few friends about the aurora and soaked it in. Soon there was a lull, and I headed inside.

While rinsing out my toothbrush, my phone buzzed. “The sky is dancing!” wrote my friend. I threw on a warmer coat and headed back outside. In just an hour, the temperature had dropped enough that the snow crust supported me firmly. And yes, the sky was dancing.

Pillars, curtains, and swirls of light danced along the horizon. As the beams strengthened and the flashing increased, the display shifted from the Little Dipper into Cassiopeia. This “Westward Traveling Surge” is a phenomenon associated with sudden brightening and activity in the aurora called a substorm. Substorms happen when a plasma flow short-circuits and is suddenly flung toward Earth causing a surge of activity.

My jaw dropped as the pillars shot upward, and then overhead and behind me. Light danced across even the southern sky. And directly above me, the curtains turned to curving bands that flashed, wiggled, and swirled. After almost losing my balance, I gave in and lay down on the snow to look straight up.

Substorms were first described in the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58 when scientists from all over the world coordinated their efforts to observe the aurora simultaneously. That same effort also led to the discovery of the Auroral Oval—imagine the northern lights originating from crowns sitting on top of the North Pole...and the South Pole, too!

When we are south of the Auroral Oval, we only see the sides of those faint curtains of light on the northern horizon. When the oval widens or shifts far enough south, the light curtains appear straight above us, and you can look up at the bottom of the curtains instead of at their side. Then, the corona appears. This psychedelic, converging pattern at the top of the sky is rare to see and highly sought after by aurora chasers.

I’ve long thought that auroras were most visible at night just because we can only see them when it’s otherwise dark, and most visible in winter for the same reason. As it turns out, the best northern lights occur around midnight, when the Sun is on the far side of the Earth. You may have seen a diagram of the solar winds hitting the Earth’s magnetic field, then curving around the planet and creating a tail on the far side. The best auroras come from that tail, and thus are visible around midnight. In addition, cracks that form in our magnetosphere near the equinoxes make impressive auroras more common in March and September.

I also thought that northern lights were always caused by coronal mass ejections (CME) of plasma, but this event came from a hole in the Sun’s corona where the magnetic field is open to space, allowing high-speed solar wind streams to escape. The coronal hole that caused this storm is reportedly thirty times the size of Earth. Luckily, the solar winds from coronal holes are less likely to interrupt radio communication, disrupt power stations, and damage satellites.

“The best of my life!” “An unbelievable experience!” “The sky was alive!” “Magia!” “Taika!” “Magic!” This was the most spectacular auroral display in many peoples’ experience. Thanks to social media, I could see photos and exclamations from Iowa, Indiana, Alaska, Canada, Poland, Denmark, Finland, Australia, Tasmania, and more.

The same Sun gives us all the energy we need to live, and the Earth’s magnetic field protects us when that energy becomes intense. Together, they make magic.

(If you'd like to be notified that you should go outside and look for the aurora, there are several websites and apps out there that can help. I had recently downloaded "My Aurora Forecast & Alerts" from Google Play, and it did indeed alert me just in time! I was also expecting the alerts because I follow Astro Bob's Astronomy for Everyone on Facebook. Bob King is in Duluth and posts about lots of neat stuff, including upcoming northern lights.)

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

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is closed for construction of our new exhibit: The Northwoods ROCKS! It will open on May 2, 2023. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Facebook Post and Frog Phenology

A Facebook notification popped up on my phone screen and I tapped it absentmindedly, mostly to make it go away. Even as the post was loading, sound erupted. Wood frogs quacked, chorus frogs crrreeked, spring peepers peeped, leopard frogs snored, toads and tree frogs trilled, green frogs plunked, and finally bullfrogs hummed.

I grinned as I scrambled to turn down the volume. The animation continued without sound—a dark blue line moving to the right across a bar graph showing which Northwoods frogs sing in each month from March through August.

I created this audio and animation in the spring of 2020 while working from home. I thought it was a sad replacement for the in-person version of a frog call chorus I should have been teaching in first grade classrooms during MuseumMobile visits.

And yet, the post went viral.

From all over the country and the world, people who were spending more time at home, and outside, and with less traffic noise, heard the frogs and were eager to identify their newly noticed neighbors. They liked and shared the post, commenting about what they were hearing in their own backyard, how the audio had startled their dog, and what beautiful memories the frog songs revealed.

Each spring since 2020, the start of real frogs calling inspires people to begin sharing the post again. By this point, the post has a reach of more than 9.5 million. Just a few days ago, the phenomenon began again—which is what prompted the notification and sound erupting from my phone!

The steady stream of new comments the post is receiving is a little disheartening, actually. Those people are hearing frogs already! A commenter from southern Missouri wrote that their daffodils are almost finished, lilac buds are close to bursting, and sugaring season is long over.

Meanwhile, my daffodils are under a mountain of a plow pile. Last year they didn’t even get uncovered soon enough to bloom. The yardstick I stuck in the snow near my subnivean thermometer tells me that we still have 30 inches on the ground. Snow continues to be in the forecast. Temperatures will plummet into the single digits tonight.

Is it wrong to yearn for daffodils in March?

I don’t remember those feelings as a kid. The seasons progressed happily from sledding to mud pies to dandelion soup, and I had little awareness that other places experienced seasons differently. With the advent of social media, I now see images of crocuses, salamanders, sunshine, and gardening slide through my feed while I look forlornly out on snow.

We call some of the negative emotions triggered by social media the “fear of missing out (FoMO).” In 2013, British psychologists Przybylski et. al. defined FoMO as the “pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent.” Most people apply the feelings to social connection, but in the Northwoods, I think FoMo should also be applied to weather.

Of course, we will experience spring eventually. And the annual arrival of spring—as it creeps up from the south—brings with it many phenological observations. Phenology is the study of when specific events happen in nature from year to year in a specific place. When do daffodils bloom? That answer will be different for each latitude, each yard, and even each side of the same house. (The south-facing side warms up faster, of course!) The answer will also differ based on the weather of that particular year.

Using my Facebook feed, I can compare the arrival of spring here to the arrival of spring around the country. Websites like JourneyNorth.org let us seek out that same information in a more organized way. They curate maps that show the arrival of robins, hummingbirds, monarch butterflies, loons, and more as they migrate back for the summer.

While the frog call animation that started my reflection on phenology indicates that we could hear wood frogs as early as the end of March, I expect that spring will be late.

Luckily, the frog call chorus already arrived at a first grade classroom near you! First the kids learned to imitate several frog sounds. Then I assigned each row of students to be a particular species. Finally, I directed the students in a full season of frog songs.

“Wood frogs begin, with peepers close behind. They keep going while leopard frogs start! Then the wood frogs and peepers stop. Bullfrogs begin. Leopard frogs go quiet, and finally in August all we’re left with are the bullfrogs. Hmm…Hmm…Hmm…Until even they are silenced by fall.” Snow comes, and we start the whole cycle over again.

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

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is closed for construction of our new exhibit: The Northwoods ROCKS! It will open on May 2, 2023. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

MORE Bear Babies

My feet were just starting to get numb from standing on the snow-packed trail when the activity over by the den changed. Students with University of Wisconsin Stevens Point’s (UWSP) Wisconsin Black Bear Project, led by Dr. Cady Sartini, plus several other wildlife professionals, were working together around the mouth of the den.

A student broke away from the group and headed to where we non-researchers were stationed out of the way. Abby was cradling something small against her chest, and the adoring smile that lit up her face gave it away: she was carrying a bear cub.

Abby, a University of Wisconsin Stevens Point’s Wisconsin Black Bear Project student researcher, snuggles a tiny black bear cub to help keep him warm while his mother is anesthetized and other researchers collect data on her. Photo by Emily Stone.

Eager hands reached out to take the cub and nestle him into a puffy winter coat. Soon more students with more cubs headed our way. Four tiny cubs were distributed among the willing volunteers. Mama bear lay anesthetized in the den, and the cubs needed our warmth.

Back in January, Dr. Sartini allowed a group of Wisconsin Master Naturalists to join her team on a reconnaissance mission to find out if this den had cubs, yearlings, or just the collared adult. As I wrote, we saw the mom’s sleepy face, and heard the grunts of two cubs. Two cubs were all I’d been expecting when I lucked into joining Dr. Sartini and her students on this data collection visit to the same den.

One of the students held a cub out toward me, and I cradled him against my chest, trying to tuck him inside my puffy coat while his long claws tangled in nylon and wool. I’d forgotten to take my hood down, and soon the anxious cub was climbing up my neck, needle-sharp claws poking and wet nose nuzzling. It was adorable, funny, and painful all at once. Climbing trees to safety is a life-saving instinct in bear cubs, and although this was the first time outside their den, their long, sharp claws were ready to go!

Kris Dew, bear project supporter, shows off the adorable feet of a cub. Photo by Emily Stone. 

Startled by the cub’s climbing, and unable to untangle him alone, I enlisted Laura Schulte, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter also covering the event, to help. Together, we got the cub off my neck and swaddled against her chest so that he was comfortable enough to stay put—although the little guy whined the entire time. Later, we discovered he was the runt of the litter at only 3.4 pounds to his brothers’ 4. They’ve likely quadrupled in size since birth just over a month ago.

A few minutes later, someone shared their cub with me. Paul Smith, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel outdoor writer who has been covering this project for 30 years, helped me get the cub settled comfortably and remarked on just how perfect the little ones are. Paul will be writing about the 45-year history of this long-term research project.

You can barely see him against my gray sweater, but there is a little cub snuggled up in my coat! 

Taking off a mitten, I reveled in the softness and warmth of this tiny wild creature, and soon he became so quiet that I’m pretty sure he was sleeping. I felt honored by his trust. Despite bears’ excellent sense of smell, there’s no evidence that a mama bear will abandon her cubs if she catches a whiff of human. And despite rumors of animal babies being scentless, this cub had plenty of his own odor.

Disrupting a den like this is undoubtedly stressful for both mother and cubs, which is why protocols and safety measures are in place. But in the 45 years that the Wisconsin Black Bear Project has been collecting data and handling cubs, the impacts have been found to be minimal. And the data gathered has proven essential for learning about and managing black bears in Wisconsin, and training students in wildlife research.

After a few minutes, Abby and a volunteer weighed each of the cubs by placing them into a cozy stocking hat and attaching a spring scale through the knit. They were sexed (all boys) and students held a ruler up to the hair between their ears—a proxy for age. Then a wildlife biologist collected nasal and blood samples to screen for wildlife diseases.

Abby, a University of Wisconsin Stevens Point’s Wisconsin Black Bear Project student researcher, weighs a black bear cub. The cub is placed in stocking hat to keep him warm during the process. Photo by Emily Stone.

Measuring the hair of a bear cub to estimate age. Photo by Emily Stone

Meanwhile, back at the den, students and professionals struggled to get the limp, heavy female out of the ground. The entrance, tucked under the roots of a spruce tree, proved too narrow. She couldn’t be weighed or fully measured. With just her head out, they checked her collar, took vitals, and collected a tooth. Bear teeth record growth rings just like a tree. A cross section can tell researchers her age, and even record the years she gave birth and had less calcium to spare.

At the end of the day, the cubs were safely returned to the den with a drowsy mother, and the den entrance covered with balsam boughs. Researchers packed up samples and data for analyzing in the lab.

“It didn’t go the way we thought it would go,” said Dr. Sartini as we stuffed gear into vehicles, “but it went just fine. So many of the skills the students gain here will be transferable. Risk management, teamwork, and planning are useful for studying other wildlife and doing any kind of science.” John Tracey, the wildlife vet in charge of anesthetizing the bear, agreed, “As much as you want an event you’re running to go smoothly, it’s also beneficial for the students to see curveballs and challenges come up and get dealt with calmly.”

Researchers are always looking for new bears to add to the UWSP Wisconsin Black Bear Project, so if you know of a bear den in Ashland, Bayfield, Price, or Sawyer Counties, you can contact Dr. Sartini directly at csartini@uwsp.edu. Dens outside this area can be reported to your nearest DNR office for their statewide research project.

Want to learn more? Dr. Cady Sartini is giving a live/virtual lecture on March 16: “The Wisconsin Black Bear Project: Celebrating 45 Years of Bears in the North Woods.” The lecture is part of the UWSP College of Natural Resources Spring Seminar Series.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is now 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 Growing Up WILD exhibit will close on March 15, and The Northwoods ROCKS will open on May 2, 2023. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.