Something had been gnawing at the bases of several nearby trees.

A porcupine?

You tell me.

Then I caught the stomach flu that’s been going around.

Feeling all better today, but I have a sad lack of snow shelter photos to share. Instead, here’s a different image depicting what life is like during the North Woods winter.

This is the road that I live on. We haven’t seen the pavement since November. So note to all, if you don’t like the idea of driving on a layer of compacted snow and ice for five months out of the year, don’t move to northern Wisconsin! I don’t really mind it – you  just have to be willing to drive sloooowly when necessary.

The hollow under this log actually went back further than I could see.

And in this case, something – probably a red squirrel? – agreed with me about its shelter potential. There were tracks leading through the snow straight to the log.

Not only do I live in Land O’ Lakes, on Friday I actually spent a chunk of the day in Tomahawk as well, which is about an hour and a half south of here.

This morning when I got up it was 27ºF. Over fifty degrees warmer than it was yesterday at the same time. This feels downright balmy by comparison.

Dead snags always seem to catch my eyes lately – probably because they always harbor signs of life, even on the coldest, snowiest days. (When I got up this morning it was -26ºF. Even after noon, when it finally made it into double digits above zero, walking in the snowy woods for half an hour was enough to make my face and feet very cold.)

Pileated Woodpeckers continue to rip apart the dead wood in search of food.

Lichens and fungus add contrasting texture.

Now I’m back inside drinking hot chocolate by the fire. Man, -26ºF. This has been a cold couple days.

Image via Wikipedia

There is only one animal tough enough to attack and kill a porcupine.

Before we left for Christmas break, two coworkers and I were on our way to “Mexican night” at the local rural bar/restaurant. I was driving down a country road through the woods after dark. Suddenly a large, dark, hairy animal with a bushy tail darted across the road through my headlights. Not large like a bear or wolf, but larger and heavier-looking than a porcupine or rabbit or other small mammal we expect to see regularly, and definitely big enough to catch our attention.

We were mystified. What had we just seen? At the restaurant we described our sighting to the elderly waitress, who confirmed our suspicions. What we were describing was a fisher.

Though they’re not as well-known as charismatic Northwoods predators like bears and wolves, fishers (members of the weasel family) have one important claim to fame: they are the only animals that regularly kill and eat porcupines. They don’t only eat porcupines (in fact, they’re generalists who will eat just about anything except fish), but their technique for killing them is terrifying and badass: fishers bite porcupines in their quill-less faces over and over again until they die.

Why am I talking about this now? I’m currently taking the workshop to become a Certified Interpretive Guide, and for my ten-minute presentation I’m going to be talking about fishers and why they are the coolest, toughest predator in the North Woods. In preparing for our presentation we had to brainstorm universal intangible concepts related to our topic, and my list went something like “power, survival, violence, toughness, perseverance, death.” It’s easy to forget how many animals here we almost never see because of their secretive, nocturnal habitats, but this is one that has captured my imagination.

In January one may follow a skunk track,
or see what young pines the deer have browsed,
with only an occasional and mild digression into other things.

January observation can be almost as simple and as peaceful as snow,
and almost as continuous as cold.

There is time not only to see who has done what,
but to speculate why.

(From a Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold.) I’m back. This afternoon it was 20°F and sunny, a beautiful, balmy day in the North Woods, and I made it all the way around our two-mile loop trail on skis without falling down once.

…and a local Common Moorhen was so inspired by all this finery, it decided to leave its rail roots behind and climb a tree.

Regular posting resumes this weekend. Thanks for reading.

This afternoon we visited Boyce Thompson Arboretum, a state park east of the Phoenix valley, one of my favorite places in the area. It’s a great place to see birds and, in the warmer months, lizards. Some areas have been left fairly natural, while some have been more formally landscaped with desert plants, and I love the varied shapes, colors, and textures of the succulents – native agaves, African aloes, and others. “Succulents” are plants that can store water in their fleshy leaves, which is usually an adaptation for dry climates.

Click on any thumbnail in the gallery below to bring up a slideshow (let me know in the comments if it’s not working right). I’m quite pleased with some of these photos.

It’s not just cranes – I spotted a Virginia Rail skulking in the brush, there were Northern Harriers coursing back and forth over the marsh, there was a HUGE flock of gorgeous, noisy Yellow-headed Blackbirds that came in to roost at dusk, and there were LOTS of great ducks, including Redheads and displaying male Cinnamon Teals.

But oh, the cranes… click to view full size!

For some reason a lot of my photos turned out sort of blurry, and none of them show the cranes close up since I just have a pocket-sized point-and-shoot. If you want to see a closer look at Sandhill Cranes check out this post from my visit to the Okefenokee last year. But wow, were there a lot of them. There were a few Snow Geese mixed in with them as well, which was also a treat.

We stayed until around sunset, and I loved the color of the water reflecting the darkening sky.

Not a bad way to spend an evening. One final thought: if there were 10,000 Sandhill Cranes at the Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area when we were there yesterday, which is a reasonable rough estimate, then in one look we were seeing about twenty-five times the entire remaining wild population of America’s other native crane, the endangered Whooping Crane.