Return of the Sapsuckers

Some of our woodpeckers – Downy, Hairy, Pileated – are year-round residents in the North Woods. Others – the Northern Flicker and the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker – are migrants, only here for the breeding season. Both of the migratory woodpeckers have just turned up here on campus in the last week or so, and my first inkling that the sapsuckers had arrived was hearing their distinctive irregular drumming. Taptaptap-tap-tap–tap—tap! (Click here to listen.)

This morning while I was rambling around a male flew in and landed on a nearby trunk at eye-level, posing for a few photos.

I’ve written before about sapsuckers’ interesting foraging habits – as their name suggests, they drill small holes in tree trunks and feed off the sap. I like these guys. That red cap and throat are a beautiful pop of color.

After a long, snowy winter, it is awfully nice to see (and hear) the spring birds returning to the forest.

First Lep of the Year!

(Lep = Lepidopteran = butterfly or moth. Come on, you knew that, right?)

There is hope for spring yet! In the past week we’ve had more and more migratory birds – sapsuckers, sparrows, Yellow-rumped Warblers – arriving back on campus, and yesterday afternoon I was out in the woods in just a t-shirt, though admittedly at the time I was slogging through a couple feet of slushy snow in my snowshoes. At this time of year, insects that normally might not catch my eye become cause for celebration. Case in point? This tiny, drab moth.

These little critters, each one about a centimeter long, were fluttering over the surface of the snow in the bog. I haven’t had much luck identifying them – there are many, many species of tiny drab moth, and I posted photos on BugGuide and Twitter but people suggested, like, three different possible families – but finding any moth at all feels like cause for celebration after this endless winter. Hooray!

Shall we take bets on what my first butterfly of the year will be? Mourning Cloak, Eastern Comma, Spring Azure?

Slope Aspect and Snowmelt

With high temperatures reaching the fifties this week, the snow is finally – and slooooowly – starting to melt. However, it doesn’t melt at a uniform rate everywhere on the property. A number of factors can affect how fast the snow melts in a particular spot, one of which is aspect, the direction a slope faces.

Here is what the northern shore of one of the lakes on campus looked like this morning:

And here’s the southern shore of the same lake:

On the northern side of the lake, the sloping shore is facing toward the south, so it gets more sun each day and the snow melts faster as a result. You can see this same effect just driving along the roads here, with bare ground on the northern side of the road while the southern side still has a layer of snow.

I’m going to be donning long underwear and snowshoes to trek into the woods this afternoon, but there is a glimmer of hope in our weather forecast for the weekend!

Conservation & Nature Linkspam

No natural history news to report other than endless cold and wet and snow (temperatures dipped to zero F again over the weekend, and we’re under yet another Winter Storm Warning tonight). Instead, let me present another of my sporadic linkspam posts – recent bits of conservation and nature interestingness from around the internet.

• Climate change = snow melting earlier = white Snowshoe Hares on bare brown ground each spring. I’ve never actually laid eyes on a Snowshoe Hare but I’ve seen their tracks around here plenty of times.
• Amazing (and grisly) photos of an alligator eating a nutria in Texas.
• Why do we feel like bird feeders are okay but baiting owls with mice is not? A great 10,000 Birds post on where to draw the ethical line.
• A Storify summary of the Earth Day conference I attended last week.
• A concise explanation of hybridization in birds. My non-birding students are always surprised to learn that birds occasionally mate across species lines.
• At least somewhere there are wildflowers blooming.
• The always-wonderful Julie Zickefoose on painting a bird species she’s never seen in person.
• How much do you actually know about the humble dandelion?
• I love frogs and did frog calling surveys every spring in college, but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a Mountain Chorus Frog.
• I didn’t get any photos of the Fox Sparrow that turned up at our feeder in the snow last weekend, but _CabinGirl has some great ones, so check them out.
• Interesting: red squirrels born in crowded forests get hormonal signals from mom to grow faster.

Feel free to share any interesting links you’ve come across lately in the comments, and have a good week!

Sad Woodcock Is Sad

I’d been convinced for a while that even though we hadn’t seen or heard them yet, our woodcocks must be here somewhere, hunkered down and waiting for the weather to change so they could start their spring displays. Well, now I have proof – one of the teachers at the school where I work snapped this photo on campus earlier this week.

photo by Robert Eady

Poor sad, confused, hungry woodcock. Hang in there, little buddy.

Everything Is Changing and Everything Is Connected

Did anyone notice that I missed posting on Monday as usual? I was in Madison, at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies’ annual Earth Day Conference (yes, Earth Day is April 22, they were a week early). I got to see talks by Jane Goodall and Céline Cousteau, among others, as well as attend a really great panel on how species and ecosystems might respond to climate change. My favorite aspect of the conference was that it wasn’t just academics and environmental professionals there – attendees included lots of families, teenagers (including past students of mine), and other members of the public, interacting first-hand with scientists and activists. For someone like me who does work in this field, where it’s easy to get caught up in the stress and hustle of everyday tasks, events like this are an important way to get re-inspired and remember why I’ve chosen what can feel some days like a pretty thankless career path.

Then Monday night we made the four-hour drive back from Madison, where it’s chilly but at least there’s no snow on the ground, to Land O’ Lakes, where it still looks about like it did in January. A few weeks ago blogger and prairie ecologist Chris Helzer posted a great explainer on how this year’s late spring and last year’s early spring are both connected to global climate change. If I understand correctly, the idea is that the northern hemisphere’s air and water currents, including the Jet Stream, are ultimately driven by the temperature difference between cold Arctic waters and warmer temperate waters. As the Arctic warms, there’s less of a difference, and everything becomes a bit less stable, so that the Jet Stream wanders around a lot more than it used to. Last year it made a big northward loop, and most of the U.S. was on its southern side, getting warm southern air. This year it’s wandering to the south and the opposite is happening.

At the climate change panel at the conference, they showed us this graphic, and it made a big impression on me.

Click to view it full size so you can read the labels – the left half show changes in human activity over the past couple centuries, and the right half shows corresponding changes in the global environment, all on the same timescale. (Some of the data plotted might surprise you, like the amount of international tourism, or the number of McDonald’s restaurants.) Everything is connected, and everything is changing. Whatever happens, my generation is living through an important period in human history.

Steffen W et al. (2004). Global Change and the Earth System: a Planet under Pressure. The IGBP book series. Springer (Berlin, Germany), 336 p.

Love Drummers! (Also Known as Prairie Chickens)

The scientific name of the Greater Prairie Chicken is Tympanuchus cupido. Translated from Latin, that loosely means “drummer of love.” The quirky name comes from its elaborate and famous courtship ritual, and Sunday morning I was lucky enough to witness it.

Greater Prairie Chickens, technically a species of grouse, used to be common, but their numbers plunged as the country’s grasslands were converted to agriculture, and now they’re mostly limited to carefully managed and protected prairie remnants like those found in Central Wisconsin. Anyone can pay $15 for the privilege of getting up at 4 AM on the April morning of their choice, tucking themselves into a wooden blind so small that it’s hard to sit upright, and sitting in the freezing cold darkness waiting for the birds to appear for their performance. It’s totally worth it.