Check out the winter edition of Wisconsin Natural Resources

The winter edition of Wisconsin Natural Resources magazine includes my feature on Pat Fisher, who runs The Feather bird rehabilitation center in New London. You will find it at https://dnr.wi.gov/wnrmag/

Here are links to my previous stories in Wisconsin Natural Resources and other stories I've done on Pat.

Paddle Tales (WNR)
Journals of canoe trips long ago

Natural Leader, Nature Champion (WNR)
Gordon Bubolz's other natural areas

Injured eagle lifted by helping hands

Osprey nests a platform for mystery

Abe's day at dad's work

Taking sides in survival of the fittest

By David Horst

You never know what you'll see out of our
window to wildlife

That whole food chain/survival of the fittest thing looks a lot better in theory than on the hoof.

We were looking out the window to wildlife in our living room one evening. About 10 deer and a pair of sandhill cranes were out there. I believed them to be the same cranes we had seen several days earlier.

On that evening, one crane landed and then the other. The first started running in a straight line with its wings stretched out. It looked pretty threatening, so I assumed it was territorial. This display went on for a bit until it became clear these were not two males drawing a line in the sand. They were a couple having a roll in the hay. The show might happen again, so we were keeping an eye out.

The deer were acting oddly. They looked around nervously and flashed their flags – the white underside of their tails – signaling danger. Then the deer were on the move. They closed ranks and took off east. Shot from the brush came a low, brown, speeding figure. It was a coyote and it was gaining. It also was getting near to the cranes, 4-foot-tall birds that need some time and space to get airborne.

The coyote was just performing its role at the top of the food chain. Actually, they call it a food web now. It’s more complicated than just a straight chain. But seeing the coyote claim the rights that go with being at the top of the web was not going to be pretty.

As it turned out, the cranes took their cue from the deer and had made short work of getting up higher than a coyote’s leap. The deer bolted into the woods. The coyote made an about-face and raced back to the west.

The evening light was dimming, but the deer all appeared to have escaped, as had the cranes.

I’m perfectly aware that an individual one way or the other won’t make a bit of difference in the deer population. Coyotes gotta eat, too. But I was cheering for the deer.

Everybody still holds their positions on the food web, so the scene is likely to be repeated, possibly with a different ending.

The cranes returned quickly after the coyote disappeared. They settled down into the hay field. One stretched out its neck and ran with its head down.

That’s another force in nature that continues the food web.

Count on cranes to know weather

By David Horst

Sandhill crane mating behavior 

I took part in the annual Midwest Crane Count Saturday morning. That means being in place at your assigned counting area by 5:30 a.m. and staying there counting until 7:30 a.m.At 33 degrees with a stiff wind, the sandhill cranes had the good sense to stay in the woods until 6:38 a.m.

Snow from this year’s April storm still lined the rows between the corn stubble. It was better than last year’s April storm, which prevented me from getting to my site.

After an hour of seeing no cranes, the weeds and fence posts start to take on that role, until you fine tune the focus on the spotting scope.A good spotting scope is a big help on the crane count. The cranes aren’t really interested in being close to you. I could make out their figures in the morning light, but the scope allowed me to see what they were doing and get a more accurate count.
At 6:38 I finally saw two birds feeding in the field. By 6:50 there were four. At 6:58, six. At 7:10, 10 cranes. That would hold steady as my count, just as 33 held steady as the temperature.
The behavior I recorded for all 10 was “walking and feeding.” In warmer years, I sometimes saw mating behavior — cranes hopping up and down with their wings spread, or even tossing a small stick into the air repeatedly. Hey, who’s to judge what turns on another species.

This year I left all of the checkboxes for mating behavior blank. But I was still out in nature, watching the morning come. And I had the company of 10 very large, impressive birds.

Annual Midwest Crane Counts

• 2019 (10 cranes)
• 2018 missed due to weather
• 2017 missed due to illness
• 2016 (28 cranes)
• 2015 (32 cranes)
• 2014 (15 cranes)
• 2012 (9 cranes)
• 2010  (9 cranes, 1 county supervisor)
• 2009 (15 cranes, 2 children, 0 whining)
• 2008 (26 cranes)

The science of noticing stuff

By David Horst

I really love the concept of phenology.

This woodcook didn't check a phenology calendar.
It came to our house with snow still on the ground.

The unscientific definition is you sit outdoors and notice stuff. You do this every year and record the day the first bluebird arrives or when the owls start their winter hooting. The possibilities are as endless as the list of plant and animal species.

Over the years, you build a calendar of when all of these “firsts” happen and check if the dates change.

Friends recently bought us a copy of the phenology calendar sold by the Aldo Leopold Foundation. The pioneer environmentalist was an avid recorder of events in nature. He even knew from using a light meter that it was at precisely at 0.50 foot-candles of light during sunset that the woodcocks on his central Wisconsin farm would start their mating behavior, which involves a male woodcock diving from high altitude and folding his wings just so to create an eerie whistling sound. You can read about that in the essay “Sky Dance” in Leopold’s literary treasure A Sand County Almanac.

Having the calendar adds to our daily breakfast table a recitation of the day’s nature events. The Leopold Foundation is near Baraboo, so the dates all reflect what’s happening in the Madison area. We are a few days behind that here in the Fox Valley.

Checking the recent entries on Sunday suggested the more modest among you should walk through the woods with your eyes covered in the coming week. Wednesday, Jan. 23, the red foxes begin mating. It’s hard enough to see foxes in the wild so an embarrassing encounter is unlikely.

Wolves get frisky on Jan. 24. This brings to mind the mating practices of Klingons on Star Trek.

Beavers will be at it Jan. 25 and lynx the next day. Gray and fox squirrels get to it Jan. 28, as if there aren’t enough of them already.

Other than Canada geese arriving Friday – and with the number of resident Canada geese we have, that’s no big deal -- the week in phenology is all about doing the nasty.

February will bring bluebirds, turkey vultures and skunk cabbage, at least in the Madison area. Before the last bite of toast is swallowed, we’ll know to look for them.