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.

Do Llamas Get Along with Cats?

Upper Fox 2018

Northeast Wisconsin Padders (NEWP) organized a weekend paddle on the weekend of May 19-20.

Saturday, we launched at the White River Dam, near Princeton, and traveled the 13 miles to River Side Park in the City of Berlin, WI.  Due to heavy rain and snowmelt, the Fox River was very high. At the takeout, we cruised over submerged sidewalks and pulled up directly on the grass. 

Sunday, we launched where we had finished the day before and paddled another 13 miles to Omro, with a lunch stop at the Berlin Dam. For my money, this is the most beautiful stretch of the Fox.

Photos by Ron Starkey