Don’t wear blinders when blackcap exploring. Examining multiflora roses may cause notice of maturing blackberries. Stopping to pull a biennial garlic mustard or stickseed plant could uncover a ginseng plant or a sulphur fungus.
If we did too much wandering, we’d never get from here to there, but a little stopping to feel the mullein, smell the beebalm, and listen to a yellow-billed cuckoo call can be a good thing. Of it could be the only thing, too.
Now is an excellent time to search without a purpose, or as a baseball manager may have said, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
Noticing otherwise sidestepped leaves, trees, diseased stems, colorful mushrooms or abandoned bird nests may bring notice of a house finch feeding a fledging.
Trout fly-fishers are one group of nature users, and sometimes gatherers, who connect the dots between weather, temperature, vegetation, insects, bait, and brook trout.
“The weed growth in streams is not terrible yet, but it’s the water temperature that might keep me from fly-fishing,” said Bret Schultz, of Black Earth. “If the water temperature is over 65 degrees, I will forgo fishing trout. It’s too hard on the trout.”
Bret says the fishing has gotten tougher, but still good enough to get his fix, and it’ll be a while before he can expect fish taking terrestrial baits including ants, beetles and little hoppers.
Water and flow are still slow and low and streams could use a bit of scouring to get some silt off the gravel bottoms.
The thermometer also pushes Bret toward brook trout streams, where the water is usually cooler with spring water.
“I tend to fish the riffles, too, where there may be more terrestrial activity. If all else fails, and about this time, I’ll head to the Wisconsin River and fish smallmouth, but sorry to say so many of the sandbars were lost and they haven’t come back after floods. If you can find one, you’ll find bass chasing minnows.”
We’re getting closer to black raspberry time,” Don Martin, at Martin’s in Monroe, said. “Otherwise many are just looking to buy something they figure they will need or might want, but some of the new models we can’t get.”
Trail cameras are going up and being checked, according Brent Drake, at Tall Tails in Boscobel. “You’d be surprised at what some have seen on the flash cards, and everything seems to excite them, even if it isn’t a deer.
Bears are a big excitement in some areas, says Travis Anderson, WDNR wildlife biologist in Lafayette and Iowa counties. He’s received reports of two bears traveling together. A warden was called to remove a bear cub from a house. And those were in southern Wisconsin.
“Talk to a farmer who has made a field of hay and there may be a need for removing some unprotected animals, but watch your target and beyond,” said Doug Williams, at D W Sports Center in Portage, who’s a farmer, too. “I’m picking mulberries if I want them; blackcaps in two weeks.”
The new berry canes, those that will bloom next spring, are beginning to cover the canes with developing fruit, Williams said. “And be sure to wear long pants, not shorts. You could get a surprise if you look.
Fawns frequently bed in berry patches, too.”
“There’s usually swimming, sunning, archery carping, but be sure to wear the life jackets and have some vanilla ice cream in the freezer for when the blackcaps are ready. Chocolate ice cream is OK, too.”
Serviceberries (Juneberries), aka Saskatawan berries in Canada, are an excellent bird-attracting shrubby tree, and while great to eat many animals take them, including raccoons and bears, before they are fully ripe.
After seeing robins, cedar waxwings, catbirds, and orioles picking from a small tree, a male house finch plucked a few and fed a coaxing fledgeling what father had in his mouth. From time to time raccoons will appear and their weight is too much for the tiny limbs. In addition to being clean of fruit, many of the branches will be broken.
Wild black cherries, somewhat like commercial cherries, “shed” a portion of a large developing crop well before they ripen.
Our smallest bird, the Ruby-throated hummingbird has a complex life, which begins on returning to Wisconsin on the tail winds of Yellow-bellied sapsuckers.
Blooms are few in early May so the hummers steal sap from the sapsuckers’ bark wells, particularly in birch trees. So, too, do butterflies, bees and other insects, and birds and squirrels.
Hummingbird nests are nearly impossible to find and to relocate once they are found. The inch wide and high nest is often covered with grayish lichens the birds affix. As the chicks grow, they begin to outgrow the nest, which is somewhat flexible.
The female parent feeds the chicks tiny insects and nectar, broods them during rain and continues to feed them for a few days after fledging.
Like bald eagles, one of Wisconsin’s largest birds, these tiny chicks stand on the nest rim and exercise their soon-to-be-used wings, just as eaglets do.
Once they fledge, the little hummers do not return to the nest but may be seen at feeders with other hummingbirds.
Like wild turkeys, adult hummingbirds seem to have an early morning routine of showing up to feed from flowers at first light. They almost never come in silent, either.
— Jerry Davis is a freelance writer who lives in Barneveld. He can be reached at sivadjam@mhtc.net or at 608-924-1112.
