When the subzero temperatures finally broke free, life came back to the outdoors activities and brought many who felt cooped in outside again.
Last weekend’s fog seemed to confuse mammals and birds as much as it did drivers and snowmobilers.
Sighting and getting up close improved with big birds and deer less likely to take off flying or running. Maybe other animals are as unsure in fog as we are. Some stayed quite longer; even the mature and experienced individuals in the populations acted calmer.
Some good came with the polar vortex, giving us 2-3 days of constant below zero temperatures. No pests are immune when it comes to low temperatures, but it seems emerald ash borers lost individuals in their explosive populations. Still, don’t expect every last individual to die. And remember most pest populations explode during conditions of favorable growth.
Amy Shipley’s Ph.D. thesis research, at UW-Madison, is ongoing, but preliminary work supports a hypothesis that snow roosting birds are better able to deal with stress and then likely reproduce the following spring and summer if they have 20 or more centimeters (about eight inches) of dry, fluffy snow to roost and tunnel in.
The problem is that with climate change, Wisconsin’s winters are likely to have less snowfall, meaning ruffed grouse are likely to be more stressed than less so. Stay tuned for these results and other work on West Nile Virus and the ruffed grouse 10-year cycle.
Woodlot owners and homeowners with individual trees in the red oak group should not prune or harvested from April through July due to the greater likelihood or spreading and infecting trees with oak wilt fungus. Now, however is a better time to prune and harvest.
Temperatures above 32 sent streams of melting snow and runoff into trout waters, raising the levels and as importantly lowering the water temperature. This temperature drop can be countered somewhat by water from bubbling springs, which are generally running at about 47 degrees.
While white-tailed deer may shed their antlers any time after early December to April, many antlered bucks are still out looking for food.
A few of them appear to be chasing does, too. It’ll be a while, however, before shed antler hunting can be fruitful with deep snow and difficult walking. One has to wonder if elk antler sheds have attracted much attention in the Clam Lake and Black River Fall areas.
While game feeds, sturgeon spearing, wildlife expos, annual waterfowl meetings, and turkey hunting sessions are beginning to attract a great deal of attention, winter activities, including bird feeding and ice fishing continue to remain high on many outdoors enthusiasts’ lists.
— Jerry Davis is an Argyle native and a freelance writer who lives in Barneveld. He can be reached at sivadjam@mhtc.net or at 608-924-1112.
