Last Updated: Friday, October 6, 2006 12:55 PM CDT
Wisconsin Woodsmoke -- Autumn's art lifts the spirits
by Ced Vig
The years teach much which the days never know.
- Waldo Emerson
The leaves are still beautiful in early October. The trees have completed making food until spring. Dropping their leaves is the best thing that they can do. People are about the only living creatures that can enjoy the colored leaves. Many of our birds and animals are color blind - everything is black and white for them.
Therapists believe that fall colors have a mood-elevating effect on just about every person, especially those who wander through the woodlands. There are few places in the world where the leaves are as varied and colorful as they are here at our own doorsteps.
Hunter heartbeats
Deer produced the biggest jumps in hunters' heart rates - from 78 beats per minute with none in sight to 100 beats when sighted to 122 beats at the shot.
Duck and goose hunters' rates increased about 28 beats per minute when shooting.
Upland bird hunters' rates increased the least, from 106 beats with no birds in sight to 120 beats when shooting.
Good-bye to hornets
Hornet families break up in September. After the first hard frost, the majority of the population freeze to death in their paper-like nests. Only the fertilized queens survive the winter, having found refuge in the forest floor.
The paper-like materials used to construct a hornet's nest is made from wood fibers mixed with the insect's saliva.
Because these fibers are gathered from different sources at different times during construction, a nest becomes colored a variety of gray shades and patterns.
The nest will not be used again. During the winter, a bluejay or a downy woodpecker may tear the nest apart, hoping to find some of the frozen insect forms.
Put out water
No birdbath in and of itself prevents water from transmuting into ice. And don't believe media reports that suggest that adding substances such as alcohol, glycerin, or antifreeze will work. These will only harm the birds. The trick to keeping water frost free is to put thermodynamics into motion: Turn on the heat. You needn't rig up a Rube Goldberg contraption. Electric birdbath warmers are already on the market; some even come with a built in thermostat. The warmers are available at garden centers and nature shops or through birding product catalogs.
Ced says
Airplanes and helicopters were flying over Rhinelander last weekend. It is said that flying is the second greatest thrill known to man - landing is first. Take time to go for a walk this Sunday and enjoy the autumnal colors. We're lucky! There are few places in the world where there are colored leaves like we have. If there's a “greatest show on earth” here in the Northwoods, it's certainly when we have our painted forests.
Bear like many other animals, are very territorial. The old male bears will frequently fight to the death of another male - generally, a young one that attempts to take over his territory.
Milwaukee Journal: “If Wisconsin could package up October, there'd be an export market that would make a governor giddy.”
Popular pumpkins
A pumpkin is not a vegetable. It's a fruit belonging to the same family that includes melons, cucumbers, gourds and squash. Before pumpkins were used for human food, these prairie footballs were fed to cattle and hogs. But when the American housewives began making pumpkin pies, they raised the food value of the lowly pumpkin to one of USA's favorite foods.
Busy beavers
During October beaver repair their dams, mud-up their lodges and fill their food pantries with branches of aspen, willow and alder. This large pile of branches is located near the lodge's entrance. As the pile grows, it sinks under water so that the beaver can leave their lodges during the winter, swim under the ice to the food pile and bring back branches to gnaw off the bark - their primary winter food. Beaver are the largest rodents in the North Country.
Harbingers of winter
Toward the end of October, the snow buntings arrive in the area. They're brownish birds. When they fly over the fields, they display their large white wing patches, resulting in their appearing almost all white. No other songbird shows as much white when flying.
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