Nature notes so far this spring

A couple of friends from camp spotted a cow moose in Gooseberry Bay, just a hundred meters north of our cabin, a couple of days ago. This is a known moose calving spot so I hope that is what she was doing.

A bald eagle attacked three common merganser ducks right in front of us yesterday. The hen is using a nesting box I placed on a tree about 15 years ago. The eagle singled out one of the drakes and was gaining on him when they went out of sight.

A ruffed grouse has been drumming every 10 minutes, night and day, since we've been here. Where does he get the strength?

I've seen a meter-long garter snake twice.

Blackflies have been a problem obly a couple of days. It's just too cold.

Long underwear weather so far

We had a couple of sunny days at the cabin since arriving last week but mostly it has been cold and wet. There were even snow flurries yesterday.

The lake has risen a couple of inches.

The good news is forest fires won't be a possibility for a couple of months.

Making a landing strip for white pine seeds

I scratched up some bare dirt alongside my trail

 We have six white pine on our 65 acres in Nolalu and I would like to have more of these majestic trees. 

Five of the trees have seeded-in naturally from one big tree growing on a ridge toward the western side of our land. Three of the young trees are growing in a line, about 50 yards apart, northeast of the mother tree. In other words, a southwest wind -- pretty much our prevailing wind -- carried the seeds in this direction. 

I'm trying an experiment this spring to bring forth more Pinus strobus or perhaps I should say P. strobi which would be the plural, I think.

Nearly all of the seeds dropped by trees like the white pine don't grow because they don't land in a suitable spot. Seeds that lay upon moss or leaves or grass might germinate with moisture but will dry up and die before their tiny roots reach soil. 

Seeds that land on bare dirt, on the other hand, start growing immediately. There is a term for creating areas of bare dirt in the forest industry. It is called scarification and foresters don't call it dirt but mineralized soil.

So this spring I went around some of the areas that I have created clearings by firewood cutting in the past and have pushed off the grass thatch with my tractor bucket to reveal mineralized soil. All these spots are to the east of the mother tree. Let's see if any white pine seedlings appear in the next couple of years. 

I haven't tried this in the past because whitetail deer would have eaten every pine seedling. Following the enormous snowfall here in the spring of 2023, I estimate the current population of deer to be just 5-10 per cent of what it used to be. So there's a chance pine can get a head start and grow high enough to be out of the deer's reach before the population rebounds.

Making affordable moves to electricity

Stihl MSA 60 battery chainsaw cost $350

We will only be taking one vehicle to Red Lake from this point and that will be our eight-year-old Dodge Grand Caravan, not our 16-year-old pickup truck. That means we will have our chainsaw inside where we are sitting. Our great old Husqavarna leaks and reeks chain oil and gasoline so we have purchased a new battery electric chainsaw for the cabin. It is the Stihl MSA 60. I was able to get this for $350 which includes the battery and charger.

It is a small saw with a 12-inch cutting bar but it should do the job for us at the cabin. Mostly we will use it for cutting up wind-blown trees but we will also probably cut about a third of a cord of firewood each year.

In other electric news at our house, our Rinnai on-demand propane hot water heater has stopped working after just six years and there seems no one in Thunder Bay interested or capable in fixing it. So, it has become the most expensive piece of artwork we have on the wall and we have gone back to our electric hot water tank which we still owned.

Finally, the electronic oven control in our propane kitchen range died. We will be replacing this in the future with an induction stove top and electric oven.

We are a ways off replacing our vehicle with an electric one. For one thing we are not going to pay double what a gas vehicle costs and will wait until mass production brings the costs down.

The only thing left after that will be how we heat our home. Currently we do it with a propane furnace and a wood-burning stove. The furnace is over 20 years old. When it dies, we will need to come up with an electric alternative.

Red Lake ice-out was May 7

 Warm temperatures and, more importantly, a high wind took out the ice on Red Lake and all the other water bodies except Trout Lake on May 7. 

Satellite photos showed Trout to still have some ice yesterday, May 8. Trout Lake is higher than other area lakes and that extra bit of elevation means the air temperature is cooler. It's also a bigger, round-shaped lake and deeper. All those things can make ice-out five days or so later than Red Lake.

Ice-out Red Lake -- it's happening

 

EOSDIS Worldview pic today, May 6. Ice mostly gone

Brian was able to fly from the river, over the ice and into open water in the narrows at camp on Saturday. He said there was lots of ice remaining in the lake but with the warm temperatures in the forecast it would seem total ice-out is just days away.

Once the ice has melted away from the shoreline, which it has, it starts shifting with the wind and crushing against the windward shore.

Hooray!

Wooden lure maker now has website

Nolalu wooden lure artist Dwayne Kotala has started a website where you can see and order his lures on-line. The site is still under construction but does display a few of his hand-carved wooden lures and gives you a way to contact him.

The URL of the site is fuddyduddystudio.square.site

You can find him by typing that into your search engine window or just by clicking here on lures.

 

Where the heck have I been?

EOSDIS Worldview

 Sorry folks, I was out of the country for nearly a month and was not able to update ice-out conditions on Red Lake. 

The latest that I have heard is that the ice is still shore-to-shore, is 16 inches thick but is candled and ripe for breakup.

I wish I had left my first prediction at May 8 as that is likely close to actual ice-out.

The last few weeks of April turned out colder than normal and that set back ice melting. Again, it is only the weather in April that matters. It was the warmest winter on record but it played no part on ice-out.

You can see daily detailed satellite photographs that show ice melt by going to this site EOSDIS Worldview. The satellite passes over Northwestern Ontario about 3 p.m. EST each day. All it takes to see what is happening with the ice is a clear sky. Unfortunately, the last day that happened was April 24, a week ago. In the screen shot of EOSDIS Worldview above, you can clearly see that Middle and Sadler Bays -- small water bodies at the west end of Red Lake -- are still frozen.

 Zoom Earth also has near real-time imagery but it is not as detailed.

You can also download the free apps for both of these satellites to your smart phone. That is what I have done.