Lovely weather could speed-up ice-out

Warm, sunny days and above-freezing temperatures at night the last couple of weeks should put the 2019 ice-out on Red Lake, Ontario back nearer the average date of May 8. Colder-than-normal conditions the first two weeks of April had me speculating in the last posting that the breakup would come a week later -- May 15. Maybe I'll split the difference now and pick May 12.
Incidentally, my predictions are for when a boat can travel on Howey Bay, the bay right in front of town. It is usually the last place to melt.
Walleye season opens May 18. It is always the third Saturday in May.

'Where the heck have I been?'

I won't go into detail here but I've experienced an interruption this spring that has kept me from blogging.
If all goes well I hope to be driving nails on the new cabin all summer and won't have access to the Internet. So it could be next fall before my blog schedule returns to normal.
Since I know it is of interest to a great many people, let me just report that spring breakup of area lakes, including Red Lake, is very unlikely to be early and could be late. Average ice-out for Red Lake is May 8.
It was a cold winter but we have learned over the years that winter ice and snow depth don't make much difference on breakup times. What matters the most is the weather in April. To date the temperatures in April have been below normal. It looks like the forecast for the next couple of weeks is for warming but still not where it should be.
On the good side there haven't been many spring snowfalls that set everything back.

Our winter guest is on his way again

I have finally got my computer back now that our winter guest has left. Harry took off this morning after spending two months in Nolalu.
Things were difficult at first because we didn't speak Harry's tongue. But then we stumbled on the universal language -- YouTube. Harry loved to listen to music on YouTube all day long. Harry was a teenager.
It was pure luck that we even met Harry. He was born in the Northwest Territories and was on his way to visit relatives in Texas for the winter when he decided to take a "little side trip" and ended up stranded 1,500 miles northeast of his destination. It was a lapse in judgment but who among us didn't make a few mistakes when we were teenagers?
He was ill-prepared to spend the winter in the Boreal Forest. He wasn't dressed for the cold, for one thing. One day in mid-January I saw him fall over in the snow and quit moving. It was -25 C and that didn't count the wind chill. Of course I ran out and picked him up and brought him inside. After a couple of hours he regained consciousness so we made a little place for him and he stayed. He liked the food, especially the meat.
"Harry, you need to eat something besides meat," I would say. "Here, try some of these whole grains."
He would turn his back and look out the window while listening to his favourite YouTube channel. Harry was a teenager.
All in all, he was quiet and well-behaved and we got along with him just fine. But during the past week I could tell he wanted to be on his way. His appetite seemed off and he stared out the window wistfully. Fortunately the weather has warmed up. The temperature reached the melting point today for the first time in months and the sunshine felt just like spring had arrived. So we wished him well and watched him take off, free as a bird which, of course, is what he was, a Harris's Sparrow.
I guess I'll give the remainder of the mealworms we had bought for him to the chickadees. I might continue playing his music -- 10 hours of bird calls on YouTube. It really is spring-like.

Harry gets his bearings on the driveway after spending two months in a cage inside. An immature Harris's Sparrow, he is beginning to develop black throat feathers that are the hallmark of his species.

Here comes the sun!!!

Hope to finish woodshed this weekend. Large bump at right is propane tank buried in 3 feet of snow.

And we say, "It's all right!"
After a cold and snowy winter, the forecast from here on out is for average-to-above average temperatures.
There is a lot of snow to melt so depending on how fast that happens we could be in for some flooding. I have heard that the Red River in North Dakota and Manitoba is predicted to flood.
The best scenario is when the melting occurs gradually which is usually what happens. I would expect most Northwestern Ontario lakes will be higher than normal after ice-out and that's a good thing. Northern pike love to spawn in lowland areas around lakes that are only underwater for a month or so. These spots are clear of silt and allow the eggs to get plenty of oxygen.
The melting snow will also raise the water table in the ground and that might reduce the spring and early summer forest fire danger.
Yeppurs, spring is coming!

Stellar year for birds at the feeders

The yellow, black and white Evening Grosbeaks join the more common Pine Grosbeaks and Bluejays

Chickadee takes shelter from the wind among the lilacs beside the house

This is the best winter we have ever seen for numbers and variety of birds at our birdfeeders.
The harsh temperatures and three feet of snow might have something to do with that; however by all reports we are still more fortunate than others.
One of the biggest surprises has been large numbers of Evening Grosbeaks. These gaudy, parrot-like finches are here every day whereas in the past they might only appear a couple of times all winter,
Pine Grosbeaks are just as numerous. Bluejays are the other large birds at the sunflower platform feeder.
Common Redpolls have the top numbers for the small birds. They are followed by Chickadees, Goldfinches, Juncos and Redbreasted Nuthatches.
There are probably four pairs each of Hairy Woodpeckers and Downy Woodpeckers.
Every so often a couple of Crows also show up.
Alhough they don't come to the feeders, other birds we see are Pileated Woodpeckers, Ravens, Bald Eagles and Ruffed Grouse.
I have not seen any hawks or owls.

Children now the only adults in the room

We live in unprecedented times. You hear this every day. But the ultimate example is that little children are now our only leaders. While their parents and grandparents sit like stoned zombies as the clock runs out on keeping our planet livable little kids are taking action. They realize that it is their future that is being squandered.
School kids everywhere have for years been the best recyclers and reducers of waste. They have been making posters, planting trees and writing stories on how to save the planet which they instinctively know is their one and only home. These were things that little people could do. They are too young to drive so they can't make choices on what type of family vehicle is best for the environment. They can't vote for adults to represent them in government. They would seem to be the most helpless members in society to affect change. Well, no more. Now they are organizing and taking the U.S. government to court.
They must hurry because if they wait to become adults to take action their brains will be so loaded with hydrocarbon particles from breathing gas and diesel fumes they will end up sitting in a stupor just like the old folks. CBC television's The Nature of Things revealed new research that is finding hydrocarbon particulates penetrate the blood-brain barrier. Brains of people who are exposed to lots of auto fumes resemble those with Alzheimer's.

Check out this moon; it's Super

Moonrise is a big event at our house, just because we have such a good view to the east. This Super Moon, so called because the moon is closer to the Earth than normal, was one of the best on Tuesday.

Do we need to quit eating meat?

This is one of the more popular myths you hear about fighting climate change. The usual story goes that it takes so much fuel and chemicals to raise animals -- actually always depicted as beef -- that if we really are serious about fighting "the global warming thing" we should only eat lentils, wear sandals and dress in sack cloth.
Have you heard that cow farts and belches contribute to greenhouse gas too? Of course you have. That is because the richest and most powerful industry and lobby in the world, the fossil fuel industry, is keeping this and many other ridiculous stories alive through their well-heeled propaganda machines. Just Google "climate change skeptic organizations" for a list. They are using the same tactics formerly employed by the tobacco industry to sow doubt and confusion on a subject for which science reached a conclusion many decades ago.
Here is the real story: 83 per cent of each individual's contribution to climate change comes from his burning of fossil fuels either in his vehicle or to heat or cool his buildings. Cow farts and people's farts, for that matter, fall within the remaining 17 per cent of our carbon footprint. They are spit in the ocean compared to the big problems.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we need to cut our fossil fuel use by 45 per cent in just the next 12 years or it will be too late to prevent catastrophe.
I've been thinking about our own situation. We actually reduced our gasoline use by 50 per cent  when we owned the camp by switching to four-cycle outboard engines. That was 15 years ago. Although we had to borrow in order to make that switch the savings in gas paid for the loan.
It seems to me this is always the case: spend a little to save a lot.
Now that we have retired we have cut our use of propane for home heating by installing a high efficiency wood burning stove and building a sun room. The sun room heats the house on sunny days and the stove heats it mornings and evenings and on cloudy days. We still rely on the high efficiency furnace at night. Will we cut our propane use by 45 per cent? We will know in a couple of months when our propane tank is refilled but my guess is there will be a substantial reduction.
We have already witnessed a 30 per cent reduction in our electricity or hydro bill. There are two reasons for that: we switched to an on-demand propane hot water system, and we have not needed to supplement our furnace with electric space heaters. In the past we used the space heaters during especially bitter nights. This year the wood stove has provided the extra needed BTUs. The propane water heater does, of course, use a fossil fuel. Our electricity does not; it comes from a hydro dam in Kakabeka Falls. However the money we save from not keeping a 30-gallon tank perpetually hot in the basement can be used toward other fossil fuel cuts, like a hybrid car when we are ready for a new vehicle.
Incidentally, next to solar and wind energy firewood is about as green a fuel as can be. Burning it does emit carbon dioxide but growing new trees takes the carbon back out of the atmosphere. Certainly it can't be used in cities but it is a viable alternative for people like us who live in the country and grow our own trees. Our high efficiency Napoleon stove is practically smokeless.
Other fuel-saving things we have done over the years include triple-glazed windows and an original house design that maximized solar gain and insulation as well as controlling air movement with enclosed door entries. Ventilation comes from a heat recovery system.
Any further carbon reductions will probably need to come from our vehicles. My four-cylinder truck although 10-years old is still about as fuel thrifty as more modern models although they are more powerful. Our three-year-old Grand Caravan gets amazing mileage on long trips but could be better for around town.

Beautiful sundog this morning

It was a beautiful, if cold, morning in Nolalu today. This lovely sundog greeted us right after dawn. The temperature at our home was -24 C and the vicious winds of yesterday are gone. I got chilled to the bone yesterday snowblowing the driveway as I cleaned up from Wednesday and Thursday's dump of snow. All told we probably got 15 cm or about six inches. It was the second such snowfall in a week. We now have about 30 inches on the ground.
Temperatures are more or less normal for this time of year. Nobody misses the -40 C stuff we had two weeks ago.

Lynx move on snowshoe hares

I wondered when lynx would discover the abundant snowshoe hare population on our property this winter. The trail camera pics are from yesterday.
Hares are virtually the only prey of lynx.
These two animals follow a wild 11-year cycle that has been documented for hundreds of years by the fur trade and undoubtedly for millennia by First Nations.
Why 11 years? There is an 11-year solar cycle too. This fluctuation in solar intensity also created cycles in forest fire destruction; however, I believe climate change has now upended that schedule. The worst fire season now is always just the previous year.

Let's hear it for most-successful humans

Ski hill in distance is twice as far away as our atmosphere is thick

That, of course, would be Homo erectus.
These hominids survived for two million years and eventually cohabited the Earth with several other human species including Homo neanderthalensis, Homo floriensis, Homo denisova and yes, Homo sapiens, the "wise one."
It wasn't the Neanderthals or the Denisovans that named us that. We thought up the "wise one" moniker ourselves. Homo sapiens have a lot of qualities but modesty isn't one of them.
Everybody got along in their respective regions: Asia, southwestern Europe, Indonesia, Siberia and East Africa.
Sapiens, who have been around for only 150,000 years, were much like the other hominids. They hunted and gathered and made fires just like the others had done for hundreds of thousands of years.
Then something went terribly "wrong" about 70,000 years ago. Sapiens streamed out of Africa and eventually killed everyone. In fact you could say we killed everyone and everything.
Our historical relationship with nature could be summed up with: "We ate the big ones first and then we ate the rest."
It is estimated our species has, at best, another 1,000 years.
So what happened 70,000 years ago? Author Yuval Noah Harari says in the book Sapiens that is when the Cognitive Revolution started. People started believing in mythologies that eventually became religions, social hierarchies, systems of economics, corporations and countries. Things began snowballing downhill with the Agricultural Revolution 10,000 years ago and went ballistic with the Industrial Revolution, just 200 years ago. It is the latter revolution that will finish us along with most of the rest of life on the planet. It's one thing to have speared, shot and netted umpteen species into extinction but it is exponentially worse to pollute the very atmosphere everything breathes and alter the temperature of the entire planet so that nothing lives other than insects and bacteria.
That we can do this and not even care says everything about our species.We are arrogant, greedy, violent and conniving but that isn't even the worst about us. The worst is we believe in fantasies and refuse to accept reality when it conflicts with our beliefs. Case in point: How many people believe that those other humans mentioned above were steps on the evolutionary ladder that eventually led to the pinnacle of evolution - Sapiens! That fits with our mythology that we are the most intelligent and therefore the most deserving to be alive today and it helps us ignore the reality that if we are indeed "intelligent" we would not be exterminating all life.
Homo erectus walked the Earth from 2,000,000 years ago until 10,000 years ago. Our species started 150,000 years ago and will be gone at 151,000.
Must this be our outcome? No, it doesn't.  We know as a species how to save the planet, how to live sustainably. There are real-world solutions. Our parents were called the Greatest Generation because they saved the world from Nazi tyranny through their hard work, sacrifice and ingenuity. Our generation needs to step up and save the world, period.
We are in a boat surrounded by a sea of uninhabitable space and we have continually been removing boards from the top of the boat. We're now down to the waterline.
Here's something to ponder: See that ski hill in the photo above? It is Mount Baldy as seen from our house in Nolalu. It is 36 miles away. That is exactly twice as far as the thickness of our atmosphere.
It is just 18 miles high. Now do you understand how easy it is to pollute it, to change its composition?
When we look up at the sky it seems endless because there is nothing on the other side. It is anything but. It is a thin, fragile veneer and it is the only thing that supports Life.

Temperature is definitely 'snappy' today

Cork and I walk our snowshoe trails daily

Webbing on these 'shoes needed revarnishing

At dawn today the thermometer registered -27 C or -16 F. That is the record so far this winter in Nolalu. It was far colder in Red Lake. I heard on the radio that it was only -36 C there. Those temperatures do not take into account the wind chill. I could certainly feel the wind as I walked down the road to the mail box. At these temperatures even the slightest breeze makes you turn your head away.

(Update: Temperature Sunday was -34 C which happens to be 30 below F)

I had big plans about raising the final beam on my wood shed today but came to the conclusion that a better idea was to sit in the sunroom where a combination of the sun and the wood stove made it feel like a tropical beach. So I read a book the whole afternoon.
Cork and I have now packed down the snow on all of our bush trails. It was tough going with snowshoes the first time around. The snowshoes plunge about half way down through the two feet of the white stuff. I noticed that I have worn off all the varnish on my snowshoes so I brought them into the house for a few coats. In the meantime I borrowed Brenda's which are of a modern design and have a solid nylon material under the foot. I broke some new trail with them just to see if they held me further aloft but no such luck.
It is important to varnish the rawhide lacing on snowshoes from time to time to waterproof them. If the temperature ever gets above freezing the untreated rawhide will stretch and make walking absolutely miserable.
There are no signs of any canines in the bush now, not foxes, wolves or coyotes. I'm a little worried that something drastic has happened to the whole lot, like disease. On the other hand it could be these animals are hampered by the deep snow now and aren't moving.
Every time I snowshoe on a trail that I have made I think back to when I was a kid. I loved to make trails in the bush around our house at Red Lake. Perched three feet above the ground in the deep snow I could fly over the windfalls that make summer walking difficult.
One time my friends Dennis and Brian Larson and I found a deep drift at the edge of the lake and beside a small game trail. We thought it a great spot to make a fort and spent hours chopping out blocks of snow and piling them around the hole we had dug using our snowshoes as shovels.
We were exhausted and sat with our backs against one side of the "igloo" that had no top. Uncharacteristically we were silent, probably because we were too tired to speak for the moment and it just felt good to soak up the sun's rays down in the hole where there was no wind.
Just then a dog came walking along the game trail which was on top of the snow and about three feet higher than our heads. It was only about six feet from where I sat. The dog never saw us and walked down to the lake where it followed the little trail to the other side of the bay and walked into the bush.
As it disappeared all three of us realized at once, "That was a wolf!"

Wood shed site now buried in snow

Evidence that nature abhors a vacuum

A Harris's Sparrow, rare in these parts, is a regular visitor to our feeder this winter

There is a postscript to the posting awhile back regarding grey foxes appearing for the first time in Nolalu. It now seems that something has happened to the usual population of red foxes. I haven't seen a single one all winter, not even along the roads. Red foxes are just about the most commonly seen animal on our rural roads, especially at night. Where are they?
It is still early to say for sure but a neighbour reports finding two dead red foxes last year. What could be killing them? One suggestion is distemper.
At any rate that might explain how grey foxes are gaining a foothold. It is only about 30 miles from here to Minnesota where grey foxes are fairly common. The greys may be filling the niche left open by the reds.
In other wildlife news, the Harris's Sparrow above seems to have made the decision to spend the winter at our bird feeder. He showed up with the first snows in November. He is about half a continent away from his usual territory of Alberta - to - Texas.

New Year's Eve buck still has antlers

Whitetails will be dropping their antlers any day

Call it Snow-la-lu instead of Nolalu

Thank goodness for our Kubota tractor and snowblower

We had a white Christmas in Nolalu but the snow was only about six inches deep. Then Old Man Winter blew in. We got 14 inches a few days ago and a few more inches last night.

Merry and Peaceful Christmas!

This is the scene just about any afternoon at our home in Nolalu, Ont. We are so blessed to have so much wildlife right outside our windows. Brenda and I as well as our Chocolate Lab, Cork, wish everyone a joyous Christmas.

Evidence of our prickly neighbour

Birch and pine are its favourites

A white birch with its bark gnawed away shows that a porcupine was here. Cork and I found this tree yesterday and the damage looks recent. I expect we will find more such trees in the future.
Porcupines do not travel far in the winter. When it gets really cold they seem to hibernate right on the tree. They don't move at all for days.

Things are really hopping here in the bush

Snowshoe or Varying Hares seem to be everywhere

There are only a few inches of snow here in Nolalu, ON, which is 50 kilometers southwest of Thunder Bay, but that snow is just about trampled with rabbit tracks. I can see the tracks clearly but spotting the animal that is making them is another matter. This bunny just happened to "show up" on one of my trail cameras.

'How do they know all this climate stuff?'

Moon rises over Thunder Bay as seen from Nolalu, ON

If you don't understand all the information coming at you about climate change, I highly recommend Earth's Changing Climate, a course taught by Professor Richard Wolfson as part of the Great Courses program.

The Great Courses are university-level courses that you purchase to be viewed on your computer or listened to in your car. I prefer listening to these courses instead of commercial radio. Lectures are 30-45 minutes in length and there are usually 18 or so lectures to a course.
Courses like Earth's Changing Climate are designed for non-scientists so don't be afraid that you won't be able to understand. At the same time Earth's Changing Climate gives you all the facts and tells you what is known and not known about climatic processes.
Climate change is going to drastically affect us all. The more you know, the more prepared you will be.

Strange animals showing up in Nolalu

Where are all the grey foxes coming from?

These smaller tree-climbing canines haven't been seen here in recent memory

I was stunned to look out the window the other night and see two grey foxes eating sunflower seeds beneath our bird feeders. They were the first grey foxes I have seen in the 33 years that we have lived in Nolalu.
A neighbour told me he has heard of two other sightings this fall.
I called the local Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry office with the news. Biologist Laura Darby said other grey foxes have been seen in Thunder Bay.
That is news because in the past there has been almost nothing but red foxes here, at least in recent history. Red foxes themselves are immigrants from Europe. They were brought to North America with the first British settlers for fox hunts.
So, hundreds of years ago this might have been grey fox country. What happened to them is anybody's guess but they are known to be killed by coyotes.
I'm just guessing but I can imagine the coyote population rose when Europeans settled here. Those mid-size predators thrive around humans, especially around agriculture.
That might explain why the grey foxes disappeared, if in fact they actually once lived here at all, but what accounts for them coming back? Not much has changed, agriculture-wise.
My guess would be climate change.