Last Updated: Friday, December 5, 2008 8:39 AM CST
Balsams provide
the season’s perfume
Ced Vig
wisconsin woodsmoke
“In the North Country, a man’s best friend need not be a dog. It can be a tiny feathered bundle of cheerfulness called a chickadee.”
– John Burroughs
December is chickadee weather — chilly days, cold nights and snow in the air. Chickadees are the most popular birds that come to our feeders for suet and sunflower seeds. Their presence makes the winters so much more interesting. They require 20 times more food during winter than summer. They are known for flying to the feeder and taking a sunflower seed and flying back to a tree branch to open it.
More December
“December is the month when nature finally shuts up house and turns the key. She has been slowly packing up and putting away her things and closing a door and a window here and there all the fall. Now she completes the work and puts up the last bar. She is ready for winter.”
– John Burroughs
This first week in December brings the earliest sunsets of the year, though not the shortest days because sunrise will continue to lag for another month. We are approaching the winter solstice and, in terms of daylight span, the very depth of the year. Now we begin to pay that promissory note we signed last summer for those endless sun-tanned days with early dawns and long, lingering twilight.
December 21 marks the first day of the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. It also has the fewest hours of daylight because the sun is farthest down from the equator. The good news is that after the solstice, the days start getting longer again.
Winter weather
If you want to go to the coldest city in the lower 48 states, travel to Butte, Mont., where there are 223 days when the temperature gets below freezing. If you want to go to the sunniest city in the U.S.A., you’ll want to winter in Yuma, Ariz. Yuma has an average of 4,000 sunny hours each year. January is about 90 percent cloudy in the northwestern states.
Christmas tree facts
(From Wisconsin Christmas Tree Producers Association)
• It takes from 7 to 15 years for a Christmas tree to grow to an average harvest size of seven feet.
• One acre of Christmas trees produce the daily oxygen requirements for 18 people.
• There are 65,000 acres of Christmas trees in Wisconsin.
• Every year, 3 million Christmas trees are harvested in Wisconsin. Over 2,650,000 trees are sold out-of-state and 350,000 are sold in Wisconsin.
• Christmas tree growers plant an average of three trees for every tree that is harvested during the Christmas season.
• Wisconsin ranks in the top six states in production of Christmas trees.
• Real Christmas trees are recyclable and are a renewable resource.
Christmas tree stuff
We put up our Christmas tree this weekend — a dark green balsam fir. Its clean, spicy fragrance together with a whiff of woodsmoke from the fireplace contributed to the Christmasy environment of our home.
Balsam is the only fir tree native to Wisconsin. It has a symmetrical, slender pyramidal crown that is quite dense. If sheared annually, it makes a well-shaped Christmas tree.
It has been said that you can differentiate between a balsam fir from several Wisconsin spruces by “shaking hands with the tree.” The spruces hurt. The balsam doesn’t.
You’ll find balsams in the northern half of Wisconsin. It does not grow into a large tree and the life expectancy is usually less than 90 years.
Balsam wood is light, soft and weak and is used for paper pulp and low quality lumber. The sticky, gum-like resin is used for microscopic slides and optical equipment. In winter, deer and moose browse on the needles. It is better than a spruce for a Christmas tree since it is more fragrant and retains its needles longer.
Northwoods fragrances
If we could bring a “fragrance recording” to our firesides during the winter evenings, we would select these:
• The fresh, “Christmasy” smell of a balsam thicket — reminiscent of countless evenings of sleeping on its resinous branches.
• The tangy smoke from a bonfire of burning leaves.
• The cool, refreshing fragrance of a black spruce swamp filled with spaghnum moss.
• The distinct aroma of wet, decaying leaves whose fall has produced a soft veneer of forest duff.
These olfactory delights could be combined to form what is known as the “tang o’ the North.”
Grouse in winter
Like most winter birds, the grouse fluff their feathers to conserve heat energy. Doing this, the grouse appear to be as large as domestic chickens. Grouse frequently form small aggregations of seven to 10 birds during the winter.
Currently the grouse are roosting in protected, wooded areas, such as in the bushy branches of pine, hemlock and balsam fir. But when the snow-depth reaches eight inches, they prefer to dive down into it and spend the night there. When pursued by a predator, such as a hawk, a grouse will dive into the powdery snow to escape being seen or captured.
Grouse move about more in the winter than during the summer. Usually this movement takes place in a fairly confined area. If the snow isn’t too deep, the male grouse occasionally return to their drumming logs which they continue to defend during the winter months. Now and then a male may be heard drumming. In fact, grouse have been known to drum every month of the year.
Wintering eagles
There are several eagles wintering along the Wisconsin River in the Rhinelander area. These nine-pound birds have about 7,000 feathers that weigh about a pound and a quarter — twice the weight of their bones. Eagles are not bald since their heads are covered with feathers. These feathers are brown when the eagles are juveniles — white when adults. It takes four or five years for an eagle to get his white head and tail feathers.
A winter predator
The great horned owl is the largest “eared” owl in the Northwoods. It’s twice the size of a crow and has a 60-inch wingspan, large ear tufts and large marigold eyes. The horned owl is the most powerful owl in North America. It kills its prey with its powerful feet, exerting a pressure of 1,000 pounds per square inch — enough to crush a rabbit’s skull. The female is not only deadlier than the male, but considerably larger.
Singing Mice
Years ago, trappers and lumberjacks sometimes spent the winter in a small rustic cabin or shack. Life there didn’t get too lonesome if there were a few mice rummaging around the cabin, especially at night. These mice appeared to have white gloves on their feet, and because their well-kept pelts have a similar color pattern as white-tailed deer, they were known as deer mice. Deer mice don’t squeak like most mice. Instead they make a buzzing or trilling sound — as though they were singing.
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Comments
Bob wrote on Dec 8, 2008 10:32 AM: