There are many weather-related stories today as tornadoes blasted through the Midwest causing destruction to many towns and villages in Illinois and neighboring states. The pictures on TV show some towns wiped off the map. So far, very little loss of life was reported.
My brother Bob was in the southern tip of Illinois on a deer hunting trip and I wondered how he made out.
Once he and his son saw the weather that was coming their way they bailed out yesterday. They made it home today just ahead of the violent weather.
The area they fled experienced golf ball-sized hail and 60 to 70 mile an hour winds which would have certainly blown their little camping trailer around.
I just got off the phone with my brother and he said he got a nice nine-point white tail buck—the biggest buck he has ever taken. He was a pretty happy hunter and is already planning a return trip for next year.
The poor people of the Philippine Islands weren’t so fortunate, as I reported last week. The death toll is over 10,000 and still rising.
When a 25-foot wall of water comes over your island there aren’t many places to hide.
Our military has stepped in to try and get food and water to the survivors but it will be a long time before these islands are back to what we would call normal, if ever.
Many people are trying to leave the islands and find another place to call home to get away from the death and destruction.
The snow we got locally lasted all week so hunters had a great week of tracking snow. I heard of a few bucks being taken.
In my travels I saw where a bear had wandered around eating beechnuts off the snow. Just today I saw where a big flock of turkeys were doing the same thing.
The snow was covered with nuts under every beech tree I walked under today. The snow and wind put most of these down. There will be a lot of little sons of beeches all over the place next spring.
During the warmer weather today I even saw several chipmunks making their last haul of nuts—or maybe not. I haven’t had one problem with mice this fall as the food supply is so great they don’t have to come inside to find food.
Carolyn Belknap sent me a picture of a horned grebe that she took in front of her place on Fourth Lake.
On Fifth Lake there has been a variety of fish ducks including hooded and common merganser, bufflehead and common goldeneye.
In the late summer and early fall I had several inquiries on what was eating the holes in the maple and other tree leaves and I think I have come up with the answer.
It’s the caterpillar of the winter moth. This is a new species and of course, it’s an invasive.
The species has been in the northeast since the 1930s but is getting to be a problem in some orchards.
There isn’t much that they don’t feed on—including most hardwoods, fruit trees, and bushes—plus it also feeds on spruce and larch.
I have seen the moths around for a few years as they flit around on top of the snow on milder days. While on a walk two days ago I disturbed about eight or ten of them in one area.
The males fly up from the grass or small tree they are holding onto, just like a butterfly would in the summertime.
The females are flightless and look like a bug. The males are about an inch across.
They have milky brown wings with a couple of brown spots and crossed with a brown line. More information about winter moths can be found online at Wikipedia and at www.umass.edu/.
From what I’ve seen they seem to be on the increase here. No matter where I take a journey out in the woods on a mild winter day I can see some of the males flying around.
I would think the chickadees would love to eat them. I’m sure they could catch them, but perhaps they don’t taste very good.
A couple bucks have been seen chasing does, but that’s another story. See ya.