Seven Bats Strong

The trails, everyone will be relieved to know, have really dried out pretty well and we've enjoyed several sparkling days of sunshine here in the Snug, cheering up our loads of visitors to no end. (Numbers have been high; just yesterday I led a whopping 32 people around the marina in a harbor walk, creating as many hazards as possible for the hapless tractors.)


The Eastern Pipistrelle Bat, being his small little self.



In more exciting news, I've just been informed by Paul Brown, our chief of Natural Resources, that we'll need to change our mammal talk. We've been saying the island is home to eighteen species of mammal, but it has just been definitively confirmed that we have a seventh species of bat here on Isle Royale - the adorable Eastern Pipistrelle; bringing the total number of mammal species to nineteen.



The Eastern Pipistrelle Bat at leisure.



The Eastern Pipistrelle joins the big and little brown bats, the hoary bat, the northern long-eared bat, the red bat, and the silver-haired bat. They're insectivores and extremely tiny (they only weigh about 4-8 grams.)



In honor of the occasion, I have composed an Isle Royale bat poem:



It's an Eptesicus focus, will you focus on that?

He's the big brown one of our seven species of bats.

It hangs with the northern long-eared and eastern pipistrelle -

There's little brown, hoary, and red bats as well.

And the silver-haired bat; let's not forget him!

Lasionycteris noctivagans, out on a limb.

They're tiny and furry and have little bear faces

Out of nineteen mammals, filling seven of the spaces.  

Someone should set that to some banjo music or something. Let me know how it goes. We can have a concert on Bat Island.

extreme weather

Last week, from Windigo up here to Snug Harbor, lake levels climbed multiple feet in just a few minutes. Beaches were covered, canoes were set adrift. Several minutes later, the water dropped away again, taking logs and branches and canoes away with it.

In the Visitor Center, we were flooded with questions. “What was that strange current in Tobin Harbor?” “This giant rock was suddenly underwater, and a few minutes later it was uncovered again! That’s how much the water rose! What was up with that?” A number of people asked about the “tide.” Some people didn’t want to admit how difficult paddling in Tobin had been, but when they heard us start talking about the weird rushes of water, they leaped to chime in.



The basics of what's happening during a seiche.



The explanation, of course, was a giant seiche that rocked across the lake; water essentially tipping, as if in a giant bowl, from one side to another. Major storms in Duluth (and we're talking major; flooding was so extreme that the polar bear escaped from his enclosure at the zoo and had to be re-captured) sent strong winds repeatedly in the same direction, literally pushing water away from Duluth and towards Isle Royale. Windigo experienced the most severe water level changes, as the seiche hit them first. For the next 24-36 hours, seiches of declining strength came and went, like water sloshing back and forth in that proverbial bowl.

Then came the storms - a night of cracking thunder and nearly constant lightning, dumping multiple inches of rain on the island overnight. The following afternoon, everyone's radios leaped into attention simultaneously, with a warning from Houghton of "extreme and severe weather," "winds upward of 60 mph," "frequent lightning." Everyone sprang into a kind of delighted, frenetic activity at the excitement. We battened down the hatches, triple-lined the boats. I pictured angry winds screaming lengthwise up the island from Windigo, where just that morning there'd been reports of a boat sinking at the dock. Visitors were all dispatched indoors. The sky turned slate-gray and the whole harbor began to rumble with constant thunder, sounding remarkably like we were trapped inside the stomach of an extremely hungry giant.

Of course, as these things normally are, the whole storm was a bit of a let-down. It whizzed in with streaks of lightning over the channel and a few minutes of torrential rain, and then whizzed right by again, with nary a down tree in its wake. It wasn't until the next morning that the waves picked up and disappointed visitors had to eschew their canoe trips.

The stormy few days' greatest legacy was the state it left the trails in: having a current, and supporting aquatic life. It's only now, the third day of sun, that you can finally just about go for a hike without your snorkel.

Summer 2012 on the Isle

Although this is the inaugural post of the Snug Harbor Reporter for 2012, the season is long from "just beginning." For more than two months, the island has been warming up, with employees working the trails, opening buildings, repairing boats, beginning their research, fishing and hiking and eating and camping. Now the days are stretching on to their nigh-infinite sunny lengths, the lake is just about swimmable, and the numbers of visitors are creeping upwards. I am delighted as anything to be back on the island.

It's looking like a good year for orchids, weather (and by "good" I mean extremely variable), and potlucks. The orchids are everywhere - look for striped coral-roots in the Rock Harbor Campground and around the auditorium. The coral-roots are our only non-photosynthetic orchids on the island - they receive all of their nutrition from a fungus that lives in and around its roots. There are also a myriad of ladyslippers, both pink and yellow, clustering the Greenstone Ridge and the North Shore. The weather is currently sending a fleet of eager waves into the harbor. And the potlucks are rising up from the green shores of Mott Island to fill our plates with corned beef and coleslaw and potato chip casserole.

As many of you know, the island is rife with newcomers this year, from Windigo to the North Shore to Mott Island - to right here in this blog's own interpretive division. Justin Olson, our new lead interp, is heading up an impressive crew, if I do say so myself, the five of us hailing from five different states. We have Melissa from Minnesota, Alina from Wisconsin/the Keweenaw, Erin from D.C./Miami, and myself, back from the lower peninsula. Justin, somewhat of a nomad, is originally from Colorado, I believe. Introductions will be forthcoming.

Stay tuned as the summer progresses for photos, updates, stories, and jokes from the Snug. As always, send your photos, questions, and comments to snugharborreporter@blogspot.com, and keep it real.

Sincerely,

Liz Dengate

Snug Harbor Reporter