Fish Fear Me

Not So Fast

Remember last week when I declared Duluth open for business? Well, Mother Nature has decided to cast a vote on that:

As the Presque Isle sat damaged at the Port Terminal dock in the Duluth Superior Harbor Saturday afternoon, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Morro Bay sat across the bay near the Aerial Lift Bridge nursing its own wounds.

Both vessels were forced to return to the Twin Ports Friday after Lake Superior's ice cover—as thick as 8 feet in some places—put a halt on any forward progress.

The US Coast Guard icebreaker Katmai Bay went past the cabin last night on its way to the Soo locks, but today it appears to have holed up in Thunder Bay as a storm is also moving through. Between the ice and the storm rolling through late this afternoon and tomorrow, conditions are just too much. I was hoping to get some good big boat pics with the new camera this trip, but I don't think that's to be.

Below the fold, a couple of gifs I made today of the ice getting blown past the house from east to west.

Deer Me

I was hoping to get a shot at a sliver of moon at sunset tonight when I turned around and saw another opportunity three houses down:  

I count 7, but it could have been 8. They could obviously hear the camera, but they were far enough away that it just made them nervous:

For perspective on distance, the deer are browsing around the smaller spruce in front of the brown house in this picture:

The Hatch Is On

I guess something was up on Monday afternoon as one eagle chick has emerged and another is in progress today according to the Facebook page for the EagleCam:

 

Oh,  and I don't want to put a damper on things, because I think this is very cool, but I hope the elementary school classrooms that are watching this process are prepared for this:

Occasionally, as is recorded in many large raptorial birds, the oldest sibling sometimes attacks and kills their younger sibling(s), especially early in the nesting period when their sizes are most different.^[7] However, nearly half of known Bald Eagle produce two fledgings species (more rarely three)...

It is what it is, but that can come as a shock to kids overwhelmed with cuteness right now. 

Huh...

Two things about this screenshot of the EagleCam this afternoon:

1. It's alert again now, but including last year too, this is the first time I've caught one of the eagles appearing to sleep for a few minutes.

2. Is it my imagination or is its posture different, as in the wings aren't tucked in as tightly? Is there a chick under there?

Update: Nope. Caught a quick glimpse this morning and it looks like all three eggs are still intact. 

The Port Of Duluth Is Open For Business(Updated)

The Cason J. Calloway opened the 2014 shipping season for Duluth yesterday (Warning! Loud horn blasts starting at 2:24):

 

Very impressive. 

Much work has been done all over the Great Lakes to get the shipping season started. Here's a video from a couple weeks ago of the USCG cutter Alder busting out of Duluth Harbor, passing under the lift bridge, and then busting through more ice until it reaches open water about ten miles later:

 

Cool stuff.

(via Duluth Shipping News)

Update: The US Coast Guard continues to work the shipping channel between Duluth and the Soo locks. This morning marinetraffic.com shows the cutter Mackinaw, a heavy icebreaker, leading the way down the North Shore to Duluth followed by the USCG icebreaker tugs Morro Bay and Katmai Bay. If they are really doing 13 knots they must be keeping the shipping lane open and not breaking ice. The high temps lately in that area have been in the high teens to low 20s with lows in the single digits at night. 

Here's an NBC story and article on the Alder that may be from the same mission as the video above:

 

Confirmation

Obviously I can't say it's the same bird for sure, but this is definitely a male Downy Woodpecker:

Note the white indent on the back of the neck and the solid red cap. Some birds are fairly easy to identify by plain sight or binoculars. I don't think I would have figured this one out for sure without being able to study the pictures from the new camera.

Son. Of. A. Bitch

Our brief return to somewhat normal temps for this time of year will be interrupted by yet another Arctic blast:

We're looking at a few inches of snow Thursday night into Friday, maybe more. The good news is the low overnight Saturday in the Twin Cities will only be 6 above, instead of the -5 or so that places north will see.

No really, for this year that's good news.

 

Bird Of The Day: Downy Woodpecker

The Downy Woodpecker and the Hairy Woodpecker are very much alike. I think the bird pictured here is a male Downy Woodpecker based on how the white on the neck indents up toward the red patch instead of there being a basically straight line from front to back as shown here. I could be wrong, though it's almost certainly one of the two. I'll try to get some better shots to make a positive ID.

Uh Oh

I'm getting the feeling that the sense of calm right now is only the eye of a hurricane:

Ukrainian soldiers authorized to use weapons by acting president

Ukrainian soldiers serving in Crimea have been authorized to use their weapons to defend themselves, according to the acting Ukrainian president's press service. 

The order comes only hours after a Ukrainian serviceman was shot and killed on Tuesday at a Ukrainian base that came under attack in Crimea's main town of Simferopol and acting Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said the Crimean conflict has now entered a "military phase."

Crimean forces take Ukrainian navy HQ

Crimea's self-defense forces on Wednesday stormed the Ukrainian navy headquarters in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, taking possession without resistance a day after Russia signed a treaty with local authorities to annex the region.

An Associated Press photographer witnessed several hundred self-defense forces take down the gate and make their way onto the headquarters' premises. They then raised the Russian flag on the square by the headquarters.

They also took away the head of the Ukrainian navy, Sergey Gaiduk, prompting this response from Ukraine:

Ukraine's Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov issued a 9 p.m. (3 p.m. ET) deadline for Crimea to release all hostages and stop all provocations, a statement on the presidential website said.

It warned that if all hostages, including Gaiduk, were not released by the deadline, authorities would take action of "technical and technological character," likely meaning turning off utilities.

And that, my friends, would probably mean at least the threat of a further Russian invasion of Ukraine, if not simply the real deal right off the bat. 

Hopefully the Ukrainians will not give Putin his reason, but the opportunities for this to blow up into full scale war are numerous. One misstep will do it.

Oh, and this is not welcome either:

Russia signaled concern on Wednesday at Estonia's treatment of its large ethnic Russian minority, comparing language policy in the Baltic state with what it said was a call inUkraine to prevent the use of Russian.

Russia has defended its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula by arguing it has the right to protect Russian-speakers outside its borders, so the reference to linguistic tensions in another former Soviet republic comes at a highly sensitive moment.

Bringing that up at this moment is a thinly-veiled and deliberate threat, probably in response to Biden's visit to the Baltics today. I don't believe anything is imminent there with the Ukraine situation so explosive, but NATO should respond with more exercises in the Baltics, and perhaps a shift of some of the US EURCOM forces to permanent bases in the Baltics. 

Obama Creates Ministry Of Silly Sanctions

It's right out of a Monty Python sketch:

While stopping short of singling out Putin himself, Obama sanctioned seven high-ranking Russian officials on Monday. The administration also announced sanctions against separatist leaders in Crimea and former president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. The expanded U.S. sanctions, announced in an executive order, would target the assets of the listed Russian officials and bar them from entering the U.S. These include Putin aides Vladislav Surkov and Sergey Glazyev. 

In what would be a brilliant execution of the principle called reciprocity, there's a report claiming that Russia will today unleash its own silly sanctions against members of the US Congress.

Is there any evidence that the 7 Russians and 4 Ukrainians actually had any US assets to seize? I would think we'd be hearing about it this morning, but as far as I can tell there's not a peep. 

Is there any evidence that a ban against travel to the US for those 11 will cause them the slightest inconvenience? 

Along the lines of the old "if a tree falls in the woods," if a sanction erupts from Washington but nobody actually feels it, is it still a sanction?

Putin's response yesterday was to declare that Crimea and Sevastopol* are independent and wish to become part of the Russian Federation. Today he signed a treaty to that effect that will probably be ratified by the Russian Parliament shortly. 

And there you go, it's done. Or is it just the end of the beginning? 

In Putin's speech today, he claimed that Russia has no further designs on Ukrainian territory, but he also continued to denounce the new regime and mourn the collapse of the Soviet Union:

“Millions of Russians went to bed in one country and woke up abroad,” he said. “Overnight, they were minorities in the former Soviet republics, and the Russian people became one of the biggest — if not the biggest — divided nation in the world.”

That attitude ought to scare the hell out of everybody in the West.

It's good to keep the return of Crimea and Sevastopol to Ukraine as an aspirational goal, even though it is very unlikely, but that's not the game anymore. The real game now is to keep Russia from seizing even more of Ukraine and to be proactive about where Putin may foment trouble next. In particular that means reviewing the situation in the NATO-member Baltic states, specifically the Russian situation, and gaming out various scenarios so that the EU and the US are not caught flat-footed again. 

Scoff at the idea of Russia attacking a NATO country if you will, but the old saying "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" applies.

Whatever game Putin is playing, he appears to be ahead of the US and the EU at this point. It's a complicated and dangerous game for everyone, but if the West doesn't catch up, and soon, it could quickly become even more so if Putin thinks the US and EU don't have the will to confront him. That means being willing to inflict some real pain, and receive some back from Russia as well. 

Silly sanctions aren't going to do it. In fact, they only make things worse.

*I didn't realize until today that Sevastopol was politically separate from Crimea, but it is.