A PHENOLOGICAL RECORD FOR SAUK AND DANE 
             COUNTIES, WISCONSIN, 1935-19451 
 
 
                 INTRODUCTION 
  Each year, after the midwinter blizzards, there 
comes a thawy night when the tinkle of dripping 
water is heard in the land. It brings strange stir- 
rings, not only to creatures abed for the night, but 
to some who have been asleep for the winter. The 
hibernating skunk, curled up in his deep den, un- 
curls himself and ventures forth to prowl the wet 
world for breakfast, dragging his belly in the melt- 
ing snow. His track marks one of the earliest 
dateable events in that cycle of beginnings and ceas- 
ings which we call a year. 
  From   the beginnings of history, people have 
searched for order and meaning in these events, 
but only a few have discovered that keeping records 
enhances the pleasure of the search, and also the 
chance of finding order and meaning. These few 
are called phenologists. 
  The events comprising the annual cycle are in- 
numerable. Wisconsin, for example, has about 350 
species of birds, 90 mammals, 174 fishes, 72 am- 
phibians and reptiles, 20,000 insects, and 1,500 higher 
plants. The life of each of these 22,000 species con- 
sists of a sequence of events, each a response to the 
advancing season. No one phenologist can hope to 
recognize. much less to record, more than a very 
small fraction of this prodigious drama. 
  Many of the events of the annual cycle recur 
year after year in a regular order. A year-to-year 
record of this order is a record of the rates at which 
solar energy flows to and through living things. They 
are the arteries of the land. By tracing their re- 
sponses to the sun, phenology may eventually shed 
some light on that ultimate enigma, the land's inner 
workings. 
  Yet it must be confessed that with all its weighty 
subject-matter, phenology is a very personal sort 
of science. Once he learns the sequence of events, 
the phenologist falls easily into the not-very-objec- 
tive role of successful seer and prophet. He may 
even fall in love with the plants and animals which 
so regularly fulfil his predictions, and he may har- 
bor the pleasant illusion that he is "calling shots" 
for the biota, rather than vice versa. 
  Phenologists are a heterogeneous lot, and have 
found shelter under diverse intellectual roof-trees. 
Thoreau (1906), the father of phenology in this 
country, scorned any roof-tree but his own, hence 
his records (for the period 1850 to 1861) remained 
unpublished for half a century. Hough (1864) was 
a doctor of medicine, and the Bureau of Patents 
published his tables. Henry (1881) was an agrono- 
mist and a dean; the Board of Regents published 
  'Journal Paper No. 8 of the University of Wisconsin 
Arboretum. 
 
 
his reports. Hopkins (1918) was an entomologist; 
the Weather Bureau published his findings. Among 
contemporary phenologists are botanists, foresters, 
game managers, ornithologists, range managers, and 
zoologists. Phenology, in short, is a "horizontal 
science" which transects all ordinary biological pro- 
fessions.  Whoever sees the land as a whole is 
likely to have an interest in it. 
  Phenology is more ancient than the "vertical" 
categories which it transects; its first paper, pub- 
lished about 974 B.C., cuts across three sciences, 
then not yet born: meteorology, botany, and orni- 
thology: 
    For, lo, the winter is past, 
    The rain is over and gone: 
    The flowers appear on the earth; 
    The time of the singing of birds is come 
    And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. 
                              (Solomon, 2:12) 
 
                    PURPOSE 
  The purpose of this paper is to assemble a com- 
posite phenological record for the wild plants, birds, 
and mammals of the region, with at least a sprinkling 
of items relating to other animals, waters, crop 
plants, and plants used in landscaping. 
  Such a record is useful for two main purposes. 
First, it permits one to interpolate, for any given 
event or any given date, a background of con- 
temporaneous events. For example: a game man- 
ager learns from the literature that in Dane County 
the most frequent date of first egg-laying in pheas- 
ant is May 6. What else of possible importance to 
nesting pheasants is going on at that time? A 
glance at Tables 4 and 5 shows that spring grain 
[63] has been seeded two weeks ago and should be 
well up on May 6; that Franklin ground squirrel2 
[91] has already emerged; that bluegrass [142] will 
head out in eight days; that alfalfa hayfields [200] 
will be ready to cut in 38 days, which just about 
equals the time necessary to complete the clutch (12 
days) and incubate it (21-24 days). 
  The second main purpose of a phenology table is 
to permit one to correct for early or late seasons by 
translating calendar dates into phenological "dates." 
Assume, for example, that the same game manager 
needs to find some pheasant nests, but that the sea- 
son is very early; hence the average date of May 6 
is invalid. How much earlier shall his search begin? 
A glance at Table 5 shows the following contempo- 
raneous first blooms; sugar maple, ehokecherry, win- 
ter cress, lousewort, white trillium, Jacob's ladder. 
  2 Scientific names of the animals and plants referred to in 
the text are given after the common names in the phenology 
tables. Numbers in brackets are serial numbers in the phe- 
nology tables.