Summer – Towards the Moon or To the Sun

Screaming Trees

I was early for a meeting in Wilkes County. With some time to kill, I followed the distant but pervasive sound of (pardon the geek reference) a phaser pistol overloading. I parked where a neighborhood met a wooded drain, and from a roadside swamped by wisteria, I heard the steady, whining drone of untold numbers of cicadas, all looking for love.

Like many insects, cicada adulthood is merely a fraction of the insects’ total lifespan. After hatching from eggs drilled into tree twigs, the nymphs fall to the ground. They burrow in and live in the earth for from as little as one to as many as 17 years, surviving by drinking sap from tree roots. When the time comes, the nymphs climb up trees, poles, grass, or whatever they find to get a little elevation. They split the back of their exoskeletal skin and molt. Once the new exoskeleton hardens and the wings straighten and dry, they fly off to find a mate. The males do all the calling; I can’t fathom how a female chooses one among the cacophony. Cicadas do take time to feed, drinking plant juices, but don’t do much damage considering their numbers. They don’t bite or sting, although the deep buzz of a low-flying cicada can be startling.

Georgia is home to 20 or so “annual” species of cicada, so called because adults appear every year. After spending less than half a dozen years in the darkness, these large insects appear in the heat of the summer, buzz around in their millions for a few weeks, and then die. They are often dull-colored or camouflaged, and more likely to be heard than seen until we find them dead on the ground at the end of their final sprint.

There are also six species known as “periodic” cicadas. These black and orange insects spend 13 to 17 years as nymphs before rising to deafen the neighbors. While some annual cicadas appear every year, the periodic cicadas all rise together in tremendous broods. This year, the trillions of members of 13-year Brood XIX are keeping folks awake from Virginia to Louisiana and up into the Midwest (Broods are multi-state masses of periodic cicadas that all rise in the same summer. A 17-year group known as Brood XIII has also risen this year in the upper Midwest).

My first close contact took place just as I stepped from the truck; an orange-eyed critter landed on my shirt and stayed put for a couple of minutes before getting spooked and flying off. Once I started looking, I saw the empty husks everywhere – dozens on a branch, sometimes one on each side of a leaf! And while the trees ahead of me housed the vast majority of cicadas, there were several specimens amongst the shells at my feet, mostly unbothered by me even at close range.

And the air was full of the wailing siren of cicada courtship. Did they reach the estimated one million per acre in these woods? All that noise suggested it was a possibility. At close range, cicada calls can reach 90-100 decibels, or as loud as a power drill! I was as close as I needed to be to the unearthly courting cries.

After a while, I set about collecting some of the exoskeletons (because that’s the sort of thing I do). A 15-foot strip of roadside netted me several dozen husks, and there were others in view that I didn’t harvest.

I took my collection back to the truck; it was time for my meeting, and the cicadas had their own business to attend.

4H student shows off her collection of exoskeletons

Further Information

Cicadas recorded at this roadside

Common Cicadas in Georgia

Too Blue To Fly

As I greeted the rising moon before going to bed a few nights ago, I heard birdsong far off in the woods. It triggered a distinct memory of sitting in a pickup truck on a red-dirt gravel road, late on a warm summer night. I was supposed to be snoozing while my Dad listened in vain for running foxhounds. All I heard was the distant, rolling song of a whip-poor-will.

A couple of nights later, the whip-poor-will’s repetitive cry had been supplanted by the closer and more staccato call of the Chuck-will’s-widow.

Onomatopoetically-named, both the whip-poor-will and its larger cousin are member of a group of birds called nightjars (reportedly because their call at night is “jarring”). As far back as ancient Greece, nightjars were called “goatsuckers” for the erroneous belief that they would sneak into barns and steal milk from the livestock. An odd belief to be sure, but when one sees the small beak pop open to reveal a disproportionately large mouth, it might not be as far a stretch for an ancient pastoralist with a wild imagination. The myth may never be forgotten; the scientific Order of these birds, Caprimulgiformes, is from the Latin Caprimulgus, or “goat sucker”.

Nightjars don’t in fact drink milk. Their diet consists of insects taken on the wing, supplemented with worms and other ground crawlies. When swooping on a moth, the whip-poor-will’s deceptively minute beak snaps open, revealing a horror-show mouth that seems to split the bird’s skull wide. Their maws are edged with whiskers that prompt the birds to snap their beaks shut when their prey brushes them.

Not that you are likely to see a nightjar. From twilight until full dark – and longer if the moon cooperates – these birds haunt the woodlines and fields. They are ground nesters, but with such complete camouflage that you are likely to pass right by the unassuming pile of leaves unless your light happens to catch the bright red reflection of their eyes.

Eastern whip-poor-wills lay their eggs in phase with the lunar cycle, so that they hatch, on average, 10 days before a full moon. Perhaps this allows them more hunting light to feed their chicks.

Folks have attached quite a bit of lore to the whip-poor-will. To some, the monotonous call portended imminent death or approaching danger. For others, it foretold marriage prospects. Whip-poor-wills were nature spirits, ghosts of children, or the traveling form for shapeshifters.

Poets and singers laud or curse the calls, including Hank Williams: “Hear that lonesome whippoorwill/ he sounds too blue to fly. / The midnight train is whining low/ I’m so lonesome I could cry”

I’d be blue too if someone called me a goat sucker.

Such melancholy connotations are undeserved, as there is nothing mournful in the bird’s rapid flute-like tattoo. I suspect all the feelings of sorrow and loneliness ascribed to these night birds are merely unhappy poets projecting their own misery onto unsuspecting avians.

For many country folk, the distant lulling call is pleasant night music, while a nearby maddening shrilling banishes all hope of sleep. However you perceive the songs of nightjars, you won’t hear them as frequently as in decades past. We can probably lay the lion’s share of the blame for this on the alarming decline of insects over the last century. Less food means less night song.

Last night, I heard the dueling calls of the nightjar cousins. The whip-poor-will’s infinite loop swallowed up the Chuck-will’s-widow’s more discrete song, but with concentration I could just make out the larger bird’s contribution to the night sounds. I hope I will never have a spring or summer without these two nightjars to accompany the evenings.

Additional Resources:

Whip-poor-will song

Chuck-will’s-widow song

Pages for the Eastern Whip-poor-will and Chuck-will’s-widow on the Cornell Lab’s All About Birds

The Dance of Lights

Is a picture worth a thousand words?

Depends on the picture, and the quality of the words.

I lack the picture, and am not confident that the words will be adequate. Nevertheless, here goes.

My wife and I took a weekend getaway in the northeast corner of Georgia, nestled in a small rental in a cove framed on three sides by green-mantled mountains. The little cabin shared a fenced-in field with a barn and a couple acres of unmowed grass. Beyond the fence were other fields and other houses, some abandoned but most with more permanent residents than the sort our getaway hosted. It was a pleasure to hear chickens rather than sirens, and to let the dogs out into the yard without a leash, confident that the rabbits and whistlepigs (as my wife’s people called groundhogs) had the sense to clear out before the hounds noticed them.

The sun had dipped below the nearest hills when we sat on the patio and ruminated in the still, cooling air. Turns out, we were waiting for a spectacle we weren’t even expecting.

We spotted the first flash a few minutes after sundown – a silent greenish spark, twenty yards distant among the branches of a black walnut. It was followed a minute or so later by another brief glow farther down the treeline. I enjoy seeing lightning bugs on summer evenings, and noted these as a part of the background, along with distant treefrogs and the occasional flash of heat lightning.

Why is it easy to dismiss such a natural wonder? A beetle that mixes biochemicals to create visible light with almost no heat? A beetle that uses this visible signal to alert potential mates? A beetle which flashes its bioluminescent lantern in a particular pattern to distinguish itself from the dozens of other firefly species in Georgia? A beetle whose numbers, like those of many insects, have dwindled in recent decades? Watching a biochemical flare popping over every five or ten seconds was notable back home, but it wouldn’t hold my attention long.

Yet fifteen minutes later, I noticed that these fireflies were uncommonly active. As the treetop silhouettes faded against the dimming sky, the light show ramped up, drawing us into the field for a clearer look. By full-dark, I could look in any direction and see ten to twenty flashes per second. In the trees and above the tall grass, a multitude greenish sparks floated in the darkness.

My wife was awed; she said she had not seen such an intense display since her childhood in western North Carolina, before developers transformed the fields and orchards. We watched the green sparks, like embers from a faerie fire, appear and vanish the blink of an eye. From beside our heads to two hundred yards away, they flared silently.

For the next night – our final night at the cabin – we determined to make best use of the only cameras we had: our phones. But despite fiddling with the exposures on photos and video, the devices let us down. They just weren’t sensitive enough to register the brief pinpoints flaring in the otherwise complete darkness. Out of many attempts, the best I scored was one photo with a few blurred green spots. There was also a video of the female lightning bug that I plucked from the grass at my feet. It crawled across my arm to the top of my head, strobing like it was overcaffeinated, before dropping back on the ground. But without a good way to visually document the spectacle, we were left no option but to capture the moment as we do so many of life’s stolen moments: with the mind’s eye.

After a long while bearing witness to the dance of lights, the promise of an early morning made us to reluctantly retreat indoors. I wonder if anyone in that little valley was appreciating the natural spectacle. How often did those spending nights at the cabin turn off the television long enough to notice the show outside their window?

Looking back, I can confirm that my words were inadequate. But perhaps they will be enough to encourage you to seek out this natural light show in your own forest, field, or back yard.

Additional Resources:

A firefly fact sheet (pdf) from the Georgia Extension Service.

Firefly.org: Conservation and research information.

Ghost Pipe

I learned something new! I love it when that happens.

In the last few months I moved from just below to Fall Line to deep in the Piedmont. As a result the collection of counties I am responsible for have gotten hillier, wetter, and slightly cooler. I’m seeing a different suite of flora and fauna than before, including some things that haven’t previously been on my radar.

A bowshot from National Forest land in the high hills of North Georgia, something caught my eye beneath the white pines, oaks, beeches, and maples. Small white stalks rose from the leaf litter, curling over at the top with a petaled capsule like a lamp post for gnomes. I snapped some photos so I could look up what kind of fungus this was when I got home.

Monotropa uniflora is known by several common names, including ghost plant, Indian pipe, ghost pipe, or corpse plant. It was much more interesting than I gave it credit for. For starters, it isn’t a fungus; it’s a plant in the heather family. Instead of spraying spores to reproduce, ghost pipe requires native bees to visit its flower and carry its pollen. Unlike heather (and most plants), ghost pipe doesn’t produce chlorophyll, so it can’t use sunlight to make energy. So how does it live?

That’s the next interesting bit. There are many fungi that engage in mutualistic association with plants. These fungi, known as mycorrhizae, colonize the roots of plants. They assist the plant in collecting water or nutrients, and collect carbohydrates created in the plant’s chlorophyll factories above. The ghost pipe is a parasite of certain mycorrhizal fungi. This is a switch; usually a fungus parasitizes plants. But we have a plant stealing sugar from a fungus that said fungus “traded” from a tree that produced that energy in the sunlit canopy 80 feet above. Thus, it can grow in the densest, darkest forests. Ghost pipe pops quickly up after a rain, and flowers in early summer to autumn; I was fortunate to have wandered the woods at just the right time to see them.

Curiosity is an important trait for any aspiring naturalist. Knowledge can be gained by seeking answers, but curiosity is the driver.