and then there are all the happenings
today that don't fit into it.
To know these things, ask yourself,
Where is water flowing?
Where is sun-heat pooling,
gathering?
Here you will find the creatures
that do their thing now,
not waiting for greenup--
because this is their time.
They are a quirky lot,
and no less captivating for it.
In staking their claim
to this forgotten season,
they help me to value it,
and to give it due place
in the march of life.
And more than that,
they give me heart.
I am buoyant, for them.
---
It's twenty-eighteen,
March the first,
and where is water flowing?
In the maple trees, for one--
water, with a certain
sugary life-force of the trees
intermixed.
 |
| Friends Wendy and Jim in their maple grove, March 1, 2018 |
Jim, one of two human syrupers
in this caref'lly tended sugar bush,
had told me as I went out this day
that he'd already seen
a few "Diptera."
Music to my ears;
and yes, there they were.
The hardy few,
already astir--
drawn by the life-water
drip-dropping from the spiles.
 |
| Fly #1 |
 |
| Fly #2... |
 |
| ...and a springtail nearby (at lower left). |
Ah yes, the springtails!
(More on them soon.)
And spiders on the buckets, too.
This creature was all too familiar:
An arachnid of the most intrepid sort,
one I'd seen before, in winter--
on the snow.
 |
| Eustala sp. orbweaver on sap bucket, March 1, 2018 |
Another spider refused to pose on the bucket
where I found it;
we had to settle
for a more terranean photo shoot.
 |
| Young Dolomedes sp. spider from sap bucket, March 1, 2018 |
There was even a scale-wing
I'd count among the smallest moths
I'd ever seen.
Pale as a grain of rice,
but smaller still than that!
 |
| Phyllocnistis (Greek: "leaf scraper") moth resting on sap bucket, March 1, 2018. As a larva, this animal mined the leaf of a tree or shrub sometime in the previous growing season. (1) See also: Another local example of a similar adult; a larva's leaf mine and a pupa of Phyllocnistis insignis |
All this life! And yet--
On some nearby slopes
where maples grow,
the ground slumbers daylong
in shadow, sunbeams never reaching
its deep blue patches of snow.
Things are quieter there.
But Jim and Wendy's trees
stand on ground more favorably inclined.
The slope is gentle, the aspect such
that sunlight does its thing--
brightening the russet sea of fallen leaves;
heating up the maple trunks;
melting puddles in remnant ice...
...Puddles where springtails play!
 |
| A still from a video of a springtail "raft" on meltwater, March 1, 2018 |
(Click here for a video of these animals afloat and awriggle on their puddle.)
Now you may say,
Yes, well and good this is--
but nothing's green!
But then of course if you were there
you might have stooped at base of tree
where trunk and ground,
both sun-warmed, met;
and there you would have found
indeed and truly, all asprout,
that tenderest of toughies:
 |
| Spring beauty! |
See how readily it emerges,
Leaves and flower-buds,
all in one!
---
Now, of those arthropods I found
resting on the buckets--
The leaf-scraper moth, tiny and pale;
the spiders;
just perhaps
they're on the buckets just by chance.
But not the flies.
Nay, they know when sap's adrip;
reliably they seek it out.
In April soon, sapsuckers' wells
will draw them by the dozen.
Also, larger moths will come--
Lithophane, Orthosia too,
Eupsilia, and more.
Wisconsin moth guy Kyle J
knows them all by sight!
Algona, Iowa's Matthew K
spends time with sap-moths too;
both more than I.
Soon I'll make a sap-moths post
to bring these creatures more to light.
For now, I'll simply show a few
that got into the buckets
at Jim and Wendy's sugar bush
around the thirty-first of March:
 |
| Unidentified moth in sap bucket, March 31, 2018. This moth was alive, and upon bringing it indoors I was able to keep it that way for a number of days. |
 |
| A second sap bucket moth, removed from the bucket and placed on leaf litter for photography. Clearly this is an animal well adapted for life in the current season of browns and grays. |
 |
| A third sap bucket moth -- also alive... |
 |
| ...and likely grateful to be rescued |
 |
| The previous two moths, posed side by side on an old maple leaf. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong, readers!) these are both Eupsilia sp. (Noctuidae) |
And that's not all!
Indeed will moths like these appear
at wells from which sapsuckers drink;
but plant exudates draw in birds
beside sapsuckers, too.
This titmouse sipped some resinous stuff
oozing from a cut ash stump
just out my kitchen window--
way back on January 31st,
a day sun-soaked but still quite cool.
Oops! I spooked the titmouse
as I watched it, once or twice;
yet three times it returned
to take another drink!
When it left the final time
I crept outside that I might try
this liquid worth four visits
from a certain thirsty bird;
I put a drop upon my tongue--
'twas noticeably sweet!
 |
| Sweet exudate from cut ash stump, imbibed repeatedly by a tufted titmouse. Beard Century Farm, January 31, 2018 |
Nearby I watched as chickadees
oft visited a leaky wound
on a walnut twig.
So liquid flows and brings new life!
---
Now sap flow* moths from March's end
and January titmouse drinks
are lovely through and through--
but where was I?
Ah yes, at certain sugar bush
on March the very first.
And still, back then at March's start,
yet one more sap flow consequence
(albeit left from springs now gone):
Where is sun-heat
pooling, gathering?
Once again, on maple trunks!
Past years' sap-flows stained them black,
a color good at holding warmth!
________
* From here on out I use the term "sap flow" to refer to the special circumstance of sap leaking from a tree trunk due to some injury to the tree. In dendrology the term "sap flow" may more properly be used to describe the normal movement of liquids inside the tree.
 |
| Fly basking on blackened trunk of sugar maple, Twin Springs Park, March 2, 2018. Maple trees affected heavily by sap leakage ("sap flows") in previous seasons may be located by visually scanning the woods for their trunks' dark color. |
Worshipping the sun god, eh?
Helios was, for Greeks, that god.
**CORRECTION near the bottom of the page here: Falling in Spring**
The sun flies!
Of heleomyzids, Bugguide says:
"Tend to be common in early spring"2
(and also late in autumn).
Same day, same place,
I came across two sun flies, who,
perhaps for all the sunniness,
were in a certain mood.
 |
| Heleomyzids in copula, Twin Springs Park, March 2, 2018 |
Did the person who named the sun flies know
them to bask in Sol's good rays?
Is that why they possess this name?
Perhaps.
They are surely known for hardiness
when it comes to cold, like early spring's.
To this could Vikings testify.
Two Heleomyza species flew
amok in Viking settlements,
breeding in the pit latrines;
to them they were as house flies.
Yes, archaeol'gists poring over
yard-deep cores of Greenland soil
find sun fly exoskeleton bits
where'er the Vikings were!3
And truly, yes, it must behoove
these northerly flies to be
attuned to spots like maple trunks
where sun-heat cuts a chilling breeze.
---
Just one more thing,
I promise.
Another moving-water place
is bubbling spring or seep.
The third of March already saw
fresh growth at one such local spot:
Skunk cabbage! Lo!
 |
| One of the year's first skunk cabbage spathes, Seed Savers Exchange, March 3, 2018. Photo courtesy Mark v. |
At that time neighbor cabbages
lay dormant under ice or snow;
But just along a trickle where
the water kept things thawed--
Here only grew the hoodlike spathes,
the cabbage-patch's first forays
into the temperamental season.
And see, already, came a fly
attracted by the pungent scent!
By March 19th, few other spathes
arose in yonder cabbage-patch;
Yet still were flies attracted there
to ply skunk cabbage spadices
(the yellowish clubs inside the hoods
that bear this odd plant's flowers)--
on which the flies soon found themselves
aglow with golden pollen.
 |
| Spathe with fly, March 19, 2018. Note spadix concealed inside the spathe. |
---
In part 2 (written in regular prose...) we'll visit a few other local places where sunshine and flowing water enable a diversity of interesting life-forms to thrive, even in this wrenching season of fits and starts.
Sun and water, part 2 (coming soon)
---
NOTES
Thanks to John and Jane B, Laura P, Kyhl A, John C, and others for their expertise and assistance with my associated Bugguide posts; to Seed Savers Exchange and to Wendy and Jim S for access to their wild places; to Kyle J for identifying some moths I collected from a sap flow last year; to MJ for permission to reference her rearing and photography work; and to my brother Mark v for his photo of the March 3 skunk cabbage spathe
Check out this heleomyzid fly drawn to fermenting sap in June (Bugguide photo series by MJ Hatfield)
2. "Family Heleomyzidae" (Bugguide): https://bugguide.net/node/view/12760
3. Skidmore, P. A dipterological perspective on the Holocene history of the North Atlantic area. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield: 1996. This is an incredible work! Available online at http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/14628/1/364330_VOL1.pdf
