Summer World VI: Digger Wasps

 Summer World: A Season of Bounty page 72:

. . . I thought I saw a light-colored piece of straw about half a foot long “flying” horizontally and then hovering in midair. That caught my attention — I looked closer and saw a black wasp that seemed identical in form to a mud dauber, and it was carrying an object. I jumped up in my excitement, and the wasp was spooked and flew off. The proof eluded me, but it dropped its “prey” onto the porch. I picked it up — definitely a long piece of dry grass!

Expecting the wasp to return, I waited. After about twenty minutes it did return, carrying another piece of grass. This time I was ready with an insect catcher net, and I snagged the wasp along with the grass it carried. The wasp was about 0.6 inch long, and the blade it was carrying was about 2.4 inches long. The wasp looked superficially almost identical to the mud dauber, but its body was black rather than black-blue and its wings were smoky-colored instead of blue-black like the mud dauber's. It was a different species of wasp, which I later identified as Isodontia mexicana. I also learned later that rather than making clay organ-pipe cavities for its nest and filling them with spiders, this wasp lines preexisting cavities with grass and fills them with paralyzed crickets or katydids.

Heinrich’s wife had first noticed the digger wasp (which is the common name for the wasp he describes) carrying a blade of grass but Heinrich, the professional biologist, had dismissed her observation: wasps don’t carry grass.  Heinrich soon learned he was in error, as we read above.

I remembered this section of Summer World: A Season of Bounty as I sat on our porch when a long, brown blade of grass flew near and then went into the tube of our folding chairs. Excited that I, too, saw the wasp, I got the camera, but found that photographing these wasps is difficult. Wingnut and I tried all summer and he finally got the shots of the wasp itself. Now I wish the tubes of the chairs were transparent and I’m thinking of asking John to make a digger wasp house of transparent tubes for next summer.

Technorati Tags: Digger wasp,Isodontia mexicana,Bernd Heinrich

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Summer World V: Woolly Aphids

I have seen these tiny fuzzy white balls floating around every summer of my life — but I never paid attention to them. One sentence in Heinrich's Summer World gave a name to these fascinating and beautiful creatures: "A cottony white fluff ball drifts by on feeble wing beats — it's the migrating form of the woolly alder aphid. I don't know where it's going, but it is of the summer's last generation from wingless parents."

This is my last Summer World post. I hope these have motivated you to buy this book and see the world about us more clearly.



Technorati Tags: Woolly aphid, Eriosoma
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Summer World IV: Crane Flies Dance

Crane fly (mosquito hawk) from June, 2007 in Barton, Vermont

Dancing crane flies in Wilmot, New Hampshire, June 2009

Do you remember the photograph above of two crane flies enjoying each other's company? There have been many crane flies in the house this summer. That is good; they eat many mosquitoes and with the rains all summer this year, we have many mosquitoes. But in Summer World, Bernd Heinrich gives the life of the crane fly poetry. It was the summer solstice in Maine, 2007. Heinrich explains that while June 21 is the beginning of summer for us, it is the middle of summer for many species of animals. And the day was so lovely that it was sufficient cause for dancing to celebrate the season. Heinrich's description of the crane fly dance describes exactly what happened in the beginning of summer with the crane flies in the bathroom:

Our outhouse is open at the front, and it faces deeply shaded sugar maple woods. The dancers — two or three dozen of them — each have six long, spindly legs. They jitterbug up and down and forward and back in a dark corner just under the roof, and they are worked up to a frenetic speed. Undoubtedly they are expert performers. They ought to be. They've probably been doing one or another version of their act for more than 225 million years, since the Triassic period. And indeed, their performance doesn't disappoint.

Most of the dancers are single, but several have partners to whom they are firmly attached — by their genitals. The members of a pair face in opposite directions, and when — more often than the singles — they come to rest, they dangle with one holding on to the ceiling with its front legs while the other dangles below.

Crane flies are relatives of mosquitoes. They are called crane flies because their legs are so long. Heinrich says that their bodies are 1/3 of an inch long yet their legs are three times longer (1 inch). And if you touch a leg, it could fall off. Dropping legs is a defense against predators. The sexes can be differentiated by the ends of their abdomens. A thicker, pointed abdomen is female and a thinner, blunted abdomen is a male.

The summer dance that Heinrich describes is mostly performed by the boys. Once a boy attracks a girl with his dance, they mate (my first photo) and then they stay together for hours. In his sample, Heinrich's male crane flies outnumbered females by 28:2.

I would so enjoy reading other local observations from other Summer World readers. I will have a couple more of my local observations in the days to come. Meanwhile, click on the book below and read it!



Technorati Tags: crane flies, mosquito hawk, skeeter eater
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Summer World III: Ant Lions

Here in this part of New Hampshire you live in sand — beautiful, soft beach sand. John showed me, quite a few weeks ago, creatures that like to live in the sand — ant lions. You can see the indentations of each ant lion home in these photos. Above, John is tickling an ant lion sand pit in order to get the ant lion to reveal itself. Some of the pits have no inhabitants, so tickling the pit is the only way to find out if it is being lived in. The ant lion thinks that the grass leaf is an ant and jumps out of the bottom of the pit to eat the ant.

Above, John has captured an ant lion. This one was really tiny and difficult to focus on with the Canon XSi. When ants walk into an ant lion's sand pit, they can't often escape. As they crawl out of the pit, the sand keeps them sliding back down until the ant lion gobbles them up.

Ant Lions (or Antlions or Doodlebugs or Doodle Bugs)
(Genus Neuroptera, Family Myrmeleontidae)
Above you can see the tiny ant lion.
It has enormous pinchers in front.

Below: I showed the sand pits to Wingnut, who promptly began feeding ants to the ant lion. It was totally fascinating to see the capture process. We noticed that about half of the ants were able to escape the pit. But half couldn't escape and were eaten. A 50% kill rate is pretty good in Nature. It is very difficult to see the escaping ant in the photo below.

After these activities (when these photos were taken), I happened to read Summer World because Bernd Heinrich's books have taught me so much about where I live. Summer World has a great section on ant lions (pages 193-194). If you live in New England (especially northern New England) you must read this book. You should read it if you live anywhere else:

". . . ant lions . . . are slow-moving predators that catch fast ants. They do this by making pits in lose, dry sand. The pits serve as traps; the ant lions hide buried in sand at the bottom of the traps with only their sharp tonglike pincers exposed; and with these pincers they grab any ant that wanders in. If an ant then starts to scramble up the steep, slippery slope of dry sand, they throw up loose sand that starts a sandslide and brings it back down and into reach.

My Ant Lion Photo Set

Technorati Tags: Ant Lions, Antlions, Doodlebugs, Doodle Bugs, Neuroptera, Myrmeleontidae
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Summer World II: Chipmunks, Zorro and Bot Flies

We had a kill awhile back. Zorro walked in the door with a wounded chipmunk, yowling, and brought it to the bedroom where I was cleaning. It startled me so much to see such a large catch that I screeched and Zorro turned back to the dining room and let the chipmunk go. The little rodent began squealing and running, finally hiding under a buffet table. Unfortunately, it was so severely bitten by Zorro that John had to dispatch it to chipmunk heaven.

John had told me earlier this season about the problem that chipmunks have with bot flies. I had never heard of bot flies in New England before — until I read Summer World. Heinrich writes: "I have also seen bot flies on skinned mice and chipmunks in Maine; relative to the size of their hosts, one of these maggots would be as big as a woodchuck to us."

Bot flies do not bite. They deposit their eggs in the nostrils of caribou in the arctic. When the eggs hatch, they wander around inside the caribou's body and then settle in under the animal's skin as they grow to be adults. Then they pop out of the caribou's skin and drop to the ground so that they can pupate.



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Summer World i: Sheep Laurel

Sheep Laurel (also called Lambkill) (Kalmia angustifolia)

In a previous post on my Photo a Day Blog, Wildflowers & Berries, I misidentified this Sheep Laurel as Mountain Laurel. I wrote that I wasn't entirely sure it was mountain laurel because of the size and age of the plant. While reading Summer World: A Season of Bounty by Bernd Heinrich, I suddenly came across a mention of swamp laurel. With that clue, John and I were able to identify our laurel as sheep laurel because of its location and growth pattern. Sheep laurel has the identifiable growth seen above. The flowers develop on last year's growth and this year's growth is above the flowers.

The best source of information about this wildflower is at www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/shrub/kalang/all.html.

And now, because of its importance and value, I will shamelessly promote Heinrich's book. The summer world that I am watching is more meaningful to me now after reading this book. Click, buy it, and enjoy a wonderful summer read:

Technorati Tags: sheep laurel, lambkill, Kalmia angustifolia
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