Insect Encounters of the Third Kind

On warm summer evenings we have taken to sitting outside on the rear porch, enjoying whatever cool air and breeze may be available.  There's a remarkable difference between August nights and those of June and July.  Of course, darkness falls much earlier but other things change, imperceptibly at first, then markedly.  I am always amazed at how much I didn't know about the wild world of nature just beyond my back door back in the days when I never had time to just sit and watch and listen.

I noticed that the fireflies have gone.  For weeks we watched their flashy dances in the brush and over the lawn.  Taking their place of evening prominence is the less flashy - indeed invisible - but much louder, cricket population.  Their nightly symphonies, the desperate calling of one to another, are often background noise, barely noticed.  But once noticed, the cacophony becomes an insistent ringing in the ears.

We sit in the dark, enjoying the solitude and the cover of night.  However, on evenings when someone is expected home, the porch light is switched on.  I don't care for having the light on.  For one thing, I don't enjoy being in the spotlight and have no wish to attract attention to myself.  Worse, there are the bugs.  The poor moths, completely befuddled by this infernal invention of Edison, flutter about the light, asking directions, trying to navigate by a moon that has suddenly grown exceedingly large and fallen from the sky onto my porch.  The beetles fling themselves against the siding, making a pinging noise and then fall all around and in my hair.  At some point, we must navigate our way inside through the door without allowing our new-found friends to accompany us.

It's not unusual to hear the occasional buzzing of a mosquito, taking a reconnaissance flight round my ear, looking for a succulent spot to sink her proboscis into.  Buzzing I can handle.  But  the unearthly sound that met my ear last night still makes me shudder.

I was slipping through the open door when a terrible whir and screech sounded by my right ear.  I yelled calmly asked "What's that?" while waving a useless hand by my head, having no idea what I was trying to swat.

I cannot describe this sound.  It was like no other bug that was ever heard to whizz by my head.  It was a high-pitched sound that looped and paused and swept up and down some musical insect scale.  It was like a tiny voice crying out some great secret that I must be told before some unknown and menacing fate befell me.

Then I realized what it sounded like.

The Fly.

Not the Jeff Goldblum fly.  Not the Brundlefly that retained Jeff's voice and form  and Geena Davis as a girlfriend, while growing bristly hairs and spitting on its food.

 No, the other fly.

The fly with the tiny human head and the tiny human voice, squealing "Help me!, Help me!".

This is an American Goldfinch.

I know this only because I googled for yellow birds in New England.  I had never seen one before. However, for the past few days I have been seeing some bright yellow bird out of the corner of my eye.  I could never quite get a good look at it as it flitted by the house or swooped into the bushes.  Eventually, I decided that I was seeing a light-colored sparrow and the sun was playing tricks on my eyes.  Until today, however, when it landed on a fence post right next door.  I got a good look and then went to the computer to look it up.  To my surprise, these birds are considered quite common here and yet I have never seen one before in my life. 

Apparently, these birds often winter here in the cold north.  I am going to keep a lookout for them this winter and perhaps it will be a good time to start putting out birdseed.  This new location of ours has proved a wonderful spot for birdwatching.

More on the American Goldfinch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Goldfinch

Nature Visits Suburbia

In addition to the many birds and squirrels in my little neighborhood, we seem to have a family of bunnies who scour my back yard regularly, looking for food. On occasion, I have sent The Boy outside with some tasty crumbs of stale bread or the leavings in the cereal box which, while being too meager to fill a bowl for breakfast, is more than enough to satisfy the hunger of the occasional robin, tree squirrel or roving rabbit. My only concern for the bunnies is the pair of hawks that seemed to have moved into the area. They look quite majestic, soaring overhead seemingly without effort as they ride the air currents. The larger one looked slightly less majestic the day it perched on the nearby utility pole, tearing some hapless prey apart.