FEEDING FRENZY

The little flycatcher, whose portrait graced yesterday's post, and whose daily company I enjoy, chooses to regularly perch on various nearby limbs simply because he's afforded an excellent view of the Cottage Pool. A prime spot because this large pool—ten feet from the window, and constituting my flowing front yard—is located directly below a long, rocky, and thus well-aerated riffle. As such, it's a virtual free-eats food factory…at least if you like dinning on mayflies, caddis flies, and similar aquatic insects.

Most days—especially sunny ones—from midmorning onwards, various "bugs" whose life cycle is closely associated with water, either on or in, began to appear. Sparsely, steadily, and in massive swarms. Mayflies, caddis flies, stoneflies, dobsonflies, alderflies, dragonflies, damselflies—the list is long and, apparently, tasty. 

Predators know this, eagerly watching and waiting. When the bugs are few, the feeding action is slow-paced, leisurely. One swoop, catch, gobble at a time. But some insects hatch and leave their watery homes en mass—thousands, even tens of thousands of mayflies or caddis boiling up from the depths, shucking their larval husks as they rise, popping onto the surface where they give their winged, airborne versions a bit of pre-flight drying time, floating a few moments on the river's surface before taking flight. Vulnerable. Available. In quantity!

Shazam! The feeding frenzy begins! Fish rise, slashing at floating insects. Birds wheel and swoop, catching their meals in the air—just above the water, ten feet up, at treetop level, and higher. As the insects rise and fly off, trying to disperse—or sometimes mate before returning to the water to deposit their eggs—the hungry, rapacious birds follow, nabbing at their ranks like starving teenagers at a pizza party. Swallows, flycatchers, swifts, nighthawks, waxwings, along with everything else from robins to sparrows to cardinals and jays. Any bird who likes a good bug from time to time occasionally gets into the melee. I've even watched woodpeckers make a few runs on occasion. 

The image at the top of the post is of mostly swallows feeding high above the pool perhaps a half-hour after a recent hatch began. The photo at the bottom shows the density of this same hatch, a few feet above the river's surface, backlit by the setting sun. The middle shot is of the hatching mayflies causing all the fuss.

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BEAUTIFUL BUG

A few mornings ago I stepped outside and ambled around to the narrow streamside deck which runs parallel to the river, across what we consider the front of the cottage. The view overlooks the pool below the big riffle. From this vantage point above water's surface, I can often spot a smallmouth bass—or more likely, one of the several resident carp—feeding in the shallows along the rocky edge. 

However, it wasn't a fish in the water below that caught my eye, but a bunch of insects clinging to the limestone blocks of the cottage's exterior wall. Mayflies, large ones, at least a hundred or more. A sight which immediately warmed this old trout bum's soon-to-be-accelerated heart—since we incorrigible fly fishermen, who delight in angling for trout, hold the mayfly second in importance and veneration only to the fish themselves.

Mayflies often emerge from the pool, generally hatching at twilight or well into the night. They're favorite treats of swallows and bats and cedar waxwings—but also scarfed up by bass and minnows, catfish, frogs, queen snakes, crayfish, and everything else which creeps, hops, flutters, slithers, swims, or wings near, in, or above the river.

In spite of their looks—which I deem beautiful, though you, lacking my bias, might call something else—winged mayflies neither feed nor bite, can't, in fact, and are perfectly harmless. While my mayfly identification skills are a bit rusty, considering the slow current, warm water, and partially mucky-bottom makeup of the pool, and the insect's almost two inch length—not counting the trio of extending tails, or cerci—I suspect it's a species of Hexagenia. 

Incidentally, I made the mayfly's portrait on my birthday, the day before having pacemaker surgery. As a fellow who pays attention to such natural signs, and because the mayfly just might be my favorite insect, I took their mass appearance on my cottage wall (and the nearby grapevine where I found my photo's subject) as a favorable portent. 

Hey, I'm charmed by mayflies. And at that point I figured a bit of bolstering-up from a bunch of pretty bugs couldn't hurt. Moreover, they've proven to be wonderfully right.

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