Gnat Hatch 2010

Posted by admin on Apr 29, 2010 in My thoughts, Nature | 0 comments

E-GADS, the gnats have hatched!

Gnats are a staple of the lakefront food chain, and a prerequisite to breathing and owning a vehicle in this area. They are one of the very first insects of spring, withstanding the temperamental spells of the early season. They are one of the last insects remaining in fall, so that once they disappear, you know that winter is only a snowflake away.

Gnats aren’t a surprise. Gnats are a necessary evil. Gnats are why a person never leaves the house without windshield fluid in the car.

They are also why the earliest warblers, flycatchers, phoebes, and swallows are able to journey northward in April, and find something to eat to sustain their energetic, determined little bodies.

Happily, gnats don’t bite, so the most they’ll do is hitch a ride on your shoulder or car window, until you brush them off, or the gales of catapulting down the road at highway speeds are just too much, and they have no choice but to let go and discover where you have taken them. :)

This year though, is different. This year, we woke up one day to find dense clouds of these things hanging in the air, frankly like I have never seen them in my entire life, and I’m old enough to have teenagers.

You mean they’re not all Grackles??

Posted by admin on Apr 18, 2010 in Nature | 0 comments

It’s been a warm and windy spring so far. It was almost 80° on Wednesday (or so I was told; I slept through it). It’s been in the 50′s for the screaming majority of at least a month now. The honeysuckles have nearly exploded with leaves (my pics of the same bushes show they weren’t even at that point by May 1, last year) and the ospreys were back on the local nests almost 3 weeks earlier than last year.

And I found this year’s first blooming Forget-Me-Not already at Peninsula State Park, which is a solid 4 weeks early. (Yay!)

Despite all this, I have assumed that the modest flocks of blackbirds I’ve been seeing rushing around across fields & fencerows have just been Grackles. They first arrived about a month ago, and since I didn’t see anything unusual about the birds in these small flocks, and they sounded like Grackles, I just assumed they were Grackles.

Ha ha.