LETTER FROM BOBOLINK FARM

IN TRANSIT

By Barbara Tatham Johnson

I count close to fifty Canada geese resting in a horse pasture as I pass on my way up the Ridge Road on my early morning walk. Some heads stretch above the resting flock to watch me, and a few quiet honks pass along news of my presence. The geese are comfortable and feel no need to leave their good grazing place. I wonder if they spent the night in the lush regrowth of recently cut grass. All month I have seen big flocks of Canada geese moving between nearby lakes and ponds. Sometimes in late afternoons, they land in my neighbor’s recently mowed fields to gorge on the fresh grass. As daylight dims, they rise en masse in a great commotion of wings and shouts. Years ago the excitement of geese calling as they flew in “V” formations from northern breeding grounds to wintering places in the south ushered me happily into autumn. Climate change extends the summerlike weather these days. The geese stay, traveling in pseudomigration from local waters to fields and back again. To me, this is an avian version of “crying wolf” and the message the geese voices once held—that winter was sharp behind their passage—no longer carries as much thrilling alarm. Still, the urgency and vigor in their cries touches the romantic in me, and I hustle to catch sight of every flock that flies over.

Later in the day, a tenor chorus of crow voices from the woods bordering the meadow rings full voice across the landscape. The tall oaks are busy with the movement of dozens of the black birds. The garden, with the exception of brussels sprouts, carrots, beets, and chard, is finished for the year, and I pick the last of the lettuce and green beans before my husband turns the soil for winter rest. I look up now and then to watch small groups of crows arriving from the north. Solitary greeters in the uppermost branches of the tallest trees rock as they call to newcomers. Now and then, three or four crows launch southward, flapping with broad wing beats and calling as they pass overhead. Their communication is continuous, the straightforward caws heard all summer for the most part, but frequently, throaty and raspy noises intersperse with the familiar crow chatter.

Crows seem to have no organized leadership in this group movement. These birds congregate in the neighboring city of Lewiston, wintering in roosts of hundreds of birds, some years near the high school, other years in the broad canopies of trees in older neighborhoods. Each winter day they fly away in small groups to areas where food is available and return to the city just before dark, crowding together for the night in their chosen trees. The little bands of crows heading out in the morning and returning to the city in the afternoon remind me of commuters going to and fro to work.

These days I see woolly bears and other fuzzy-bodied caterpillars ripple hurriedly across the roads and paths, looking for safe shelter under a rock or log for the winter. The width of the orange band in the middle of the woolly bear (or is it the size of the black front and rear end?) is supposed to foretell the winter ahead. I can never keep straight if more orange means bad weather or fuller bands of black predict cold and deep snow. I always thought it would be fun to uncover a fuzzy ball of intertwined woolly bears, orange and black bands in random patterns, cozy together under a rock or log awaiting the worst that winter might produce, but woolly bears shelter alone. Alas, I will never find a woolly bear “den.”

The din of mutterings and mumblings in the garage attic as I put away my tools reminds me that the cluster and face flies are assembling to spend the winter inside any crack or crevice they can crawl into. I climb up to see hundreds of buzzing black flies the size of the common housefly moving across the windows, crawling on the floor and walls. The flies find their way indoors from the meadows and fields through spaces in the eaves and attic ventilation openings and will, in time, find solitary wintering spaces throughout the attic—between walls and rafters, inside storage boxes, under books on shelves. Their life histories seem as ghoulish and repulsive as that of any imagined Halloween monster.

The cluster and face flies were introduced into North America from Europe. The cluster fly is parasitic to earthworms, which are European imports, also. The female flies lay their eggs singly in cracks in the soil. In days, a newly hatched tiny maggot wriggles to the nearest earthworm, pierces the worm’s body without killing it, and begins to grow inside its victim. Just before the maggot has developed sufficiently to start pupation into an adult fly, the maggot pierces the earthworm’s skin with its rear end, which contains its breathing spiracles, in order to begin taking oxygen from the air prior to pupation. (For atmospheric effect, I write here a low throaty cackling “Whoo-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!”) The adult cluster flies feed on the juices of fruit and the nectar of flowers, and the species produces three to four generations a summer. The last adult generation, those now milling in the attic, spend the winter in a period of diapause, cold-hardy quiescence. Thaws throughout the winter arouse the flies to buzz and bumble about inside the attic and rooms before they leave their shelters to begin the cluster fly life cycle in spring.

The face fly, also represented in my attic, lays its eggs in fresh manure, preferably in the sun where the maggots feed and grow, go to earth to pupate, and emerge as adults that hang about barnyards, pastures, and grazing areas, alternating rest time in shady trees and on fence posts with feeding on the protein-rich secretions around the noses, mouths, and eyes of cattle and other livestock. The face fly has “microscopic teeth” on her tongue that abrade her victim’s eye tissue to create a flow of tears (females need the protein for egg production). She also may mop up blood flowing from the bites of horse and black flies. The face fly spreads pinkeye and eyeworm that lead to secondary infections and loss of appetite in livestock. Large infestations cause economic loss as well as animal discomfort.

A cricket chirps under the workbench when I climb down to the garage, and Carl Sandburg’s lines, “The voice of the last cricket / across the first frost / is one kind of goodbye. / It is so thin a splinter of singing” come to mind. I look out the window at the green tomatoes I optimistically left hanging on the plants in the hope they might put on a little red before I pick them to finish (perhaps) ripening indoors.

The geese may be undecided about the arrival of really cold weather, but the crows and flies and crickets are sending me a message. Before I start to make lunch, I pick the tomatoes and snip the last sprouting growth on the lovage plants. I do detect a hint of ice water in the wind picking up from the northwest. 

 

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