Being at the Right Place at the Right Time

I have long been a huge fan of Edwin Way Teale, a wonderful writer/ naturalist of, how weird is this to say, the last century.  He covered so much more than basic identification of whatever flora or fauna he was discussing and he did it in such an engaging, beautifully written way.  His enthusiasm over insects would become my enthusiasm over insects.  Imagine then, my delight at finding myself witnessing, on the very first night of my visit to my friend on Lake Huron, the rising of thousands of mayflies for their nuptial dance that I had once read about in his “Journey Into Summer”. 

 

 I don’t believe Joann has ever had any other guest get as excited about this as I did.  Now, admittedly, in his book, written in 1960, the mayflies were coating every inch of every living and nonliving thing on Kelly Island on Lake Erie, a place famous to this day for seeing this particular “spectacle of nature”. I will have to admit; it wasn’t quite that dramatic where we were. 

Mayflies (also called Junebugs, 24 hour bugs, fish flies, Canadian soldiers, on our side, Yankee soldiers on the Canadian side, etc.) spend the bulk of their life, 2 yrs or so, as naiads (think larva only aquatic) living in the muck of river, pond and lake bottoms, enjoying the organic morsels in the muck as they go through 30 or so molts before they reach their adult stage.  In teaching the pond program on Cape Cod and here in Texas too, I have regularly found this naiad stage and its good news to find them for they are an indicator of good water quality. 

But where they reach epic proportions are in the shallow Great Lakes of Lake Erie and Lake Huron, and in places along the Mississippi river where their eruption from the water has been picked up by NOAA’s radar. They are in the Order Ephemeroptera from the Greek “ephermos” for short lived and “pteron” for wing, and truly this final adult stage will only last a day or two.  Eating isn’t what’s on their mind for they are not even equipped with a functional mouth.  The courtship dance where they rise several feet than drift down again until they find their true love and mate, is the main and only event that counts in this two-day life on land.  Immediately the female will lay thousands of eggs in the water, which will sink to the bottom and start the cycle all over again but their time is over.

The pluses of mayflies are that they claim the title of “Most Important Group of Bottom Dwelling Animals in Streams, Rivers and Lakes Throughout the World”.  And that is surely something.  Fish love them, and therefore fishermen love them. They are also the only insects to go through a second molt after molting into the adult stage.  With all other insects once you have your wings, you have your wings and that’s that.  But mayflies float to the surface of the water, slip their surely bond of naiadness, but then within the next 24 hours, and often much sooner, they will, and I can imagine how incredible this would be to see, slip out of this first winged form into a shimmery second wing form which will be their “go wow her look”. 

I found these pictures on www,mayflynews.net and it is always so astounding to think something so delicate can ease out of a next- to nothing-outfit into something else.  The wonders and flexibility of chitin!

The negatives are felt more by those whose houses are coated in them, whose streets are made slippery by their multitudinous dead bodies, and who must endure the smell of rotting flies that are akin to rotting fish.  Kelly Island is the spot the Teale’s went to and to this day is still “Mayfly Central”. If only they could come up with a Mayfly Festival; distributing awards to the person with the most mayflies clinging to their body, or the building most completely coated, or the most engulfed car.  Perhaps they are already looking into it. 

Meanwhile, I will just consider it terribly lucky that I was with my friend, on the shore watching the rising and falling of Mayflies in love.  I couldn’t have planned it any better if I had tried.





(photo credit: wickepedia)