Chasing Nature

These are tiny, harmless flower flies. / Image credits below No denying it: flies have a public relations problem. Horse flies, sand flies, black flies, and tsetse flies aren’t the only offenders. The screwworm now making news is a fly whose larvae (maggots) feed on living flesh. And mosquitoes — yep, they’re flies. But we generalize about nature at our peril. Consider the flower flies, which are among the most endearing insects you will ever know.

Pink Lady’s Slipper (Cypripedium acaule) / © Bryan Pfeiffer On a pleasant summer morning in Vermont’s capital city of Montpelier, the terrain at North Branch Nature Center is teeming with endangered animals: children running wild in nature. The preschoolers visit a woodland stream to collect rocks, search for salamanders, and compete in “frog olympics.” The older kids head for a forest trail where they’ll explore the mysteries of an old stone wall and a long-abandoned homestead.

Devils Hole Pupfish / Olin Feuerbacher / USFWS Maybe we should kill off the pupfish — the Devils Hole Pupfish, which is reputed to be the rarest fish on Earth. It would be a quick extinction. We’d drain the only pool in the world where this endangered species survives: a bedrock cavern in the U.S. state of Nevada. And we’d live-stream the killing on YouTube. Only then might oblivion no longer be an abstraction.

Pantala flavescens (Wandering Glider) / © Greg Lasley As we go about the ordinary business of living, a golden insect hunts over the garden, mates beside a roadside ditch, and patrols the supermarket parking lot. Its name rings like that of a god: Pantala, a dragonfly that defies the borders we draw across the living world. Never mind that Pantala flies around, kills other insects, and has indiscriminate sex. Plenty of dragonflies do that.

On this edition of the Chasing Nature podcast, I bring you the most hilarious bird song I know, a summertime poem from the mind of a vulture, and my appearance on Erica Heilman’s RumbleStrip podcast, where we discuss my fascination with a crazy parasite. Some of you might recall my essay about the parasite, a flatworm that lives entirely inside a bird’s gut and a snail’s body — and basically never sees the light of day. At one point, Erica asks me whether I find hope in the parasite.

A St. Lawrence Tiger Moth laying eggs / © Bryan Pfeiffer Among the zillions of wild events now happening in nature, few are as prolific and profound as reproduction. And yet rarely do we get to see it in action. Although they sing and flash feathers in courtship, birds copulate for but a second or two — a moment called the “cloacal kiss.” Squirrels, our most familiar backyard mammals, typically breed once or twice a year, with females in estrus for only a few hours on a single day.

Here in New England, we’re into the “Season of Maximum Flight.” That’s what I call the period from late June into early July, when lots of birds feed fledglings and charismatic insects fly in abundance. I’ve been in the thick of it. Which is why this solstice letter to paying subscribers is coming to you a bit late.

Dogbane Leaf Beetle / © Bryan Pfeiffer In a culture drawn to sex and shiny objects, it would seem hard to overlook the Dogbane Leaf Beetle. Along with its rainbow glow, this beetle is promiscuous, polyamorous, and poisonous. It’s a heck of a lifestyle. Which is why the Dogbane Leaf Beetle came to mind after I noticed a four-part series now running in The New York Times Lifestyle section titled “The Touch Grass Challenge.” Its shocking conclusion: we spend too much time on our phones.

A woodland spruce bog in northern Vermont / © Bryan Pfeiffer If you’re a field biologist heading to a bog, your first concern isn’t usually a hot-pink flower. Not that the flower doesn’t matter. It does. But first, you must get to the bog without getting yourself lost. That’s because trails to bogs are rare — at least to most bogs I’ve visited over the past four decades. In the days before GPS, I would bushwhack to bogs with a map and compass.

The Droplet (<1mm across) on an Eastern Dwarf Mistletoe shoot © Bryan Pfeiffer Given the world’s troubles, I recognize that a droplet at the tip of a bizarre flower isn’t exactly breaking news. And yet you, dear readers, are among the few people ever to see this droplet, which is the sugary secretion of a parasitic plant called Eastern Dwarf Mistletoe. That’s because, as best I can determine, I’m the first person to photograph this phenomenon in the wild and publish its image.