The Wrack

Considering the much maligned mosquito.

The salt marsh tiger beetle, a species of special concern in Maine, appears to have a stable and secure population at the Wells Reserve in 2019.

You can find more than one kind of "hummingbird moth" probing flowers at the reserve.

A walk in the woods and a chance encounter lead to a path of discovery.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 10/2/2016, and Making It At Home's 10/5/2016 issue.

When my wife, sons, and I went away to our annual family reunion over Labor Day Weekend, we never expected to return home to find a party raging at our house. We’d left our cat, Greenberry, in charge of the homestead. When we got back from our trip, she was playing host to hundreds of obnoxious guests.

Fleas.

We listen to the rain patter against the roof of leaves of the wise old copper beech tree as campers and I munch lunch. The vast canopy gives the impression of a complete ceiling of wood and leaves, but campers are able to look closely and discover something remarkably unique.

Who’s been spitting in the grass? Stick your fingers into the frothy mass and you’ll likely find a cool and moist tiny lime-colored creature with black eyes. This is the nymph (or immature form) of a spittlebug (Cercopidae).

The ultimate invasive species, the one that has penetrated to every corner of the map, left no waters or winds untouched, and helped all the others spread so quickly, is Homo sapiens.

Often showy but frequently cryptic, butterflies are an attractive challenge. At least 45 species have been documented at the Wells Reserve.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 9/8/13:

For the past 34 years, my mother has thrown a family reunion on Labor Day weekend. Thirty to fifty of us arrive from all over the Northeast and Canada for four days of feasting, toasting, singing, dancing, even a “Geezers vs. Young Bucks” softball game. It’s an annual weekend devoted to celebrating, shoulder to shoulder, our lifelong ties and the continuity of our families and traditions.

Meanwhile, for those who devote themselves to the monarch butterfly, there has been no celebration yet. This month, on this side of the Rockies, monarch adults from Maine to Alberta should be flying 2,500 miles back to a few square acres within the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, a World Heritage Site sixty miles northwest of Mexico City, where they overwinter from October to March. They should be, but they aren’t.