This little lady appeared on my screen door one morning, then molted while I was busy with something. If you put aside your bug creepiness, you can see that she’s an elegant insect. She’s a mayfly, an aquatic creature who lives and grows on the bottom of a stream bed for a year. At a predetermined time, she (or he) will come out from under her rock, swim up to the surface, and turn into an airborne insect. Here she has re-molted a second time. Now a true adult, she is ready to mate in the air and drop her fertilized eggs into the brook, where they will sink to the bottom, become wedged under a rock, and begin the cycle again. Her life as an air-breather may be as short as a couple of hours. Most of the time, we miss seeing this entire life.
“…you can see that she’s an elegant insect.”
Mayfly species like this Stenonema Vicarium float past the Gurleyville Gristmill like tiny proud sailboats on spring and summer evenings, drying their wings. Have you noticed them? Like the ones in my backyard brook, they glide down the rills, rivulets and creeks on Joshua’s Trust’s many conservation properties. Mayflies and their relatives, caddisflies and stoneflies, are barometers of stream health. Like the native brook trout that feed on them, they only live in pristine waterways.
It’s easy to see most of what we have saved by our volunteer efforts here in eastern Connecticut. Thick woods, rich history, scenic views. Other valuable parts of our world are more hidden. DEEP studied native brook trout populations in the early ‘90s and restudied them 2 years ago. In 2018, thirty-nine fewer CT streams had brook trout. But in northeastern Connecticut where we live, many of those endangered trout are still here, as are the insects that form much of their diet. You had something to do with that positive result. On the more than 4500 acres of Joshua’s Trust preserved land, rainwater percolates through the ground, forming cool tributaries and unpolluted aquifers that nourish the Fenton, the Mt. Hope, and much of the last green valley.
To the secretive mayflies and brookies, you can add Ring-necked Snakes and Luna Moth caterpillars. Milkweed and Monarchs. Blue-stemmed Grass and Little Brown Bats. You can heed the scent of honeysuckle. Notice how the territorial call of the Oriole sounds like a teletype machine, or a tree frog on steroids? Can you see the Milky Way at night? Among the least appreciated benefits of Joshua’s Trust conservation land is protection from sound and light pollution. Blessings all. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.
Nature observed carefully and recorded beautifully! Thank you, George Jacobi, for sharing your thoughts about the natural beauty of our area. Having Joshua’s Trust property around us providing the dark needed to better see the nighttime sky, is so relevant and underscores one of the more subtle benefits of land protected from development.