It’s an afternoon in late April along the Clark Fork River near Missoula, Montana, USA. The song of the tall dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum) isn’t obvious, like the red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) that are singing in the aspen grove on the other side of the river, or the European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) that are nesting in the cavities of the cottonwoods. But the dogbane has a song, too, a song it sings with the wind. I can hear it this afternoon as last year’s dead stalks whisper and rustle in the breeze, brushing against the dry stems of its neighbor, reed canarygrass (Phalaris arundinacea).

To know the birds is to become weightless for a time, to imagine life with wings, to sing in celebration. To know the plants is something slower, quieter, but equally powerful. A connection with the plants is rooted in the earth, grounded in place. The birds tell us of migrations, invite us to think globally, to transcend borders, to recognize habitats, perhaps to forget for a time the major environmental costs of travel as we try to imitate their journeys. The plants invite us to slow down, to become rooted in our local soil, to breathe and flex with the circular motions of the seasons.

Dogbane and cultural legacy

Tall dogbane holds a cultural legacy that stretches back for countless generations on the North American continent. Indigenous people have used its durable stem fibers to make string and cord for more lifetimes than I can imagine. As a kid in central North Carolina, I learned this ancient practice of making cord by twisting the fibers of plants. There was a small patch of dogbane along the dirt track that provided access to the neighborhood sewage line. I recognized it as a fiber plant, but I didn’t know how to gather its stem fibers then. Instead, I twisted a much weaker cordage by splitting the leaves of the cattails that grew in a local marsh. 

Years later in Montana, reading Tom Elpel’s book Foraging the Mountain West, I finally learned how to separate dogbane fibers from the stem. (Sarah Corrigan of Roots School gives a video explanation here). Visiting my mom in Missoula, Montana, I got to know a beautiful, thriving patch of it along the Clark Fork River. In the winter we gathered the dry burgundy stems. I showed my mom how to twist dogbane string and I thought of all of the generations of people who have gathered this plant and thanked it for its gifts. Taking online college classes during the covid pandemic, I twisted dogbane during my writing and anthropology classes and used it to sew bundles of ponderosa pine needles into concentric spirals. Before the pandemic ended, the dogbane and ponderosa pine had become a gathering basket.

Emergence

And that brings me back to April 2024. As red-winged blackbirds and starlings sing their songs of spring along the Clark Fork River, last year’s dead dogbane stalks whisper to me in the breeze. Under the canopy of cottonwoods, no new growth is yet visible, just the delicate silken tufts of dogbane seeds spilling out of their capsules, suspended from last year’s stems, singing with the wind.

On the gravel bar at the edge of the river, though, the sun has heated the rocky earth. At the base of the dead stalks, new dogbane shoots are just beginning to emerge. I make a goal to pay more attention to these plants this year, to write about them. If I stop to notice them, what will they teach me?

May growth

The next time I’m able to visit, it’s an afternoon in late May. A rain shower is pummeling the gravel bar, pattering on the quackgrass (Agropyron repens) and forming glistening beads on new dogbane leaves. The plants have grown swiftly in the last month. On these warm, sun-exposed gravels, the new red shoots are more than a foot tall. Last year’s dead stems, bleached to whitish tan, are still standing next to the young growth.

By now the yellow warblers (Setophaga petechia) have completed their migratory journey and returned to the cottonwoods. Spotted sandpipers (Actitis macularis) call frequently at the river’s edge. For the dogbane, it’s the season of rapid skyward growth, tender sprouts springing upwards with a supply of carefully-stored underground energy. As I walk under the cottonwoods, where the microclimate is cooler and shadier, I can see that the new stalks are still far behind, only a few inches tall. Here I find the wild licorice (Glycyrrhiza lepidota), too, the young shoots just emerging and launching their own race towards the sky. 

The hummingbird

The rain shower ends. The birds around the dogbane become active again and resume their singing. I’m watching two red-naped sapsuckers (Sphyrapicus nuchalis) in a red-osier dogwood (Cornus sericea), gleaning aphids from the leaves, when a hummingbird suddenly appears 15 yards in front of me. She’s a female with buffy flanks, a calliope hummingbird (Selasphorus calliope), and she’s hovering at the tips of last year’s dogbane stems. What could she possibly be doing?

Suddenly, I connect the dots: is she harvesting the little bits of seed fluff that remain, in the process of constructing her nest? I scramble for my camera, but I have trouble focusing it and then she’s gone. I’m left wondering if I really saw what I think I did. A few minutes later she returns and perches on a red-osier dogwood branch. I keep hoping she’ll visit the dogbane again, but instead she flies away. I’m left with a mystery.

A spider among the stems

The next time I visit, it’s mid-June. A cicada is singing from the cottonwoods above the dogbane patch. Western wood-pewees (Contopus sordidulus) whistle repetitively, and a blackish spider the size of a mustard seed waits in its multilayered web. The web is suspended from the scaffolding of one of last year’s white-bleached dogbane stems. It’s dotted with the remnants of tiny moths that the spider has trapped. A few yards away, a common whitetail dragonfly (Plathemis lydia) finds a perch on another weathered dogbane stalk.

The new dogbane has grown incredibly in the last month, as have its neighbors the grasses and the wild licorice. The stems are still supple and green, the leaves full-grown but tender, their pale veins and midribs strongly contrasting. Intent on the spider, I brush past too hastily, injuring a leaf, and it beads up with milky white sap. The sap tastes very bitter, a powerful hint to would-be herbivores: I’m strong medicine! Don’t eat me!

Dogbane on the gravel bar

Back at the sunny gravel bar, spring field crickets (Gryllus veletis) sing among waist-high dogbane shoots. Predictably, this patch continues to be well ahead of the shady dogbane. The upper stems are branching and the flower buds are already emerging. Spotted sandpipers call from the other side of the river as I run my hands through the wild mint (Mentha arvensis) growing under the dogbane and breathe in its rich, pungent scent.

I plan to visit the dogbane again in July, to spend a day or more watching the insects that come to its flowers. But the summer slips past, the fall too, and I migrate with the yellow warblers to my partner’s natal earth in Oaxaca, Mexico, the environmental costs of air travel nagging at the back of my mind. The dogbane stays behind, rooted in the river gravels. A part of me stays with it. 

Slow steps towards the plants

There’s no tall dogbane here in Oaxaca; its range ends in northern Mexico, mountains and deserts away. I miss this familiar friend. Little by little, I’m finding a place here, making new acquaintances and friendships. Including with the plants. On my morning and evening walks, I take photos of those that call my attention, attempt to learn about them. People tell me the local names and I try to remember them. I learn and forget and learn again, little bits and pieces of the incredible living richness of traditional plant knowledge, uses, and relationships. 

In our house, too, the plants are helping me put down roots. There’s no space for a garden, but I’m making compost with our food scraps and fallen leaves, mixing it with dirt that washes down the street, filling pots and wooden crates with homegrown soil. I’ve planted the ginger that grandfather Teo gave us, radishes, basil, tomatoes, hierbabuena, a passionfruit vine that my friend Joel gifted me. I scooped the tomato seeds out of the fruits and fermented them before I planted them: three varieties, a commercial roma, and two small local tomates criollos. The first ones are starting to flower now. Maybe there will be tomatoes before I return to Montana in mid-March.

Little by little is okay with the plants: they’re right here, patient, waiting for us to learn. As my friends Cat Raan and Syd Morical, herbalists and founders of Wild Wanders in Missoula, Montana like to say, every slow step towards the plants is a step of healing, for us and for the earth.

Dogbane beetles

As I keep reading more about dogbane, I find an article by Mary Ann Borge, a New Jersey-based naturalist who has done the sort of patient insect-watching that I didn’t get around to in 2024. She shares photos of a variety of bees, butterflies, beetles, and flies visiting dogbane flowers. Her story also introduces me to the dogbane beetle (Chrysochus auratus), an iridescent-green herbivore that specializes on dogbanes and related plants. I make a note to keep my eyes open for dogbane beetles this summer.

Dogbane’s strong stem fibers give us cord and rope and can connect us to this plant, to the earth where it lives, to thousands of generations of indigenous traditions. For me, dogbane is woven into my life in the memories of my childhood, the fibers of my pine needle basket, the threads of this story, in my gratitude for all that this plant teaches me, all that it gives. Dogbane invites me to become rooted in my local soil.

Becoming rooted

My appreciation for this plant has grown with every encounter, and a whole world has begun to show itself. Dead stalks singing in the April breeze. The silk of a hummingbird nest, the scaffolding of a spider web. The perch of a dragonfly, the strong fibers that connect me to the earth. For me, dogbane has become part of the heartbeat of the cottonwood forest—and are there dogbane beetles in this Missoula patch, too?

The plants wait for us, patiently—wherever we are—inviting us to slow down, to become rooted, to breathe and shift with the round rhythms of the seasons. Their invitation is a song, soft but steady. Dogbane stalks rustling in the April breeze. Can you hear it?

Further reading

Borge, M.A. (2014, 8 July). What good is dogbane? The Natural Web. https://the-natural-web.org/2014/07/08/what-good-is-dogbane/

Corrigan, S. (2017, 9 November). How to harvest and process dogbane for natural fibers. Roots School. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5vPyRWGvDs

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions.

Oregon Department of Transportation. (2011, 21 September). Soft as silk — strong as steel: the living heritage of Apocynum cannabinum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xgfQzpwnn0

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What do moths have to do with owls? Just ask Mat Seidensticker. After nearly a decade spent studying owls across Montana and Alaska, Seidensticker focused his research on the flammulated owl (Psiloscops flammeolus), one of Montana’s smallest and most cryptic species. Soon, it became impossible for him to ignore the moths—insects that this owl hunts extensively during the summer.

In 2015, Seidensticker began working with other researchers at the Bitterroot Valley’s MPG Ranch, studying not only small owls, but also nighthawks and poorwills. And, once again, the moths kept fluttering into his life. Eventually, they would show him they were far more important than most people imagine.

Now, over 30,000 moth specimens later, Seidensticker and the initiative he founded, the Montana Moth Project, along with his collaborators, Chuck Harp and Marian Kirst, have learned a great deal about the roles that moths play in nature. These soft-winged aerialists feed a wide variety of animals, shape plant communities profoundly, and carry far more pollen than anyone would have guessed.

Whales of the sky

To Seidensticker, the night sky is like an ocean. Moths, flying ants, and crane flies are “sky plankton,” a teeming community of aerial life that feeds the larger creatures. Common nighthawks (Chordeiles minor) are the “whales of the sky,” dipping and darting over the sunset as they scoop up moths with their gaping mouths.

On a late August evening near Helena, we don’t have to look far to spot the nighthawks skimming through the air high above us as they hunt for dinner. Tonight, we’re hunting moths, too. Photographer Lea Frye and I have joined Seidensticker for one of his nocturnal expeditions as he works methodically to document Montana’s moths.

A theater for moths

A swath of dark gray clouds skids over the mountains as Seidensticker hangs a white sheet between two aluminum poles. This unusual-looking device is a “light sheet,” one of the common methods moth researchers use to study these elusive fliers. Seidensticker fires up a generator as darkness approaches, powering a black light and mercury vapor bulb mounted next to the sheet. The lights will confuse nearby moths as they navigate through the night, throwing off their sense of up and down. The white sheet will give them a place to land while we identify them.

“It looks like we’re setting up a small drive-in movie theater,” I observe.

“We are!” Frye says.

Tonight’s outdoor theater is at the knees of the mountains, where the grassland shifts into pine forest and the conifers begin their march up toward the Continental Divide. We’ve already set up several bucket traps—homemade moth collectors involving a battery, black light, funnel, and 5-gallon bucket—among patches of different vegetation deeper in the forest. With luck, the buckets and the sheet will show us a great variety of moths.

Wind through the pines

Everything is in place now. The ponderosa pines are majestic black silhouettes behind us, and a quarter moon is sailing through the southwestern sky. Now, our only problem is the wind, which is proving more energetic than we’d hoped. It seems to be discouraging moth activity.

Gusts rattle the sheet, sigh through the pines, and rustle the aspen leaves. We wait, listening to the monotonous trill of the tree crickets filling the night. If only the wind would settle down.

At first, the moths trickle in one by one. Then, we get a lull in the wind, and they start arriving in fluttery waves: a small snapshot of the invisible nocturnal river of insects flowing through the dark skies around us. The diversity of colors and forms is stunning. There are the subtle ones, of course, well-camouflaged in a delicate palette of charcoals, grays, and browns, as if an artist sketched their wings. But not all of the moths blend in.

A diversity of moths

Several grass-veneers (Crambus) appear, sleek honey-colored moths with flashy white racing stripes. Frye finds an emerald (Geometrinae), its smooth green wings fringed and patterned with white. I’m fascinated by the sulfur knapweed moths (Agapeta zoegana), bright darts of yellow with a black chevron pattern crossing their wings. Several Nevada tiger moths (Apantesis nevadensis) clamber along the sheet, clothed in a mosaic of black and cream that resembles a Cubist painting. Their hindwings are unexpectedly salmon-colored.

The range of shapes and sizes is mind-boggling: from the tiny white speck of a micro moth, no larger than a midge, to broad-winged gray stealth fighters and furry-bodied Nevada tiger moths. And then there are their eyes, gleaming coppery, brassy, and purple in the intensity of the light. We go from moth to moth, taking photos as Seidensticker identifies the species, and a hundred tiny eyes shine back at us in the night.

Weathering the night

Our luck doesn’t last long, though. Soon, the restless wind resumes billowing, and the moth activity slows down. By 11 p.m., we’ve packed up the light sheet and retired to our tents. Now, everything is riding on our three bucket traps, whose lights will continue shining until morning. With luck, the wind will quiet in the upcoming hours, facilitating a strong flight of moths and an abundant catch.

Two hours later, it’s not looking good. White flashes light up the turbulent sky as a thunderstorm plows over the Continental Divide, giving us a brief but thorough soaking. Each bucket trap is roofed with just a small aluminum pan. Is it enough to weather the storm?

Moths in the morning

The call of a Swainson’s thrush (Catharus ustulatus) pierces the moist pre-dawn stillness as we open the first trap. Last night, we left it on a narrow ridge of Douglas fir trees, overlooking a drainage dotted with aspens and willows. Despite the midnight shower, the trap has served its purpose. Among the egg cartons inside, which provide places for moths to rest and hide, we see a rich assortment.

“Just looking at it here, there’s probably 20 to 30 species,” Seidensticker tells us. Some of these are new to me, including a broad-winged yellow moth. This one, like the pale green emerald we saw earlier, is a member of the geometer moth family, whose caterpillars are familiar to many people as inchworms.

The second trap, on a lower slope with a mature aspen stand nearby, gives us the largest moth we’ve seen so far, a species of underwing (Catocala sp.). This moth’s forewing is a fine achievement of camouflage, an intricate mottling of charcoal that resembles old aspen bark. But there’s nothing subtle about its hindwing, a visual exclamation declared in pink and black stripes.

Encountering sphinx moths

We retrieve the third trap from our lowest-elevation site, not far from the previous night’s light sheet. Here, large granitic boulders tower up among mature ponderosa pines, and patches of grassland and antelope bitterbrush provide habitat not present on our other sites. What catches my eye in this trap are two magnificently large sphinx moths, robust and furry. One of them, which Seidensticker identifies as an eyed sphinx moth (Smerinthus), has a pink-blushed hindwing with a surreal blue eyespot. The other, a spurge hawk moth (Hyles euphorbiae), has a pleasing bronze stripe in the forewing and a fuchsia-hued underside. These are the only sphinx moths we’ve seen tonight, and I admire the family of accomplished hoverers that often resemble hummingbirds when they fly.

Despite the uncertain weather, it’s been a productive night. Seidensticker estimates that we’ve caught between 100 and 150 species.

Thousands of species

As amazing as the assortment is from our single night in the field, it’s just one piece in the larger puzzle that the Montana Moth Project is gradually assembling. Already, the project has documented a whopping 1,250 moth species in the state. And that’s just the macro moths—the larger-bodied species, relatively straightforward to recognize in the field. Then, there are the micro moths—tiny midge-sized specks, much more difficult to identify but nevertheless important in the ecosystem. In fact, Seidensticker says, the micro moths are estimated to be three or more times as diverse as the macros.

The Montana Moth Project is collecting scientific specimens of all these species. The specimens go to the C.P. Gillette Museum of Arthropod Diversity in Fort Collins, Colorado or to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, where they’re carefully curated as a reference library for biodiversity. In time, all of them—even the tiniest moths—will be identified. Including the micros, Seidensticker predicts there could easily be over 4,000 species of moths in Montana.

The ecology of moths

This number is mind-boggling—but what’s really incredible are the diverse lives of all these moths. Every species has its own story, a unique way of life fine-tuned to the harsh weather and varied vegetation of the Montana landscape. A lot of the details are still unknown; we’re still “in the dark” about many species’ basic biology. But what we do know is this: Moths are involved in a tapestry of relationships that is indispensable to the ecosystems around us.

According to Seidensticker, there’s an intimate “double link” between local moths and local plants. A tremendous variety of caterpillars chew on plants, forming the first link. Many adult moths feed on flower nectar, forming the second. Through these relationships, moths shape plant communities, feed a wide variety of animals, and contribute to pollination.

The double link: to eat and to be eaten

Caterpillar food plants, like the caterpillars themselves, are greatly varied. The pale enargia (Enargia decolor) develops primarily on aspens, tying the leaves together with silk. The oblique-striped emerald (Synchlora bistriaria) munches on sunflower and goldenrod blooms. Ambesa laetella, a beautifully patterned snout moth without a common name, feeds on wild roses. Eyed sphinx larvae rely on willows and cottonwoods. And through the simple act of chewing on leaves, caterpillars shape the course of evolution, pushing plants to develop defenses like hairy armors, bitter flavors, and aromatic compounds. Meanwhile, the host plants become caterpillar factories, producing millions of juicy larvae that songbirds eat.

If a caterpillar manages to escape the songbirds and transform into a winged adult, it may become important prey for flammulated owls or nighthawks. Bats feed so heavily on moths that certain moth species have developed sonic defenses, emitting high-frequency sounds that interfere with the bats’ sonar. Grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) gorge on adult army cutworm moths (Euxoa auxiliaris), which spend the summer hiding in talus slopes in the mountains. These moths are more calorie-dense than butter.

Moths and pollination

Meanwhile, scientists have only recently begun to recognize how important moths can be for pollination. In 2020, Seidensticker and his colleagues did a pilot study in the Bitterroot Valley using DNA barcoding to identify pollen swabbed from moth mouthparts. Impressively, they found moths transporting pollen from nearly a hundred plant genera, including common groups such as asters, legumes, and currants, as well as rarer plants like orchids and catchflies.

Moths may be especially important in this way because of how far they can carry pollen. Indeed, some moth species have been documented carrying pollen hundreds of miles. With their long-distance flights, they can connect the genes of isolated patches of plants. Bees, on the other hand, tend to forage close to their nests.

A soft-winged world

As researchers like Seidensticker continue to learn more, it’s becoming clear that moths are amazingly diverse, awesomely complex, and critically important to life around us. For Seidensticker, his journey of discovery began with owls. Now, it’s a web of connections: these fluttery pollen carriers link grizzly bears, bats, birds of the night, and plants in a complex dance.

And there’s still so much to learn. By 2030, the Montana Moth Project expects to have a comprehensive inventory of moth species in Montana. In the next decade, they’ll focus on developing the seasonal picture of when these moths fly. From there, the sky’s the limit, with much more to learn about pollination, host plants, and food webs.

It’s a soft-winged world that most of us take for granted. But the moths are out there—fluttering through our gardens, soaring through the nighttime pines—waiting for us to notice them.

The English version of this story first appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Big Sky Journal, along with Lea Frye’s amazing photography. My Spanish translation appears here for the first time. You can find out more about the Montana Moth Project here.

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A simple whistle, ascending at the end, easy to imitate. It’s the hour when the light departs, converting the trees into silhouettes, and the evening blue leaves the slopes of the Cerro Islá. A simple whistle that I’ve never heard before, only in recordings. The months of study crystallize in an instant and I’m almost running, the whistle calling me onwards, passing the milpa and the nopales, the starfruit and the cempasúchil, the beloved garden of grandfather Teo, passing the mangos, entering the jungle. The crickets are the voice of the approaching night, this whistle the mystery of the twilight.

The mystery is this: why is each day here different? Why does the earth give us so many chances, so many guides to learn from? The voice of each bird sings its story, its relationship with the living earth. The bud of every plant is a universe in waiting—and they all wait for us; what will we do? Will we learn the humble magic of the milpa, of thousands of generations of hands caring for the corn and the beans, the squash and the chile, the firewood and the manure, the cacao and the guanábana, so that our footprints may be gardens of flowers and jungles where the thicket tinamou (Crypturellus cinnamomeus) gives this simple whistle at sunset?

The ghosts of the birds

Or will we tear apart the earth, so that our food only comes from the supermarket, so that it carries the ghosts of the birds and the beetles that once lived where a monoculture crop creeps to the horizon? It’s not a rhetorical question. Large-scale, mechanized agriculture continues growing across the planet, the primary cause of biodiversity loss (in spite of climate change, another huge and growing threat). Industrial agriculture is an enormous and efficient system, difficult for anyone—farmers or consumers—to change. Efficient for saying goodbye to rainforests, milpas, insects, tinamous, efficient for selling us candy and snacks, diabetes and cancer, for losing our connection with the earth. But it’s not inevitable. Every milpa, every shade-grown coffee farm within the intact rainforest, every attempt to form a healthy relationship with the earth opens up a different possibility.

Ancestral practices

We all have these practices in our ancestral lineages. Here in Mexico, the system of the milpa is one of them. From the land where I was born among the mountains and valleys of the Pacific Northwest of the United States, there are the indigenous traditions, stewarding habitat for salmon, cedar, camas, and huckleberry.

I suppose that somewhere in my European roots is a tradition of tending fruits, because they’ve always fascinated me. My mom has vivid childhood memories of picking raspberries with her Grandma Jessie. As a kid, I used to go huckleberry picking with my dad. Before he died, we went out in the evening to observe noctuid moths pollinating the cherries in his orchard, an orchard of old fruit trees without pesticides where the red-naped sapsuckers (Sphyrapicus nuchalis) drilled wells in the tree trunks and the pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) visited in the fall to feed on apples. There were enough to share. We dried apples, plums, and cherries, and I grew up craving this dried fruit. I wasn’t very interested in candy, because dried fruit from the orchard was so much better.

All of these traditions and many more offer us another way forward, together with the birds and the plants, the fungi—a way that gives us healthy food and gives the animals habitat to flourish.

The tinamou, the forest-falcon, and the owls

The thicket tinamou continues singing. The earth gives us so many chances, and the voice of each bird tells its story. Grandfather Teo tells me that there used to be quail here, but they disappeared. Maybe it was because of an increase in insecticide use in the area, he says. I continue to listen for the quail at sunset. Perhaps one day I’ll find them, like the thicket tinamou whistling now from the forest close to the Río Sal, this timid bird of the dense vegetation. It’s kind of like a chicken, except that it doesn’t scratch with its feet. Using its beak, it seeks out seeds, beetles, and fallen fruits. It nests on the forest floor during the hot spring and the rainy summer.

Along with the tinamou, do you hear that nasal cry? Now it’s gotten closer. It’s a collared forest-falcon (Micrastur semitorquatus), hunter of birds and squirrels, a bird that hides in the jungle and nests in cavities in the caoba (Swietenia macrophylla) and other big trees. And now the Middle American screech-owl (Megascops guatemalae) begins its nocturnal trill, this insectivorous owl that hunts grasshoppers and beetles at the edge of the plantings.

The mystery of the twilight

In the distance hoots the mottled owl (Strix virgata), larger than the screech-owl. It also feeds on many insects at the edge of the forest. The common pauraques (Nyctidromus albicollis) have emerged from the dense bushes where they passed the day. I can see them in the deepening darkness, perching on the clay of the track. They flutter under the crescent moon, hunting beetles, moths, and other flying insects. Sometimes I hear their liquid calls and their song, purwheeoo!

The fireflies are glimmering above the shadows of the milpa. Clusters of stars hang suspended above the guardian silhouette of the Cerro Islá. A while ago the thicket tinamou stopped whistling, but I know it’s still there, in the leaf litter of the rainforest. The Middle American screech-owl continues singing.

The earth gives us so many chances to learn; the voice of each bird tells us its story. The milpa shows us how we can live with fields of flowers and diverse forests, and everyone waits for us. What will we choose?

Note: This story about the nocturnal birds of the coast of Oaxaca, Mexico alludes to the importance of insect diversity and intact ecosystems for birds and all life. It’s something I’ve touched on in other stories (such as those in bold that follow the references, below) and that I’ll continue exploring next month with a story from Montana, USA about owls, moths, and a project that is documenting the diversity and importance of these flying insects. Also, if you’d like to delve more into sustainable agriculture and biodiversity, check out the references I’ve shared below. In particular, I recommend Lorna Milne’s poignant and deeply personal essay “Losing Ty,” and Luke Hingtgen’s review of the inspiring book The Third Plate.

Further reading

Billerman, S.M., B. K. Keeney, P. G. Rodewald, and T. S. Schulenberg (editors) (2022). Birds of the World. Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/home

Hingtgen, L. (2014, 11 December). Review: The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food. Edge Effects. https://edgeeffects.net/third-plate/

Jaureguiberry, P. et al. (2022). The direct drivers of recent global anthropogenic biodiversity loss. Science Advances 8:45. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm9982

Lozada Aranda, M. and A. Ponce Mendoza. (2016). La milpa. Biodiversidad Mexicana. Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad, Mexico City, Mexico. https://www.biodiversidad.gob.mx/diversidad/sistemas-productivos/milpa

Milne, L. (2023). Losing Ty. Great Plains Quarterly 43:4. https://www.lornamilne.com/losing-ty

A hopeful sign for a bird in decline: helping Montana’s tree swallows

Lunch on the fly: a bird’s-eye view of chokecherries

The post Mystery of the twilight: birds at dusk and sustainable agriculture appeared first on Wild With Nature.

This story is the second in a series about Lake Helena and getting to know a place in nature over time. If you haven’t heard last month’s installment, you can start there… or just jump in here!

It’s a night in late June at a cattail marsh along Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front. The sun set more than an hour ago, and the pale, peachy afterglow has faded to blue over the backbone of the mountains. The marsh and the dark sky above it are filled with the calls and strange winnowing sounds of a dozen Wilson’s snipes (Gallinago delicata). And then, from somewhere deep in the marsh, we hear it again, that strange, deep gulping sound, wump–CATchum! wump–CATchum!: the distinctive call of an American bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus). 

The American bittern is a secretive heron of dense marshes, uncommonly observed in Montana, and this is the first time that anyone has reported one in this marsh. We hear the bittern calling for roughly half an hour as the sun’s last glow fades away. The next morning we hear it once again in the pre-dawn hours, starting up around 4:20 am and continuing for roughly 40 minutes. Before sunrise arrives, though, it’s become silent, a ghost of a bird hiding in the wetland.

Bitterns at Lake Helena?

If a bittern is living here among these cattails, I ask myself, why not at Lake Helena, 64 miles away? The cattail marshes are even more extensive there. And so, four days later, I arrive at Lake Helena at 4:00 am to listen for bitterns.

It’s a chilly, still morning with skeins of mist rising from the lake. I’m standing in waders at the edge of the cattail marsh, cupping my hands over my ears and listening intently. I can hear the clear wichety wichety wichety of the common yellowthroats (Geothlypis trichas) and the chatter of the marsh wrens (Cistothorus palustris). A Wilson’s snipe winnows in the distance. From time to time, I hear splashes and sounds I don’t recognize from the marsh—but no bittern. 

A waning crescent moon is high in the southeastern sky and the mountains are black silhouettes in the distance. I’ve listened for an hour now—still no bittern. I’m getting cold. If a bittern was calling, I’m pretty sure I would have heard it. Later, I read that bitterns most often call early in the breeding season. Are there bitterns hiding in this marsh, silent now at the end of June?

July in the marsh

I return to Lake Helena a week and a half later by kayak, arriving before sunrise on July 12. As I drift slowly through the morning darkness, I’m greeted by a cacophony in the marsh. It’s a roaring buzz, notable from hundreds of yards away. It sounds like the cattails are hosting a convention of miniature chainsaws. But as I get closer, what I find isn’t what I had been expecting, a conglomeration of red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) or marsh wrens. Instead, it’s a massive group of bank swallows (Riparia riparia), easily a hundred of them, perhaps several times that many. 

Immediately I have a suspicion about what I’m seeing. A nearby bank swallow colony has fledged, I think, and the year’s profusion of fledglings have moved on from the vertical earth bank where they spent the first three or four weeks of their life. As they forage and get ready for migration, the marsh is a safe haven for them to stop and roost for the night. 

Swallows and nighthawks

The pre-dawn sky is pinkish-gray with haze from the Horse Gulch Fire, which started a few days ago in the mountains to the east and has already grown to over 7500 acres. Suddenly, at 5:27 am, the bank swallow flock erupts from the marsh without warning. A swirling cloud of noisy swallows circles over my kayak just long enough for me to snap a photo and estimate that there are at least 250 of them. And then they’re gone, scattering over the lake.

As I continue to drift slowly onwards at the edge of the marsh, I think about all of the stories of the birds and other animals that use this place throughout the year. I wonder how many of these stories I haven’t even imagined. On June 19, 2023, Logan Kahle was at Lake Helena in the evening and observed an astounding 680 common nighthawks (Chordeiles minor) flying over the water, where they were presumably foraging. 

“This was a bare minimum estimate, made in a single scan counting by 20s,” he wrote. “I have viewed many amazing nighthawk spectacles over reservoirs in the Great Basin, but this may have been the craziest.”

Marsh wrens and marbled godwits

Presumably Logan had no idea that evening that he would see such a massive group of nighthawks over the lake. Nor did I set out this morning with any inkling that there would be hundreds of bank swallows roosting in the marsh. Often, the most amazing moments in nature just happen, unexpected.

As the sun rises smoky orange over the mountains, I watch a group of three juvenile marsh wrens who give high-pitched begging calls from the edge of the wetland. They still have tufts of downy feathers on their heads, giving me the impression that they only recently got up out of bed and didn’t comb themselves. One of their parents is working overtime to stuff them with insects, hunting diligently for prey among the mud at the edge of the cattail forest.

At the Prickly Pear Creek delta, the swamp verbena (Verbena hastata) is blooming, rich purple spikes against the green of the marsh. A flock of marbled godwits (Limosa fedoa) is circling low over the sandbar, calling. Finally they land there, gull-sized shorebirds with gently swooping, pale orange bills. They dip their bills in the shallow water and tilt their heads up, drinking.

Hot morning at the delta

The morning sun is fierce now, its intensity increased by the water’s reflection. Most of the shorebirds at the delta today are species that nest here: spotted sandpipers (Actitis macularius), killdeer (Charadrius vociferus), and dozens of Wilson’s phalaropes (Phalaropus tricolor). An impressive flock of 70 American avocets (Recurvirostra americana) flies over but doesn’t land.

But even though “summer” only began a few weeks ago on the human calendar, and the May shorebirds that used these sandbars in their northbound migration towards the Arctic are still a recent memory, the mosaic is already shifting. The marbled godwits—shorebirds which breed in Montana but not, as far as I know, in this urbanized valley—are one of the first hints that fall shorebird migration is already starting. But they’re not alone.

Fall shorebird migration

As the morning heats up and the roar of Helena Valley traffic echoes through the soundscape, punctuated by the sounds of red-winged blackbirds and a few other species, the shallow water at the delta is full of foraging shorebirds. Here, alongside the Wilson’s phalaropes, I count nine long-billed dowitchers (Limnodromus scolopaceus) and four western sandpipers (Calidris mauri).

With these two species, there’s no doubt that these birds are already migrating south. Both breed roughly 2000 miles to the northwest, where wet tundra meets the Arctic Ocean. After a compressed nesting season, by now the adults have already begun their fall migration. The juveniles will wait longer—often another month or more—before they too head south, somehow finding their way across the continent to their wintering grounds without the assistance of their parents. Some western sandpipers will spend the winter as far south as the coast of Peru.

Noticing the flies

Past the delta with its shorebirds and its usual group of American white pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos), I decide to give myself time to slow down and notice some more of the life in this place. There are some flies buzzing along a band of sandbar willows (Salix exigua) that divides the lake from part of the marsh as I record a Virginia rail (Rallus limicola) making short, staccato calls from the wetland. Among the incredible diversity of flies in the world, I have no idea what these ones might be, nor do I try to catch one to observe it more closely and find out. 

This patch of marsh is dominated by bur-reed (Sparganium sp.), an expanse of bright green spears pointing skyward, and on the bur-reed flowers I notice some other flies. These ones are bronze-colored with striking yellow bands on the abdomen, suggesting to me that they’re a species of hover fly (family Syrphidae). The flies take off before I can get a photo, but not before I notice that they’re only landing on the small, bright yellow clusters of male bur-reed flowers, which are positioned above the larger, snow-white spheres of female flowers. The hover flies must be finding pollen to feed on, I suspect.

Mudflats in miniature

The morning is getting hotter, and I’m almost ready to turn back. But I paddle just a little bit farther first and stop to photograph the swamp verbena. It’s flowering abundantly here at the edge between lake and marsh, just as it was at the delta. A viceroy (Limenitis archippus), a beautiful monarch-mimicking butterfly whose larvae probably developed on the nearby sandbar willows, is perching on a swamp verbena stem. A second viceroy lands on a mudflat in miniature nearby, flexing its wings. This tiny mudflat has flies, too, but they aren’t the sort that buzz around my microphone to add their voices to a Virginia rail recording. These ones are smaller, delicate, and they glint in the sunlight in tones of metallic copper and green. I suspect they’re some kind of long-legged fly (family Dolichopodidae).

In a special place in nature such as Lake Helena, the learning is endless. Today, it’s been a huge flock of bank swallows roosting in the pre-dawn marsh. It’s been the shifting kaleidoscope of shorebirds using these mudflats and sandbars alongside massive American white pelicans. And pausing to slow down and take a closer look, I’ve seen something similar in miniature: a viceroy perching alongside dozens of tiny long-legged flies, like the insect analogs of pelicans and shorebirds on a mudflat.

Seeing bank swallows, imagining bitterns

I’m left feeling grateful for this habitat that supports so much life, from long-legged flies and bur-reed to bank swallows and the occasional massive concentration of foraging nighthawks. I wonder what Lake Helena will teach me next time. And I keep on imagining American bitterns in the marsh. Perhaps, if I come back on an early summer night next year, I’ll find them here, singing.

In Montana, Montana Audubon coordinates the Important Bird Area program, which includes the Lake Helena Important Bird Area. To find out more about this program and Montana Audubon’s other conservation and citizen science initiatives, visit mtaudubon.org. And if you visit Lake Helena, consider submitting your bird sightings through eBird to contribute to our collective knowledge of this place!

Further reading

Billerman, S.M., Keeney, B.K., Rodewald, P.G. & Schulenberg, T.S. (editors). (2022). Birds of the World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Lab of Ornithology. https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/home

Marks, J.S., Hendricks, P., & Casey, D. (2016). Birds of Montana. Arrington, VA: Buteo Books.

Wilson, H. (2012, 5 Aug). Shorebird migration. Maine Birds. Retrieved from https://web.colby.edu/mainebirds/2012/10/21/shorebird-migration/

The post Of bitterns and bank swallows: Lake Helena, part 2 appeared first on Wild With Nature.

The nest boxes haven’t been up for five minutes, and already a small cloud of tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) is swirling around them. A dusky, gray-backed female lands at the entrance of the box closest to us, her liquid chatter blending with the staccato calls of the western kingbirds (Tyrannus verticalis) on the electrical lines overhead. Beyond her, two more tree swallows are investigating another box.

Tree swallows are cavity-nesters, typically using abandoned woodpecker holes in old cottonwoods and other large trees to raise their young. They also readily use nest boxes as a reasonable substitute. But we certainly didn’t expect them to show up so soon.

This instantaneous response from the local swallows is immensely gratifying. But it also suggests to us that the birds in this area have been limited by a lack of nest sites.

“Apparently there is a cavity limitation here,” says Megan Fylling. 

Nesting habitat for declining swallows

Megan works as a Research Director and Avian Ecologist for the University of Montana’s Bird Ecology Lab (UMBEL). It’s the second week in May of 2023, and this morning I’m with her and five other wildlife researchers, pounding in metal T-posts and putting up cedar nest boxes. The project is a collaboration between UMBEL and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, with funding from NorthWestern Energy. It’s an effort to create tree swallow habitat where these birds are in decline—and to learn what they can teach us about the places where they live.

We’ve just finished installing 10 new nest boxes along the heavily-fished tailwaters below Montana’s Holter Dam, where the Missouri River cuts a canyon through the red rocks of the Big Belt Mountains, between Helena and Great Falls. There’s something very inspiring about watching these sleek, athletic birds checking out their new homes here. And to see them so soon is a huge surprise. Often it takes a year or two before tree swallows will set up shop, says Brian Balmer. Brian, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will be leading much of the monitoring to see how the tree swallows respond to these new nesting sites.

Waiting for tree swallows

There had been no such instant gratification at our first site of the morning. There, 16 miles farther upstream, our work was a matter of faith. No tree swallows appeared as we hammered T-posts into the shallow, rocky soil above the river, where larkspurs bloomed and Douglas-firs clung to the slopes. They still hadn’t arrived as we attached nest boxes to our last T-posts in that string of 10, on a ridge of loose cobbles overlooking the river.

But as we gazed out over the gray-green waters of the Missouri River and the bitter-herb smell of big sagebrush wafted through the gray, misty mid-May morning, it seemed like the sort of place where tree swallows could make themselves at home.

“I have a good feeling about these boxes,” said Tricia Rodriguez, UMBEL’s Project Manager.

Tree swallows and population declines

Tree swallows are familiar breeding birds across much of North America, equally at home in the baking heat of a central California summer or a somewhat-cooler July in Maine. Darting through the air, flashing their glossy blue backs, they twist and turn as they hunt aerial insects on the wing. But although they’re widespread and common, their overall numbers have been declining. Analyses of Breeding Bird Survey data since the mid-1960s point to particularly notable declines in the northern and eastern parts of their breeding range. 

Along the Missouri River in Montana, finer-scale surveys of breeding birds have also shown concerning declines in tree swallows. Systematic songbird surveys from 2004 to 2021, also funded by NorthWestern Energy and led by UMBEL researcher Anna Noson, point to a loss of around 25% of the river’s breeding tree swallows—an alarming downward trend. 

Critical cottonwoods

Why? Although the exact causes remain uncertain, habitat changes along the river have likely played a role. The cottonwoods (Populus spp.) along its banks—which provide nesting cavities for tree swallows as well as critical habitat for many other birds—are also declining. Two thirds of the cottonwood stands in this area of the Missouri River are at least 50 years old. The trees are aging, and relatively few young ones have been able to establish. Dams have limited the flooding that provides a seedbed for baby cottonwoods, while houses and farms have encroached into the once-unpredictable river’s floodplain. It’s a host of changes that seems to be impacting many of the river’s birds, which depend on these important trees for food (think insects), shelter, and nesting sites.

Nest boxes can’t replace the missing trees. Unlike cottonwoods, T-posts and cedar boards don’t host the caterpillars that yellow warblers (Setophaga petechia) and many other birds eat, for example. But by supplementing the nesting cavities typically found in old cottonwoods, nest boxes can help address the loss of the tree swallows. That’s why it’s especially exciting to see the swallows investigating the Holter Dam boxes so soon, just minutes after we’ve put them up. 

Tree swallows as sentinels

“I’m so obsessed with the birds just getting right into those boxes,” says Bridger Creel, a PhD student who works with UMBEL. Their work focuses on songbirds and heavy metal contaminants one mountain range to the west, along the Clark Fork River.

Tree swallow research projects like this one along the Missouri aren’t just helping provide new habitat for a declining insect-eater. Here and elsewhere, they can also teach us important lessons about the surrounding environment. Nesting tree swallows forage close to home, rarely traveling more than a third of a mile from their nests. Their local diet—made up of aerial insects such as midges, mayflies, and dragonflies—means that tree swallows can serve as sentinels for landscape health. If the swallows are thriving and fledging large, healthy clutches, it’s probably a sign that the food web they rely on is thriving, too. 

Meanwhile, by taking small blood samples from the swallows when they’re banding them, researchers can monitor for hidden environmental toxins—avoiding nasty, unforeseen surprises that could jeopardize wildlife and people. For the health of our rivers, tree swallows are like the canaries in the coal mine. But unlike the timeworn cliché of the canary in its cage, tree swallows live wild and free, twisting and gliding through the air in a high-speed insect hunt that no human can match.

Nest boxes, tree swallows, and waning cottonwoods

Our last stop of the day is along a west-facing hillside of skunkbush sumac, cheatgrass, and lupine that overlooks the reservoir above Holter Dam. Spotted towhees (Pipilo maculatus) mew as we install 10 more nest boxes. We stop to pick up the discarded beer cans and water bottles that litter the slope and look up to see a sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter striatus) circling overhead. Below us, a common loon (Gavia immer) dives in the reservoir beyond a sparse scattering of aging cottonwoods, the trees crowded between a campground and the water.

The plight of the cottonwoods remains: a waning habitat that supports an astonishing, vulnerable bird diversity across the arid West. But today, I’m feeling hopeful. This morning, we put up 30 nest boxes along the river, providing homes for cavity-nesters where none existed last year. And over the years ahead, this team of biologists will be looking out for these birds, learning what these sentinels of the river have to teach us.

As we get back into the truck and drive away, a tree swallow is banking over the hillside, circling where a new nest box overlooks the dammed river. I hope that it will stay for the summer, and thrive.

Update: the tree swallows in 2023

Fast-forward a year now, to spring of 2024. Tree swallows have once again returned to Montana, and another nesting season is about to begin. In May and June last year, the tree swallow team installed 100 nest boxes along the Missouri River, grouped into sites consisting of ten nest boxes each. And even though they were installing the boxes relatively late, when the nesting season had already started, cavity-nesting birds still used 29 of them.

At several sites, the response of the birds was particularly impressive—and it wasn’t just tree swallows there. In the first area that I visited with the researchers, where we hammered T-posts into a rocky sagebrush slope, tree swallows used two nest boxes and violet-green swallows (Tachycineta thalassina) used two more. At Holter Dam, where we watched the birds find the boxes within minutes, it was pure tree swallows. Even in that first year, they occupied six of the ten boxes. At one box where a nest with six young fledged successfully, the tree swallows proceeded to re-nest in the same box, laying five more eggs. Meanwhile, on the dry hillside above the reservoir, where the spotted towhees had mewed, the nest box community was a mix of tree swallows and house wrens (Troglodytes aedon). Between the two species, they built nests in a whopping nine out of ten boxes.

Tree swallows in the years ahead

In the 2023 mid-season report that the tree swallow team shared with me, they wrote: “The relatively immediate high occupancy rates at some sites along the Upper Missouri River surprised even our most seasoned avian ecologists… we expect to see increased occupancy in 2024.”

I return on May 20, 2024, a sunny morning with a light frost coating the grasses, to check on the nest boxes below Holter Dam. I stand underneath the powerline and watch a tree swallow pair that seem to be claiming Box 32. Both are perching on top of it, vocalizing frequently over the background hum of the dam. In just a few minutes, I watch them copulate five times. When another female circles nearby, clearly interested in their box, they intensify their chirps. The female defending the box flies to the entrance hole, shielding it from the would-be usurper.

Every nest box in sight has two or more tree swallows perching on or near it. At Box 31, a cloud of five are swarming and calling, in the midst of an unsettled debate over who will get to nest here. Meanwhile, at Box 35, another pair is perching amiably together. If you close your eyes and listen, there’s a music here: a chorus of liquid chirps, a bustle of activity that wasn’t here until last spring. The pair on Box 32 continues calling. To my ears, it sounds a lot like they’re saying “thank you.”

Further reading

Farther downstream along the river, between Fort Benton and Judith Landing, a project led by Friends of the Missouri Breaks Monument has been attempting to mitigate cottonwood declines by planting young Plains cottonwoods (Populus deltoides). Read a 2019 report about that project here.

The post A hopeful sign for a bird in decline: helping Montana’s tree swallows appeared first on Wild With Nature.

It was June in North Carolina, USA, the humid morning of a day that promised to be hot. The orchard orioles (Icterus spurius) sang sweetly at the Flat River Waterfowl Impoundment, where Kent Fiala recorded their voices. It was a morning full of birdsong in this natural area where the eastern deciduous forest mixes with fields and wetlands.

Now in February, 1700 miles to the southwest in a direct line that crosses 900 miles of the Gulf of Mexico, the orchard orioles are much quieter. They dance among the branches and flowers of a thicket at the edge of the river, flashes of burgundy and lemon yellow in constant motion. There are lots of orchard orioles here, a flock of at least 15, at the edge of the Huatulco River in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico.

The orioles no longer give their sweet summer song; all I can hear are a few harsh trills, almost hidden by the burbling of the river. Seeing them here, you wouldn’t imagine their beautiful song nor where they spend the summer, a range which includes not only North Carolina but also other distant lands: the Dakotas, Michigan, New York. Nor would you guess their routes of migration—routes which, at least for some individuals, involve a flight of over 500 miles across the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico.   

The orioles and the thicket

The thicket along the Huatulco River where the orchard orioles are foraging is covered in arrays of orange flowers in the form of brushes. They belong to a vine known as el bejuco de carape or el peinito (Combretum sp.) that clambers over the shrubs, forming a refuge and cafeteria for the birds at the edge of the river. It’s a beautiful spot and an unhurried morning. I decide to sit at the edge of the river to appreciate it. And the longer I stay seated here, the more birds emerge from the thicket.

The orchard orioles continue feeding among the branches, a swarm of activity like a giant, colorful vacuum cleaner, sucking nectar from the flowers and snatching up insects. Two Baltimore orioles (Icterus galbula), brilliant birds in ebony and orange, appear to investigate the flowers as well. Like the orchard orioles, they’re birds that migrated impossible distances from their natal summer homes to arrive at this thicket. These ones might have come into the world in Alberta, Tennessee, or Pennsylvania. Two streak-backed orioles (Icterus pustulatus), orange birds streaked with charcoal, are leaping from branch to branch. Unlike the other orioles, these ones are year-round residents in Oaxaca. 

Buntings, grosbeaks, and a white-tipped dove

The buntings are more timid. I’ve been sitting here for half an hour when they finally emerge from the shadows. A solitary indigo bunting (Passerina cyanea), a male with feathers like the sky in its most intense moods, perches in the undergrowth, ready to disappear again. But three painted buntings (Passerina ciris) dare to drink from the edge of the river. The two females are a soft, textured green like the hills of my state of Montana when spring surrenders to summer. The male, on the other hand, looks like a color wheel that escaped from an artist’s studio: his head is blue, his breast red, his back yellow-green.

Seven blue grosbeaks (Passerina caerulea), relatives of the buntings, have emerged from the vines. The females are reddish-brown, the males chalk blue. They perch like the indigo bunting, silent at the edge of the shadows.

Suddenly a yellow warbler (Setophaga petechia) appears, a glimpse of dandelion yellow among the leaves. He pauses to perch briefly on a branch alongside a warbling vireo (Vireo gilvus) who wears the color of river rocks. A white-tipped dove (Leptotila verreauxi), a resident that normally only gives her hoots from the undergrowth, emerges to forage at the edge of the river. By now I’ve been sitting here for 45 minutes.

When time stops

A Louisiana waterthrush (Parkesia motacilla) and a yellow-rumped warbler (Setophaga coronata) are flitting on the riverbank, feeding on insects. Another white-tipped dove continues singing in the distance, where the orange-fronted parakeets (Eupsittula canicularis) are screeching. A group of parakeets launches into flight from a guanacastle (Enterolobium cyclocarpum), its canopy replete with strange, wrinkled fruits. The parakeets nest along this river corridor, excavating their cavities within arboreal termite nests (of Nasutitermes sp.). 

Even as an adult, there are moments like this: moments when I’m in nature and time seems to stop, when an animal, a plant, or a community lets me get close to its way of life. Suddenly I feel that astonishment I felt as a child, when the world was full of magical beings, when I saw the plants and animals with new eyes and believed without doubt in the goodness of life, in the magic that there was in the living beings with whom I shared this existence.

This episode is made up of various threads. It includes the birds, the diverse landscapes that their migrations connect, and a conversation with a Oaxacan biologist about the passion we both have for the natural world. But in its essence, this is a story of those moments in nature, moments when time doesn’t exist, when the magic is palpable, when we can see ourselves as part of an intricate, diverse community of living beings. 

Tierra de Aves

I met Ana Rebeca Martínez Martínez in December in the city of Oaxaca. We got to know each other through Tierra de Aves, a non-profit based in Oaxaca that is dedicated to understanding and studying our feathered neighbors, where Rebeca has volunteered for almost two years. What I noticed immediately about Rebeca was her passion for birds and nature. I had met up with the Tierra de Aves team to help with their monthly sessions studying the birds of the Monte Albán Bird Observatory.

The team carefully captures the birds in special nets, records information about them, gives them aluminum leg bands to identify individuals, and releases them. It’s a project that seeks to improve our understanding of the lives and movements of the birds of Monte Albán, as well as those that visit during their migrations. Over time, the project will also help us understand how climate change is affecting these birds.

Afterwards, I asked Rebeca if she would tell me more about her connection with nature and her story as a biologist. And so, one day in December, we met up for the conversation. While I listened to her, I thought about all of the threads of her story that have parallels in mine, in spite of growing up in different countries, thousands of miles apart. I thought about birds, insects, and plants—and about the sense of wonder that they have given us both since childhood. Have you experienced it, too?

The café and the sparrow

We’re sitting on the patio of a café near the Andador Turístico in Oaxaca, an open space with tables and a few trees. And thanks to Rebeca, our conversation begins with another moment of connection with the birds. The house sparrows (Passer domesticus), cosmopolitan birds that many people despise, are searching the ground for leftovers and crumbs. Rebeca doesn’t despise them. Pulling her binoculars out of her backpack, she checks the flock carefully.

Almost immediately she finds what she’s looking for. On the right leg of a sparrow, we can see the glimmer of an aluminum band. This sparrow is one that the Tierra de Aves team banded in the Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca, four blocks away. The Ethnobotanical Garden is the site of another of Tierra de Aves’ bird banding stations—a station that has been functioning uninterrupted, month after month, for more than 20 years, making it the longest-running bird-banding station in Mexico. The sparrow is an individual that Rebeca and the rest of the Tierra de Aves team know personally, a familiar face in the midst of the café.

Hints about migration

If we could glimpse an aluminum band on the leg of one of the orioles or buntings at the edge of the Huatulco River, if we managed to take a photo that revealed the unique numbers stamped on the band, we could understand a little bit more of the story of that bird. Perhaps the band would tell us of an indigo bunting that was born in New York and got its band from a team of scientists there. Or maybe we would learn of a Baltimore oriole that grew up among the cottonwoods and oaks along a river in Nebraska. We might learn whether the orchard orioles are the same ones that Kent Fiala recorded in North Carolina, or if these grew up farther west—in the Dakotas, in Kansas, or possibly closer, in Zacatecas, Mexico.

In a forest of oaks a few miles north of Oaxaca city, close to a creek in the foothills of the mountains, a MacGillivray’s warbler (Geothlypis tolmiei) is calling vigorously. The warbler is hiding among the shrubs and weeds. If we could see him well, there’s a minute possibility that we might see a band on his leg, too. It’s even possible—although it would be like winning the lottery—that the band would have the number of a MacGillivray’s warbler that I know personally, such as the young one that I saw banded in Wyoming last summer. Or perhaps the band would tell us that this individual grew up among the quaking aspens of a British Columbia stream, or in a patch of willows in the mountains of California.

Imagining

In the absence of bands, we don’t know the specifics of these stories. We’re left listening to the song of an orchard oriole in North Carolina, to a MacGillivray’s warbler that I recorded near a stream in Montana—and we’re left imagining. Rebeca imagines—and also, she keeps on looking for bands.

Rebeca was born in the state of Oaxaca; later, her family moved to Mexico City for work. Like many stories of connection with the earth, Rebeca’s story begins in her childhood. Growing up without siblings during her first eight years, as a child she felt a special connection with the small creatures of the garden outside her house. She tells me of a time with a friend when they found a moth stranded on the ground in the patio. The two moved the moth so that no one would step on her, and Rebeca remembers with joy that the experience helped her friend get over her fear of moths.  

The insects and the birds

In college, Rebeca studied chemical engineering, returning to Mexico City afterwards to work. But her affinity for the animals followed her. And living in the city, her connection with the insects (something that had always fascinated her) became especially important. In particular, the butterflies and moths called her attention. She began to rescue caterpillars that other people wanted to kill, feeding them with leftover prunings from the gardeners of the politécnico.

Rebeca also enrolled in a university again, this time to study insects. She got involved with the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN) and other nature-lovers in Mexico City . And when she returned to Oaxaca in 2021, those connections led her to volunteer with Tierra de Aves, where she fell in love with birds as well. Now she feels as if she is part of a human flock, a team that she describes as “marvelous.”

Rebeca’s passion for nature has touched her family as well. It started with the caterpillars, whose sightings began to be a topic of family conversation. Now it’s the birds, too. Rebeca tells me of a recent conversation with her mom about the incredible migration of the Nashville warblers (Leiothlypis ruficapilla). These warblers, so common in Oaxaca during the winter, migrate unbelievable thousands of miles to spend the summer as far away as Washington state, Manitoba, or Quebec.

Nashville warblers and western tanagers

There are Nashville warblers among the leafy trees of the Sierra Sur as well, 70 miles southwest of Oaxaca city, where a broad-winged hawk (Buteo platypterus) is whistling from a branch in the evergreen tropical forest. At a prudent distance from the hawk, where its whistles fade among millions of leaves, a flock of western tanagers (Piranga ludoviciana) is feeding among the expansive foliage of a fig tree (Ficus). From time to time, between bites of the small fruits, you can hear their rapid calls.

While the migration of the Nashville warblers has touched Rebeca’s family, the tanagers have touched mine. Last September, 2300 miles to the north, my mom heard the same calls in her Missoula, Montana garden. For several weeks, day after day, a flock of five western tanagers foraged just outside of her window, feeding on the grapes she had planted three years before. Every time I spoke with her, she mentioned the tanagers and how excited she was to see them. Her dream of a garden of fruit trees and native plants that would provide food for people and wildlife was coming to fruition. It was the first time she had seen western tanagers in her garden.

The hope of songbirds

When I ask Rebeca how getting to know birds has changed her life, her answer surprises me. She tells me that birds have given her hope. Before, she looked at the ground in search of insects; now she also searches the sky, looking for birds. She recognizes them by their voices, too. And noticing their presence in her daily life gives Rebeca hope that, in spite of the massive challenges that the beings of this planet are experiencing—extinctions, habitat loss, climate change, extractive economies—there are things that we can do. And recognizing the birds, seeing her relationship with them as one of cooperation, gives Rebeca the hope that we can still find healing and thrive, together with the living beings of our planet.

I love this perspective. It makes me think of my connection with the faraway northern landscape of Montana, connected by the impossible migrations that the MacGillivray’s warblers and so many other birds make each year. There you can find the restoration site that I mentioned in the last episode, Sevenmile Creek, where I began observing the local birds in 2017. The land was far from pristine. The decades of abuse were very evident—and even so, the birds and the plants continued, a persistent and exuberant diversity in a neglected place. It gave me hope, too, getting to know the warblers and sparrows among the chokecherries and the weeds, seeing the diversity of pollinators visiting the invasive plants, learning by heart the summer songs of the gray catbirds (Dumetella caroliniensis), the red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus), the American goldfinches (Spinus tristis), and the western meadowlarks (Sturnella neglecta).

A thousand moments of wonder

It gave me a profound connection with the living beings of this place, a connection composed of a thousand moments of wonder, of sitting, listening, and learning. And Sevenmile Creek asked me the question: if my neighbors the birds and the plants can survive so well in spite of our abuses, what if we help them? What if, after getting to know them, getting to know their ways of life, we find ways to reciprocate?  

It’s something that Rebeca asks herself, too. She tells me that she wants 2024 to be her year of action. She shares a few of her ideas: projects to reduce collisions between windows and birds, to share the inspiration of the natural world with more people, to plant native plants and create more habitats for birds within the city of Oaxaca.

Moments of connection

And so we return to the moments of connection with our neighboring beings: to get to know them and feel the magic that it is to be alive on this diverse planet. I believe that, with this type of connection, the desire to reciprocate comes naturally, to take actions that help life thrive. And the personal connection that we have with the birds, the insects and the other animals, with the plants and the fungi, with the lichens and the trees, with our living neighbors, is a source of inspiration and meaning. It’s also this connection that will tell us if the actions we take are working.

So let’s return once again to the orchard oriole in the North Carolina summer. Let’s think of the thicket at the edge of the Huatulco River, the house sparrows in a café in Oaxaca, the MacGillivray’s warblers who spend the winter in the hills of the city and spend the summer singing thousands of miles to the north. And to this symphony of connections, let’s add thousands other wild voices from your community, your garden, and your local park. And then let’s get out there, collaborating with the countless living beings of this earth, and let’s continue learning their stories and caring for them.

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September 28, 2023

It’s a warm, still night in late September along the Niobrara River, flowing east through Nebraska’s sandhills prairie. The moon is nearly full, casting a sparkly white trail of ripples along the water’s burbling curves. The humid night air is vibrating with life. Ground crickets, tree crickets, and many other singing insects that I don’t recognize give voice to this place with a thousand wings and legs. The sounds are different from the nighttime chorus I know in Montana, but equally magical.

The owls that were singing a few minutes ago have fallen silent. I can no longer hear the plaintive tremolo of the eastern screech-owl, nor the deep hoots of the great horned owls in the distance. But now, above the melodic burbling of the water, something starts making a terrible, screeching racket, as if Halloween has come a month early to this forest. I suspect this horrible sound is a young great horned owl. 

The personality of a place

I came to Nebraska for a few days to work on a field biology project. Now the work is done, but I’ve stayed for a little while longer. There’s something fascinating to me about getting to know the plants and animals of a new area, the sounds and smells, the seasonal patterns—that whole unique combination of creatures and happenings, that tumult of life that gives every place on earth its own unique personality. For one area along the Niobrara River, this story is a sketch of that personality.

It’s impossible to express in words how much I love riparian areas, those amazing habitats that trace the edges of rivers and streams. Living in the western United States, in the cold, dry interior of the continent, it’s no wonder. In this harsh region, it’s impossible to ignore how important riparian areas are to all sorts of plants and animals. And there’s something wonderful to me about being immersed in such an abundance of life. Along Montana’s rivers, I think of the cottonwood stands where the western wood-pewees and least flycatchers sing, where northern flickers and tree swallows nest. White-tailed deer bed down underneath. At night, beavers swim out to forage from their dens in the riverbanks and yellow-breasted chats sing in the darkness.

Plants and animals along the Niobrara River

Here along the Niobrara River, there’s so much that is different—but at the same time it’s so much like home. The air is more humid, with moisture carried from the Gulf of Mexico. The Plains cottonwoods (Populus deltoides) and green ashes (Fraxinus pennsylvanica) that I know from eastern Montana are joined by trees and vines typical of the deciduous forests farther east—and the birds are a bit different, too. 

Bur oaks (Quercus macrocarpa) spread their strong limbs and form groves along the river, dropping acorns for wild turkeys. The nasal calls of the blue jays join the familiar ones of the robins and cedar waxwings. Exuberant wild grapes (Vitis riparia) climb the trees and dangle juicy clusters of small fruits. The grapes have tart skins and large seeds, but they’re abundant, and the juice is incredible, rich and acidic and complex. 

Along this Nebraska river, there are the familiar flickers and downy woodpeckers I know from Montana, as well as the red-headed and red-bellied woodpeckers of the eastern United States. The hackberry trees (Celtis occidentalis) are new to me, the patterns of their corky bark forming a beautiful contrast with the cottonwoods. They have small purple fruits with a large seed and a thin, dry pulp that tastes incredibly like dates. The seeds, once I’ve scraped the tasty pulp off with my teeth, are covered with an intricate, net-like design.

Sparrows and sandhills

In this place, many of the migrant songbirds of late fall are the same species I know from Montana. Flocks of Lincoln’s sparrows and juvenile white-crowned sparrows call softly from the American plum thickets, already leafless with the approach of fall. The green ashes along the river have turned golden and a few yellow-rumped and orange-crowned warblers hunt insects in the canopy, the stragglers in the fall flood that warbler migration has been. 

In the dry hills of sand above the river, vesper sparrows and Savannah sparrows fly up from the wild sunflowers along the road. But other than the wild sunflowers, the prairie plants are quite different here. Reddish-purple expanses of little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) and the tawny seedheads of sand bluestem (Andropogon hallii) have replaced the bluebunch wheatgrass (Agropyron spicatum) that is so common in western Montana. The moonlike flowers of white prickly poppy (Argemone polyanthemos) glow along the dirt roads.

The connections of memories

Years ago, before I became an avid naturalist, I lived in North Carolina. Here in Nebraska, there are sounds and creatures that make me think of that place, stirring half-conscious memories from long ago. Voices of the nighttime insect chorus. Wild grapes climbing with joyful abandon. Oak forests along the river. 

There would have been eastern screech-owls in North Carolina, too, though I don’t remember them from my childhood. As far as I know, this is the first time I’ve ever heard that tremolo in the night. I had hoped I might, sleeping out under the stars in this incredible place, this richness of big cottonwoods, hackberries, and grape vines. 

This story can’t do this place justice. But it’s a sketch and an invitation: that we can spend time getting to know places like this, places that can remind us that life is vast and we are part of it. The rivers are paths of life. These forests along their banks are full of magic, seen and unseen.

Coyotes in the night and seeds in my pocket

Suddenly the coyotes join the nocturnal chorus of insects, yipping and barking in a crescendo from the ponderosa pines to the north. It’s good to know they’re here, these animals whose voices weave into the stories of so many of the original people of this land. And a few minutes after the coyote music has faded away, I hear the screech-owl again. The owl is directly across the river from me now, voice plunging in a series of hauntingly beautiful whinnies. Sometimes the song stays level, a melodious, pensive trill. 

The next day, as I return home to Helena, I go with one pocket filled with grape seeds. Another is full of hackberry seeds. 

I don’t know why. Both are species of the Great Plains and of eastern North America. The native distribution of hackberry barely reaches eastern Montana, while wild grape is found just in the southeastern corner of the state. Planting them around Helena, several hundred miles farther west, probably doesn’t make much ecological sense. It’s very possible that both will end up sitting on a shelf in labeled envelopes, moments of inspiration set aside for the future.

From the Niobrara River to riparian life everywhere

But I think there’s something important here: a “seed,” if you will, of love for riparian habitats. Anytime I’m in a place like this, where the screech-owls sing and life is thriving, I want to help it thrive even more. And so I notice patterns: which plants the birds and insects like, which native species are uncommon and could be more common. I gather seeds, and plant them. I pull non-native grasses from around patches of goldenrod, wild mint, and other native riparian plants. Sometimes I help plant cottonwoods and chokecherries on stream restoration sites. And I camp in places like this, where the owls sing and the wild fruits ripen, and I dream of a few more of them, along our rivers and in our yards.

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The tiny wasp shimmered between my fingertips, its hard exoskeleton glittering green and blue under the strong June sun. Nearby, along the base of the shaly orange slope, was the patch of leafy spurge where I had captured it as it had gathered nectar from the showy yellow spurge blooms. I had started seeing cuckoo wasps several weeks ago near this western Montana grassland stream, crawling across the ground and visiting flowers among the busy profusion of early-summer vegetation.

The cuckoo wasps I was seeing, roughly the size of rice grains, varied somewhat in their appearance. But all of them were striking. Most ranged from emerald to a deep blue-green. Some shone coppery red in the light. And the more I learned about these tiny, often-overlooked wasps, the more interesting they became.

When most people think of wasps, they think of the yellowjackets and paper wasps – that small handful of species that tend to show up uninvited at picnics and sometimes sting us. But the rest of Montana’s wasps make up a vast and seldom-seen world. Most of them would never show up at our picnics. Very few people even notice them. And cuckoo wasps (family Chrysididae) are part of that massive world. Unless you know what to look for, you’ve probably walked right past hundreds of them.

How to recognize them

Cuckoo wasps are extremely docile. Unlike most female wasps and bees, they actually can’t sting, even when they’re threatened. While most female wasps have a stinger, cuckoo wasps just have a harmless egg-laying tube. To protect themselves, most of Montana’s species can curl up into a ball when they’re attacked. Like the shell of a turtle, the hardened armor of their exoskeleton keeps them safe.

Cuckoo wasps aren’t Montana’s only small, wasplike, iridescent green insects. Certain sweat bees (family Halictidae) are similarly green – and these creatures can sting when they feel threatened. There are also other tiny wasps, such as the perilampids (family Perilampidae), that sport similar, shiny greens and blues.

How can you tell if you’re looking at a cuckoo wasp, then? Watch for compact, iridescent green wasps that typically play dead when disturbed, rolling into a ball. Their bodies usually have a pitted appearance, and many of them have a series of small teeth projecting from the rear of the abdomen. The veins in their forewings form a few box-like cells. Sweat bees have many more of these cells (over six of them), while perilampids have none.

A diversity of cuckoo wasps

Like many insects, cuckoo wasps are very diverse in Montana. According to Mike Ivie, curator of the Montana Entomological Collection in Bozeman, we have at least 71 species of them in the state. In fact, we have almost as many cuckoo wasps as we do mammals, a group that includes 109 species in Montana. But whereas most people are at least vaguely familiar with mammals, from elk to muskrats and deer mice, few of us have noticed even a single cuckoo wasp.

Until recently, even entomologists didn’t know much about cuckoo wasps in Montana. For many species the published range maps seem to curve around the state, barely missing it. But since the 1990s, when Mike Ivie and his colleagues began a much more thorough effort to inventory Montana’s cuckoo wasps, they’ve found a rather astounding diversity of them.

“Our diversity is that mix of eastern and western,” Mike says.

We have species from the Pacific Northwest that enter northwestern Montana, others from eastern North America, and still others associated with desert habitats near the Pryor Mountains. With cuckoo wasps, as with so many other animals, Montana’s diversity of habitats fosters an impressive diversity of species.

Species ID and where to find them

Identifying cuckoo wasps to the species level is generally quite challenging. Some are relatively large; others are as small as a mosquito. Many are bright green, while others have reddish tints. Details of the wing venation, ridges and indentations on the face, and the structures at the rear of the abdomen can help distinguish the different species. But for definitive identifications, it’s usually essential to study specimens under a microscope. 

Relatively few people may have the patience to identify cuckoo wasps to the species level. But for all of us, it’s relatively simple to keep an eye open for these creatures whenever we’re outside. Species ID is hard, but recognizing them as a family is fairly straightforward. And by noticing cuckoo wasps, we can understand another important part of the vast natural world that surrounds us.

Where can you find them? Sometimes, cuckoo wasps visit flowers, such as the brilliant green individual I found on the leafy spurge. I’ve also found certain cuckoo wasps visiting the striking white flowers of cow-parsnip (Heracleum lanatum) and the deep yellow arrays of goldenrod (Solidago spp.). But it’s more typical to see them on the ground.

“The place I see them most is on dead wood,” Mike Ivie tells me.

In forested settings, it’s common to find some species crawling busily along downed branches, large or small. Meanwhile, others frequent areas of bare ground.

A bizarre life cycle

Why all of the crawling? This behavior is the visible sign of the other 80% of these wasps’ life cycles, which take place in hidden burrows. And from here, the story of the cuckoo wasps gets increasingly bizarre.

Montana’s cuckoo wasps are parasitoids. When we see them crawling busily across wood or soil, we’re actually watching them hunting. A few of Montana’s species, in the genus Cleptes, attack sawfly cocoons in forested habitats across the state. The rest of our cuckoo wasps look for certain groups of wasps and bees. In this case, the female will sneak into the nest of her host species, laying an egg there. When her young larva hatches, it will devour its host and whatever food is in the nest cell. The next summer, the new cuckoo wasp will emerge as an adult, having usurped its host’s would-be nest.

What can these shiny green wasps teach us? It turns out that noticing the cuckoo wasps themselves is just the tip of the iceberg. They’re a window in on a whole community of bees and wasps that nest in the ground, or in downed branches where wood-boring beetles have excavated. Each of these species, which the cuckoo wasps target, has its own story. Many are highly specialized, collecting pollen from particular flowers or hunting certain insects to stock their nests. It’s an intricate, miniature world that most of us don’t even think of. And the cuckoo wasps can help us notice.

A miniature world of bees and wasps

“They’ll be crawling around on pieces of dead wood, branches…. Those old beetle borings are full of bees,” Mike says.

A closer look at a few species helps to illustrate the complexity of this miniature world. On a sunny early July afternoon, I found a pair of deep green cuckoo wasps mating within a streamside leafy spurge patch. Later, studying one of them under the microscope, I identified it as Holopyga ventralis. Like all cuckoo wasps, Holopyga has a unique life story. This species attacks Bicyrtes, a group of pale-striped sand wasps that visit flowers and dig their nests in sandy soil. 

Like many wasps, Bicyrtes are rather-specialized predators. In order to feed their larvae, the females hunt stink bugs and other true bugs. Stinging these bugs to paralyze them and then stocking their underground nests with them, they’re ensuring that their larvae will have all the food they need to develop into an adult. If everything goes according to plan, that is. 

Enter the cuckoo wasp, Holopyga. If a female Holopyga manages to sneak into a Bicyrtes nest and lay her egg, then her larva will devour the developing sand wasp, along with the paralyzed stink bugs that were supposed to feed it. This is game over for the Bicyrtes larva. It’s also why the female Holopyga can curl into a ball, protecting herself with her super-tough exoskeleton. If the adult Bicyrtes wasp finds her sneaking into the nest, the armored-ball defense will allow her to survive. The angry Bicyrtes may throw her out of the nest, but the Holopyga will live to nest-search another day.

Different species, different story

It’s a similar story with Hedychrum parvum, a cuckoo wasp that I found visiting flowers in a dry, disturbed area around the same time of year. But instead of searching for Bicyrtes nests, this one has a different host. Hedychrum sneaks into the underground nests of Cerceris or Eucerceris, slender predatory wasps that hunt weevils. 

Then there’s the bewildering diversity of cuckoo wasps in the genus Chrysis. For many of these species, entomologists don’t yet know which wasps or bees they attack. Others are better-studied – such as the widespread cuckoo wasp Chrysis pellucida. This one relies on wasps in the genus Trypoxylon, which nest in wood and hunt spiders.

Aren’t cuckoo wasps bad news for the wasp, bee, or sawfly larvae that they attack? For these particular larvae, yes. But on the population level, one Finnish study suggests that they don’t seem to threaten the long-term survival of their hosts. Indeed, because they rely on specific host species, cuckoo wasps tend to be less common than their hosts, more vulnerable to extinction. For a species like Holopyga ventralis to thrive, it depends on an entire system in miniature: the Bicyrtes wasps, their true bug prey, and the plants those bugs feed on. 

So as June approaches again – and with it, the beginning of cuckoo wasp season – keep your eyes open. Watch for jewel-like, iridescent wasps crawling across downed branches or patches of bare soil. How many can you see? Can you spot the nests they’re searching for, or some of their host wasps and bees? Welcome to the miniature world of the cuckoo wasps.

Further reading

Bohart, R.M. & Kimsey, L.S. (1982). A synopsis of the Chrysididae in America north of Mexico. Memoirs of the American Entomological Institute no. 33. Ann Arbor, MI: The American Entomological Institute.

Evans, H.E. (1970). Ecological-behavioral studies of the wasps of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology 140(7):451-511.

Paukkunen, J., Pöyry, J. & Kuussaari, M. (2017). Species traits explain long-term population trends of Finnish cuckoo wasps (Hymenoptera: Chrysididae). Insect Conservation and Diversity 11(1):58-71. Retrieved from https://resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/icad.12241

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November 6, 2022

A light snowfall blanketed Missoula overnight, and this morning my feet are feeling the approach of winter. They’re screaming gradually louder at me from within waders that I may not have dried sufficiently since my last stream adventure. But if the aquatic insects dislike the cold, they aren’t telling us. In just a few minutes of wading and netting, we’ve caught over 300 of them in this single section of stream. It’s an impressive diversity of mayflies, stoneflies, caddisflies, and more.

Today, I’ve joined the Watershed Education Network (WEN) to volunteer for their stream science on Rattlesnake Creek. We’re near the Lincolnwood Trailhead, where Rattlesnake Creek flows through a mature forest of ponderosa pine, Douglas-fir, and black cottonwood. It’s a beautiful section of stream, flowing over large, mossy boulders, with rafts of fallen cottonwood leaves stacking up in the eddies. And unlike the Rattlesnake Creek Dam site, which we visited last week, here the stream has been a stream for much longer than two years.

Aquatic insects are just one part of the sampling that WEN’s Stream Team is doing today. We’re also measuring the stream cross-section here and testing the water chemistry. But when I had the chance to decide which activity I would help with, the insects were an easy choice.

Aquatic insects

Al Pak is leading the insect exploration this morning. Lauren Sampson and Grace Spella complete our team of four. Today’s plan is simple. We’ve begun by catching aquatic invertebrates using dip nets, sampling across the width of the stream. Now we’ll sort these creatures into groups we can identify in the field – such as mayflies, stoneflies, and midges – and tally how many of each we’ve found. 

Certain groups of invertebrates, such as mayflies and stoneflies, are indicators of good water quality and stream health. Others, like midges, tend to be more tolerant of polluted, damaged streams. So by looking at a sample, we can get a good idea of how healthy this stream section is. What’s more, it’s a lot of fun – and it’s a great opportunity to get to know this hidden community of tiny creatures.

How to catch mayflies

Before we got started this morning, Al instructed us in our netting technique. First, we would wade out into the creek and face downstream with our nets planted in front of us in the water. Then, he told us, we would gently shuffle the rocks of the stream bottom with our feet, dislodging small creatures into our nets.

In practice, it wasn’t quite as easy as it seemed. I immediately managed to dislodge a grapefruit-sized rock from the bottom, and the current swept it into my net. I fished the rock back out and continued stomping the bottom. After a few minutes, there was something in my net – an assortment of leaves, small bits of wood, and tiny pebbles. With luck, I hoped, there would be some insects, too.

Sorting the catch

Now our stream wading is done and we’ve all returned to the picnic table with our net samples. We rinse them into two plastic tubs filled with stream water. It’s time for the really fun part: sorting. Our goal is to pick out 300 creatures and figure out which group each one belongs to. An ice cube tray turns out to be an excellent tool for sorting, providing small wells where we can place these tiny animals while they’re waiting to be released again.

Al reminds us how to distinguish the major groups, and then we get busy sorting. Stoneflies (order Plecoptera) have two “tails” at the tip of the abdomen. Their gills, if visible, are in their “armpits,” at the base of their legs. Mayflies (order Ephemeroptera) can look rather similar, but most of them have three “tails.” Their leaf-like gills are located along the sides of the abdomen, not in their armpits. 

Mayflies and caddisflies

The diversity is impressive. There are lots of mayflies here, camouflaged in subtle tans, their three tails splayed widely. They differ in size and shape, and it’s no wonder: this is a complex group. In fact, there are over 600 species of mayflies known from North America.

Among the bewildering assortment of tan mayflies, Al shows me one that looks strikingly different. It’s small and blocky, with a reddish head and a surprising dark band across its whitish back. Al tells me that this is a spiny crawler mayfly (family Ephemerellidae). This family is rather sensitive to pollution, so it’s exciting to find them here.

We pick out several different types of caddisflies (order Trichoptera). They look more wormlike than the mayflies, with small legs and obviously segmented abdomens. At the tip of the abdomen, each caddisfly has a pair of short, hooked appendages. Some of them are surprisingly colorful, with notably orange heads.

Most of the caddisflies we’re seeing today are naked, without the intricate cases of wood or stone that certain members of this group carry with them. But then Al finds a saddle case-maker caddis (family Glossosomatidae) that still has its home with it, a fragile structure built of pebbles. 

“These are the ones that adhere to larger rocks in the stream,” he tells us. We watch under my macro lens as the caddisfly tentatively extends its head outside of its case.

“Okay, this is way too fun,” says Grace.

I have to agree: streams are fascinating to begin with, but it’s amazing to find this miniature world of creatures unfolding in front of our eyes. 

Stoneflies and riffle beetles

“I’m really happy with the number of stoneflies,” Al says as we progress with the sorting. In the section where the Stream Team sampled last weekend, the invertebrate community was heavily dominated by mayflies. But this week, we’re getting to see lots of diversity: not just mayflies, but many other creatures as well.

Several of the stoneflies are impressively large, nearly filling one of the plastic spoons we’re using to transfer creatures to the ice cube trays. And with the macro lens, we’re amazed by the intricate patterns of marbling and chevrons that cover their heads and thoraxes.

Lauren has been carefully searching the other plastic tub for new creatures. Now she shows us an adult riffle beetle (family Elmidae) she’s just found. It’s tiny, just two or three millimeters long. It would have been easy to overlook, but Lauren is sharp-eyed and patient. With the macro lens, I can see that the beetle has a magnificent orange and black pattern on its wing covers. I show the photo to Lauren and her face lights up.

“Oh my gosh, that’s so cool!” she says.

An insect mystery

Al quizzes me with a mysterious creature he’s found. Its body is elongated, segmented, and translucent orange. I grab some photos with my lens and try to imagine what it might be. It has a pair of protuberances at the tip of the abdomen, and another pair of miniature legs just behind the head. What could it be?

Is it a caddisfly? I ask him. No. 

I rack my brain. I’m somewhat familiar with terrestrial insects, but aquatic ones are a whole new world. Is it some kind of fly, order Diptera? I ask. Yes!

But flies are one of those insect groups that are extremely diverse: there are roughly 17,000 species known in North America. So to really understand this creature, just calling it a generic “fly” doesn’t get us very far. 

I try to think of the families of aquatic flies that I know. Is it a deer fly, family Tabanidae? I hazard a guess. No.

“It’s a very common one,” Al tells me. 

Could it be a midge, family Chironomidae? I wonder. Yes! The single pair of prolegs just behind the head is a good clue for this family, Al says. 

The chironomid midges – extremely common, non-biting relatives of mosquitoes – can be found almost anywhere there’s water. Unlike most of our mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies, many midges can tolerate polluted waters. But they’ll also live in cold, clear, high-quality streams. And because they’re so abundant, they’re important food sources for a variety of creatures, including fish and birds.

An underwater world

It seems like we must be getting close to our benchmark of 300 insects now. And I’m not the only one whose toes are starting to congeal from the cold. We each count the creatures we’ve sorted into the ice cube trays, and Grace tallies them all up. There are lots and lots of mayflies, as well as a respectable assortment of stoneflies and caddisflies. We’ve also picked out some other creatures that I haven’t had space to mention here. We’ve found black flies, a crane fly, flatworms, and some other aquatic worms. And our tally, astonishingly, comes out to exactly 300 of them!

We’re done for the day, and it’s a good thing for the sake of my frigid toes. But this has been such a fun morning: an introduction to an entire world. There’s a lot more to learn, and I look forward to getting out in the field with Stream Team again next year. 

What’s more, this underwater world isn’t unique to Rattlesnake Creek. The details differ from place to place, but every healthy stream is full of creatures like these.

It’s a world full of complexity and surprises. A person could study stream insects for their entire life without getting bored. But it’s also a world that anyone, regardless of age or experience, can get to know. (For an entertaining introduction to the life of a stream that is accessible to people of all ages, check out Montana-based ecologist Sara Owen’s excellent book, Seth and Mattie’s Big River Adventure.)

We hadn’t finished sorting through the mayflies yet when Al summed it all up.

“This is the coolest part, I think, is the bugs,” he said. I have to agree.

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September 10, 2022

From a distance, this sparse patch of sunflowers looks nondescript. You’d have no idea that it’s the stage for a gripping insect drama. But here we are, five adults, completely engrossed in this miniature world in front of our eyes. We’ve already spotted a golden paper wasp, two magnificently hairy velvet ants, and a spined assassin bug. And we keep spotting more creatures, each of them exciting. It’s a scramble to keep track of them all and get photos.

We’re about 18 miles southeast of Missoula today, close to where Rock Creek flows into the Clark Fork River. We’re standing in a rocky wetland area on the Rock Creek Confluence property, a Five Valleys Land Trust site that offers public day use and an interpretive trail. Prior to 2016, this wetland was a pond, kept full with irrigation water. Since then, Five Valleys Land Trust has returned their water right to in-stream flow, supporting bull trout, cutthroat trout, and other inhabitants of Rock Creek. And the once-full pond has become a shallow wetland under restoration. Now the water levels fluctuate with the groundwater. Volunteers have helped plant a variety of native plants, and others are establishing on their own. A deer fence currently surrounds the area, limiting attention from deer while the plants develop.

Getting started with the insects

As part of the restoration project, we’re here today to document a few of the most visible insects we can find in this habitat. Glenn Marangelo of the Missoula Butterfly House is leading this field day. By the time I arrive (20 minutes late), there are three other naturalists helping with the search: Kelly Dix, Kristi DuBois, and Jenny Lundberg. 

We’re hovering excitedly around the sunflower patch, in the dry cobbles above the wetland. A golden paper wasp (Polistes aurifer) is still perching quietly on a sunflower stem. It’s exciting to see this native species here – at least in my observations around Helena, this wasp seems uncommon compared to the European paper wasp (Polistes dominula), a non-native relative that has become ubiquitous.

“Is that another assassin bug up above him, hanging from that flowerhead?” asks Jenny. 

There it is, an outlandish, long-legged tan bug with a narrow head and neck. 

“Really!? Oh, that’s cool!” says Glenn, every word full of excitement.

For all of their drab tan camouflage, assassin bugs (Sinea spp.) are vicious predators. They hunt any small or medium insects they can find, sucking the juices out of their hapless prey. And this is the second one we’ve seen here in these few minutes of looking. The other one dropped to the ground, where I was able to get photos of it.

Ambush bugs and velvet ants

We haven’t finished watching the assassin bug when I spot one of its more-colorful relatives trying to hide behind a flowerhead. This armored, rough-textured black and yellow creature is a jagged ambush bug (Phymata sp.). Remarkably camouflaged among yellow flowers, like goldenrods and sunflowers, these bugs prey on unwary flower visitors. But here, against the green bracts, this predator is obvious. It must realize how much it stands out, because soon it flies off, in search of a better hiding spot.

Just minutes before, we had spotted a velvet ant on the sunflowers. Wingless and antlike, but way fuzzier, we watched it crawl methodically along the plant, then drop to the ground when we disturbed it. Not ants at all, these unique wasps (family Mutillidae) are parasitoids that attack the young of certain other insects, especially ground-nesting bees and wasps. They seem rather uncommon, and it’s always a treat to see them. Don’t pick them up, though – some species can give a nasty sting when they’re attacked.

From forest to wetland

In the distance, we can hear the chipping of red crossbills from the mature ponderosa pine stand along the interpretive trail. A few minutes ago, the Clark’s nutcrackers were giving their nasal calls there, too. I arrived at the trailhead at the same time as Jenny. From there, it took us almost half an hour to walk the 1/3 mile from there to the wetland, distracted by the spiders, moths, and grasshoppers within the pine forest. From the invertebrates and the bird calls, it’s easy to tell: the community in the ponderosas is completely different from that of the wetland.

Here in the wetland, small flocks of migrating American pipits are landing to forage, giving their sharp “sip-it” calls. A killdeer is foraging in the mud. And right around us, we’re finding new insects so fast that Glenn is hard-pressed to both get photos and write everything down.

Webworm moths and ladybugs

The fall webworm moths (Hyphantria cunea) have completely denuded a small chokecherry, replacing the once-green leaves with a massive, silky web. We find one caterpillar still at home – the others have already moved on. The web also yields a couple of ladybugs. A convergent ladybug (Hippodamia convergens) has died here, though whether it was at the end of its life or got trapped into the webbing isn’t entirely clear. 

But near this ladybug we find one that’s still alive, a less-elongate creature with a conspicuous black line where the wing covers meet. It’s a nine-spot! This species (Coccinella novemnotata) is in decline – and even here in Montana, where people continue to spot them, they’re rather rare. When I found six of them in a sagebrush stand near Helena earlier this summer, they were vastly outnumbered by the 142 other ladybugs I counted. Nine-spots are always a special sight. After Kristi takes photos of it, we remove the nine-spot from the webbing. Before I can get any photos, it flies off.

We stop briefly by some clumps of white sagebrush (Artemisia ludoviciana) loaded with inconspicuous yellow flowers. Conspicuous or not, the honeybees have found them. Several dozen honeybees are getting lunch on these flowers, along with a couple of smaller flies.

Insects near the water’s edge

Out in the moister soil near the water’s edge, the striped ground crickets (Allonemobius fasciatus) are singing from their hiding places among the vegetation and the mud cracks. Meadowhawks (Sympetrum spp.), those red and black dragonflies, are in constant activity here, perching and making short flights. We spot at least five species: striped, black, band-winged, white-faced, and cherry-faced meadowhawks. A variety of lyre-tipped spreadwings (Lestes unguiculatus) are fluttering around us, too. 

Up close, the eyes of these damselflies are like blue ocean planets. With such prominent eyes, it’s no wonder damselflies and dragonflies are excellent hunters. It makes them hard to catch, too! I do manage to catch a striped meadowhawk (Sympetrum pallipes) for a closer look.

We’re almost ready for a lunch break, but as we’re walking back I notice a brilliant green beetle making its way among the damp gravels of the wetland. It’s a species I haven’t seen before, its legs deep amber and its wing covers coated with short, golden hairs. A closer look tells me that it’s a species of carabid (family Carabidae), a group of ground-dwelling beetles that hunt whatever insects they can catch.

Pygmy grasshoppers and meadowhawks

After our lunch break, we return to the search, making a loop around the other side of the wetland. A pygmy grasshopper leaps up from my path. It’s well-hidden against the mud. Smaller than my thumbnail, the top of its thorax is prolonged over its back into a slender point, a distinctive characteristic for this group (family Tetrigidae). These little grasshoppers eat mosses, algae, and decaying vegetation.

The meadowhawks are hard at work now, laying eggs. We stop to watch them, dozens of pairs, rising up and down in a quiet dance over a meadow of spikerush (Eleocharis sp.) ten yards from the water. They’re laying eggs here. When the water rises in the spring, the eggs will hatch. The aquatic larvae, voracious predators like the adults, will develop rapidly to bring forth the next late-summer spectacle, this hover-dance over the spikerush.

A giant water bug and a katydid

Now we’ve reached the edge of the water, and Glenn has spotted something he’s been looking for all day. It’s large, the size of a frog, rowing gracefully away from us along the muddy bottom. It’s a giant water bug! Intent on the water now, Glenn spots another and dives for it with a tiny aquatic dipnet. He comes up with a netful of mud – and the water bug!

We all work together to rinse the mud off. Kristi carefully holds the massive insect by the sides of its abdomen, avoiding the wicked sting it can deliver with its mouthparts. Another of the wetland’s voracious predators, this bug (Lethocerus americanus) doesn’t just eat other insects. Today we’ve seen several young common garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis) here, their yellow and red stripes contrasting vividly with their jet-black scales. Watch out, garter snakes – Glenn says that even vertebrates this large can fall prey to the giant water bug.

An extremely high-pitched song has been tugging at my ears for a while now. It’s a rapid, mechanical trill followed by a series of ticks: a katydid of some sort. And based on my observations around Helena, I suspect this is probably a cone-headed katydid (Conocephalus fasciatus), a species that seems to like wetland edges. It’s not entirely clear whether these katydids are plant-eaters or predators (reports conflict). In any case, this one is singing very close to us.

I get down on my knees, trying to track the sound. Then I spot it. The katydid is literally a foot from my ears, singing from the stem of a willow seedling. I can see its forewings quivering as it produces its shrill song. 

All the insects of the Rock Creek Confluence

Isn’t this enough insects for one little restoration area?, you might be asking. No – in fact, I’ve been leaving out a lot, trying not to make this too wordy.

But one more still deserves a mention. We notice a large, slender wasp that keeps landing on the mudflats near the giant water bug’s shallows. It’s mostly black, with crisp yellow trimlines. Its abdomen is mounted on a long, slender pedicel. It’s a predatory sphecid wasp, a mud dauber in the genus Sceliphron. Its prey: spiders. And what’s it doing here? Presumably, it’s gathering mud for another nest cell. It will fill the mud nest with spiders for its young to eat.

As adults, sometimes it’s easy to forget how amazing life is. But being out here, learning together and being in awe of the complexity around us, I remember the enthusiasm and curiosity I had as a child. As Kelly Dix remarked today, “it’s fun to be ten years old out here.” To be out with a group of passionate naturalists, celebrating the beauty of the world around us and helping with a wetland restoration project: I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend a day.

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