Several spring events that I would highlight include the frequent cloudbursts we have been having in the last several weeks. Some haven’t stopped there, but continued several hours and even all night. It seems that these downpours were those that were backordered from last year. Perhaps, for that reason, they’re the much more appreciated. How fresh and clean the air seemed after those showers! It was refreshing to fill one’s lungs on it rather than on stale, dry and dusty air of periods of drought.
One reason that the air, in dry times, seems dusty is that the “filters are plugged”. They need to be washed down. The most effective “go green”, environmentally friendly air filters are trees. I expect needle-leaved trees, conifers, are more effective than broad-leaved trees as filters because of their collective greater surface area. So, the air seemed so refreshing to breath partly because the showers washed down the trees, making them more effective air filters. Clean “tree filters” also allow natural air fresheners to be released. As well, showers bring air freshening flowers.
Adequate moisture in the way of rain not only uncovers the brighter hues of the vegetation and richer colors of the flowers but brings out more vivid greens, reds, yellows and purples. Sufficient moisture also indirectly increases wildlife vigour, even to the point of better growth of antlers of members of the deer family. A week ago, at the edge of the forest, a robust buck mule deer with many points, displayed his healthy coat and velvet covered antlers. Spring is the time when, after the old antlers have been shed, new ones begin to grow, aided by nurturing blood vessels buried in that velvet.
Often when I see some not-often-seen phenomenon or thing, I think of how much is missed. Recently, when walking a local trail, someone called out from behind, “Look at this!” A very-much-alive polyphemus moth was flopping on the ground. When it settled down, I could see by the narrow antennae and plump body that it was a female. (The male has wider, feathery antennae.) Apparently, it had fallen from a branch that I had brushed by when walking along the trail. About the time of this sighting, someone told me that they saw the same moth species clinging to the side of a window on the Kootenay Lake ferry.
I also saw the exited cocoon of a Glover’s silkmoth. (I missed the actual emergence of this four-and-a-half-inch creature.) The past few weeks have probably been the peak time for emergence of butterflies and moths from their winter “suitcases”. Tiger, pale and mountain swallowtail butterflies, dusky skippers, elfins, alpines and Lorquin’s admirals, along with many other moths and butterflies, have left behind their winter state and are now flying about.
It’s almost a given that if we can’t find something it is because we haven’t looked right in front of us, right in front of our noses. Or, we look “everywhere” — not in the right places, but in all the wrong places. And, then we look, but don’t see; our mind is not “connected” to our eyes. I walked right by the polyphemus moth, that five-and-a-half inch night-flying creature. And then, sometimes it is a matter of being at the right place at the right time.
All kinds of things happen in springtime, when we are sleeping or not looking and/or not listening! Do we spend most of our time enclosed in four-wheeled capsules or in larger capsules where we wander from one compartment to another? There are approximately three months to the summer season, only 120 days. How much of it will be spent out there?
Ed McMackin is a biologist by profession but a naturalist and hiker by nature. He can be reached at 250-866-5747.
