The Trees Are Happy Again

Do you remember my “ghost trees” from a month ago? If you want to refresh your memory, click on the link. The post was about Bird Cherry Ermine caterpillars eating all the leaves of the Bird Cherry trees and spinning weird-looking webs all over the place to protect themselves, leaving the trees all grey and ghostlike. I felt shudders down my back every time I passed – so I have been avoiding that path for a while.

Until today. By now I did suspect that the caterpillars would be gone – turned into new little moths. What I had not expected was that at first sight no one would believe there had been anything at all going on here only a few weeks ago!!! The trees have all grown new fresh green leaves; and the berries are turning black (see the picture in the bottom left hand corner of the collage), bearing witness that we are going towards the maturity of the autumn season soon. (Seems the caterpillars don’t eat the fruits, only the leaves?) Only on close inspection could I detect a few remnants of old deserted webs here and there (see the picture to the right.)

I gave the opinion in the previous post that “Some things In Nature are just Strange”. Have to add now that not only is Nature strange, but it also hides (and sometimes reveals) amazing abilities to repair itself!

---

²⁰For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that^[i] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

From Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Chapter 8

       You will go out in joy
       and be led forth in peace;
       the mountains and hills
       will burst into song before you,
       and all the trees of the field
       will clap their hands.

    Isaiah 55:12

A UFO Visitor

Click to enlarge, if you dare.

I’ve been saying in connection with the heat that at least one good thing about living in town and two floors up is that we don’t get a lot of insects. And I usually don’t, even with the windows and balcony door open at night.

The other morning when I got out into the kitchen though, I found this one crawling on a cupboard door in the kitchen.

Instead of hitting him with the flyswatter I managed to get him to crawl onto it, and carried him through to the balcony. There he sat down on a plastic footstool and waited patiently while I went back inside to get the camera. So before we said goodbye (i.e. before I got him to crawl back onto the flyswatter and then somewhat rudely threw him out over the railing to meet an unknown destiny), I took a photo.

But he did not give me his name, and the few names that did flutter through my mind do not seem to fit when I google them.

If someone knows, please enlighten me. He was probably ~2 cm, antennae excluded.

Ghost Trees

Some trees this summer are not happy. First impression is that they’re all dead, because all the leaves are gone.

On closer inspection, it seems that some of the smaller and creepier of God’s creations are VERY happy this year: The Bird Cherry Ermine caterpillars.

Because the caterpillars make weblike nests, they can eat a whole tree bare unhindered.

“Yucky” warning for the following pictures
(I can’t believe I even took them):

 
Nest of caterpillars

When they’ve finished off one tree, they move on to the next by using the old rope trick … There were lots of these “ropes” of caterpillars hanging on to each other, swinging from the branches of the bare tree.

But they are choosy little buggers. Apparently they only eat Bird Cherry trees; nothing else is to their taste.

I pass these Bird Cherry trees on one of my usual walks. I never actually knew what kind of trees they were until just recently when they started to appear ghost-like. Now I get a creepy feeling every time. I catch myself kind of huddling as I pass - as if that would help!

Here’s a picture of Mummy (or perhaps Daddy?) Bird Cherry Ermine Moth, from the Wikipedia article. Judging from the number of caterpillars in those trees, I guess later in the summer we should have like a gazillion of these flying around…? The wingspan according to Wiki is 16-25 mm so quite small. And harmless except to this one kind of tree. Apparently though, even though all the leaves may get eaten, the tree does not actually die from the attack.

I was trying to come up with some kind of parallel to human life from all this but I fail. Some things in Nature are just Strange!

Swedish name of the tree: Hägg.
Insect: Häggspinnmal.

In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle…

I know that most readers of this blog don’t understand Swedish. I just “have to” include this anyway, even though half the joke gets lost in translation…
 
Brother, dog and I went for a walk in a nature reserve in the countryside again this weekend. (It is quite close to where our dad lives.) From a meadow, a path along the river leads into a wood of mostly alder and birch. Here and there there are signs to tell you what you’re looking at…




For some unfathomable reason, this one sign among all the others seemed to be directed at children rather than adults. First of all they call the alder wood a “jungle”. (?!) Then they go on to say that “in this jungle, there are no dangerous predatory animals or elephants…” (elephants?!)
“But if you look down into the calm water…”
 


… Any idea yet what you’re looking at? …*
 


“… you may see some insects walking on the surface of the water. These are called water striders, and they are predators hunting for other small insects…” 
 


“… using their proboscis.” (Swedish: snabel)
 
You tell me! - but I do suspect that the proboscis joke gets even more lost in English than in Swedish, since with the elephant you usually use the word ‘trunk’…? Even in Swedish, if and when you finally get it at all, the whole jungle joke still feels so far-fetched and out of place that it makes you go “aaargh”…!


* Sorry, to get close enough for a proper macro shot of the insects I would have had to step into the water, and since unlike the water striders I’m not able to walk on the surface… Well, anyway - the black ‘dots’ are their shadows on the bottom of the river (you can see they have quite large feet!); and in the enlarged picture the striders themselves are kind of purplish in colour.

In the Jungle,
the mighty jungle,
the lion sleeps tonight.
In the jungle,
the quiet jungle,
the lion sleeps tonight…
A-weema-weh, a-weema-weh,
a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh…

PS. Would you have known how to spell that ? I mean “a-weema-weh”… Another thing I never gave a thought until just now! But I found it on the Web. Of course!