Down East trek worth the aches to spot warblers

I went with several Audubon friends to a small lake in northern Washington County. We all love nature – birding, tracking, finding wildflowers, canoeing and more.

The birding was great. Warblers were everywhere – black-throated blue warblers, black-throated green warblers and yellow-rumped warblers. Most were high in the trees. We all got sore “warbler neck” from looking up for hours.

Peering through the leaves, we were straining to find the birds. It was worth the aching neck to see these colorful, hyperactive little birds.

The star of the show was the Blackburnian warbler. The bright color on the male’s throat was an orange that bordered on fluorescent. It was hard to find him among the leaves, until he went hover-gleaning from one branch tip to another.

“Hover-gleaning” is a term used by field ornithologists to describe a feeding behavior. Other interesting feeding terms are “flycatching,” done by the phoebe; “bark gleaning,” by the nuthatch; and “tree drilling,” done by woodpeckers.

Birds are endlessly interesting, and so is everything in nature. While paddling along the rocky lakeshore, we spotted a large insect on a rock. From our canoes we could see that the insect was more than 2 inches long. We all could look closely from our canoes.

Suddenly something else appeared on the insect’s back. What was that? Were two insects mating, or what? Suddenly it appeared that something was being born. What was happening?

A soft-looking, wet-looking thing emerged from the back of the large insect. Suddenly it made sense. A new, soft, dragonfly-to-be was wiggling out from the hard shell of the former “naiad,” the term for the larva of a dragonfly.

Its wings were folded and wet. The creature was struggling to exit from its shell. It thrashed from side to side, coming out more and more from the exoskeleton of the naiad. It stopped to rest often. It really did look like a birth happening, rather than a metamorphosis. I suppose it was a birth – not scientifically, but metaphorically.

We watched it for quite a while and then left it to finish its task – to emerge, to straighten its wings and fly. Then it will snatch mosquitoes out of the air, crunch them up and eat them. Good luck, dragonfly, and thanks.

For information on Fields Pond Audubon Center, call 989-2591.