With the intense heat and humidity of mid-summer, horseflies, deerflies and greenheads have all emerged with a vengeance. While males innocuously feed only on plant juices and can actually help pollinate certain flowers, females are focused on sucking blood to provide the nourishment they need to produce their eggs.
The females’ mouths are stabbing weapons with six chisel-like blades with serrated edges. Moving side-to-side, they enlarge the wound and increase the blood flow. Their saliva contains an inflammatory anti-coagulant that stops clotting — and initiates an allergic reaction.
Their painful bites can spread disease, especially among cattle and sheep. Unlike some biting insects that evolved painless bites, these suckers never needed to, as their large prey proved helpless in dislodging them. Fortunately for us, they tend to give away their approach with their noisy flight.
Walks in the cool, early morning woods can prove free of the painful hematophagians. They activate in sunlight, become dormant at night, and avoid dark, shady areas during the day. As soon as sunrise turns up the thermostat and lights the forest, they leave their brush hangars to attack relentlessly, honing in on their victims’ warmth and expulsion of carbon dioxide. They are attracted to dark, uniform colors, and some scientists theorize that zebras, at least in part, evolved stripes to alter their typical, attractive mammal prey pattern.
Insect repellent that is so reliable against ticks and mosquitoes is useless against them. Colors matter. Dark clothing seems to magnetize them. Escaping to the sea shore, if it’s bordered by marshes, can prove just as riddling with their cousins, the greenheads. All across the Cape’s marshes, one can see blue or black boxes to attract and trap them now.
Clamming on the Barnstable mudflats in my bathing suit last Wednesday, I luckily needed to kill only three, as winds early in the morning kept the greenheads lying in wait within the grasses. But on the long, windless walk back to my truck, with the humidity high and temperatures rising, they were merciless, forcing me to change my route and wade all the way back just far enough offshore.
Still, one successful bite left a dripping souvenir all the way down the side of my leg. From mid-July to mid-August, our great outdoors always has a bite to it. Mercifully, they live barely a month, finishing their breeding and vicious attacks before Labor Day.
For most of us, blood sucking insects mean mosquitoes. We’re already being warned to protect ourselves from EEE, the brain-debilitating virus that threatens us more and more each summer. Most people would rid the world of all its mosquitoes if they could. I’d never want to see them all gone — and not just for their critical importance to birds, tiny fish, bats, dragonflies and a host of other valuable wildlife.
Ever since I spent summers in the High Arctic with the Inuit and witnessed vast numbers of shorebirds arrive at countless, temporary pools created from ice melting above the permafrost, I realized how mosquitoes were essential to their survival, too.
The adult shorebirds lay their eggs upon arrival, as the Arctic spring and summer are all too brief. The little hatching sandpipers are necessarily precocious feeders and immediately begin independently hunting mosquito larvae in the shallow pools to nourish themselves. Where did the protein come from for the female mosquitoes to make their eggs? Caribou blood!
The summer Arctic on a windless, warm day is a torture chamber for caribou, which comprise the bulk of blood bearers there. Each caribou will be relentlessly attacked by literally thousands of mosquitoes at a time. The caribou are the reservoirs of female mosquito nourishment only, as males don’t bite and suck blood. While both male and female mosquitoes feed on nectar and plant juices, only the female’s mouthparts are designed to pierce skin and suck blood.
I thought of this vital connection as every mid-July, adult sandpipers leave the Arctic and their still-developing young to migrate south. We should start seeing their vanguard along our coast next week. I can’t wait for the phenomenal show, but when I see my first sandpiper, I always think of mosquitoes and caribou blood.
Surprisingly, a few very early adult shorebirds have already raced south to Plum Island, where birders recorded white-rumped and semi-palmated sandpipers pecking on the abundant life on the mudflats. Meanwhile, a ruff, which breeds from Britain to Siberia, improbably arrived at a marsh in Bristol. And a bit farther south in Rhode Island, a little stint, fresh from its breeding grounds from northern Scandinavia to Siberia showed up at the Charlestown Breachway. Then, making Rhode Island the center for amazing migratory bird discoveries this year, at Napatree Point, a truly rare, out-of-range Terek sandpiper was spotted. This bird blew me away and topped by a long shot the clapper rails, sand hill cranes, tri-colored heron, hooded warbler, and chuck-wills-widow that entertained us in our region.
Terek sandpipers breed from Finland to northern Russia and Siberia. They normally winter in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and along the coast of East Africa, South Africa, India, New Guinea, and Australia. To my knowledge, only one Terek was ever seen in Massachusetts on June 23, 1990, so this was reason for the birders’ world to celebrate a truly amazing happening here.
Local fishing outlook good
Fishing news just coming in from the heating Arctic isn’t good. Feverish conditions hitting 100-degrees F. all the way to northern Siberia are causing enormous fires, melting permafrost, and draining once-fish-filled lakes. With no ice to serve as a hard bottom, water just leaks out, as if the lakes and ponds were sieves now.
Fortunately, local fishing has finally turned good — actually great in some spots. The frenetic flights of laughing gulls, herring gulls, black-backed gulls, and common terns have been frequent beacons for boats looking for feeding schools of stripers and bluefish.
The striper migration had been late this year. The concentration of our region’s very biggest bass was hung up between Montauk and Block Island. Connecticut’s colder than normal temperatures provided fine striper action, too.
Night fishermen casting eels or menhaden are taking numerous keepers. The recent surge of very big 40-pound class bass off Westport and New Bedford may signal the beginning of more than just a blip of monster striper fishing in the Canal next week, too. A few big fish have been taken in Cape Cod Bay off Barnstable and Billingsgate Shoal. Around Scituate, keepers are coming off the Cliffs and the North River. Some are provocatively wondering whether these goliaths are the vanguard of post-spawning Hudson River or Chesapeake Bay fish. Hopefully, we run into lots of both.
With great schools of mackerel and menhaden moving up to the Merrimack, fishermen are now finding many stripers specifically targeting them. Night-tide surfcasters are doing very well at Plum Island. Mornings, as usual, have been best at the river’s mouth. The monsters are yet to make their appearance that far north, so expect mostly smaller fish there. But the explosion of trophy fish could happen later this week.
Around Martha’s Vineyard, although striper action has been poor, bluefish have been hitting hard, especially off Chappaquiddick, while sea bass and scup fishing remain excellent. Boats out of Westport are hammering sea bass. Off Falmouth, blues up to ten pounds have been chomping tails off soft lures.
Giant bluefins are being reported off Chatham, the Fingers, the Sword, Jeffrey’s Ledge, and Stellwagen Bank. Several 800-pound fish have been taken.
The big party boats are doing very well on bottom fish, bringing home coolers of haddock, pollack and redfish. Sea bass have been spotty off Connecticut.
As expected, with warming temperatures, flounder action is going down and deep. Fluke fishing has been disappointing off Connecticut.
Off Rhode Island, the big migratory stripers have finally arrived. This period is really peak of the season there. Best fishing has been at night. Fluke catches on party boats, though, have been erratic in Rhode Island this week. Although the winds and weather cooperated and several benchmark 10-pounders were taken, the tides just didn’t offer good drifts necessary for effective bottom coverage.
Far out in the canyons, big-eye and yellow-fin tuna are hitting hard, making reels scream and sashimi chefs smile.
NOAA reverses decision
Because of political pressure, NOAA reversed its decision to place observers on commercial fishing vessels to monitor their catches. Too many shady things have been happening in the past. In response to Covid concerns, they’ve cancelled the observer requirements until July 31.
Shad run nears end
The shad run on the Connecticut River is all but over. Daily passage numbers have run from 66 to 13. The total of 362,000 exceeds our average. Over 33,000 sea lamprey passed over, as did 420 striped bass, but not one salmon was seen.
Deerfeld River booming
Fly-fishermen hitting the Farmington for trout down in Connecticut have been enjoying continuing hatches of Sulphur and Isonychia mayflies. Terrestrial imitations are working well now, too, especially ant patterns. The best fly fishing for trout in Massachusetts has to be on the Deerfield River, where the Harrison brother guides continue to get their clients into lots of fish.
Deer permit deadline
Every year, numerous deer hunters forget to apply on time for their antlerless deer permit. If you’ve delayed doing so, get on the MassFishHunt website by July 16.
—Contact Mark Blazis at markblazissafaris@gmail.com.
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