Rain beetles, snow cancels

[Joel Pomerantz]

Hi Musick Creek community!

I thought you might enjoy the below sexy beetle story (+ beautiful photos) announcing rain-induced critters in the Sierra in November. It was gleaned from a note in a newsletter I get from Jake Sigg. I especially love the antennae shown in open and closed positions!

But first, here is a sprinkling of short-form news on Musick Creek.

Flow

• The creek stayed fairly watery with a small but consistent flow, all through the dry season this year. We found small rainbow trout (and maybe brown trout) in it!

Life

• The fire helped us get moving on our long-planned catalog of species. We are using iNaturalist mapping out what we’ve photographed. If you have photos up close enough to ID a species there, reply to this email (it’ll only go to Joel, list manager) and describe the size of your photo collection, so we can arrange inclusion.

• You can create a free account and any observations you upload that are mapped on the property will be useful as we compare before and after the fire and other major ecological shifts. If you want to help identify species from my pics, look here: http://inaturalist.org/observations/joelpomerantz

Community

• We had our first-ever Zoom gathering which was very relaxed, social and focused when it needed to be.

• Jemmy got a truck, meaning he will be better able to get up the mountain when necessary. I so hope we can someday subsidize costs of personal equipment that’s used frequently for Musick tasks—in cases when that financial boost would be helpful. But we are not yet nearing that stage financially.

• Anna got us a URL (musickcreek.org) and a Farcebook page (facebook.com/musickcreek.org). Then she began plopping place-holder things and other inspiration there. If you have suggestions, I’ll forward email replies to her.

Fire

• The Creek Fire is dimming, listed as 96% contained but not showing up on satellite heat maps at all. Before being extinguished by precipitation and cornering itself in granite areas, it spread from one snag, seen by witnesses, to well over a third of a million acres.

• It came through our land on a hot windy day but only destroy in spots. The poorly managed National Forest adjacent roasted down to ash.

• Neighbors of Musick Creek may have benefited from our years of careful forest management. Location stats bear this out.

• We tried to have a work party for a dozen(ish) folks to prepare slopes after the fire, reducing erosion opportunities. Some of us even went to classes on how to spread straw. But early November snows made that unattractive and impractical.

• This fire will give us the opportunity to see life emerge from the ashes. Some species depend on fire, so this should be interesting to watch.

Shots of Musick after the fire (NOTE: Heavily burned areas are mostly off our property.): https://tinyurl.com/MusickAfterburn

Links

• See our 2020 Annual Report ➪ https://tinyurl.com/MusickAnnuals

• A convenient new way to support Musick from PayPal! ➪ https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=F6ZCBVPKFZ5KQ

BEETLES

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jake Sigg <jake...@earthlink.net>

Subject: Nature News from Jake Sigg

Date: November 18, 2020

On Nov 14, 2020, at 1:15 PM, John & EJ kipping wrote (from Sierra foothills):

Hello - Yesterday afternoon I grabbed my Defenders of Wildlife umbrella to trek through heavy rain towards our mail box. As I returned, I noticed several large insects, awkwardly flying a few feet from the ground. I recognized them as “rain beetles” - which I had seen when I lived near Stinson Beach and Lotus. I snared one specimen with the umbrella and brought it inside to photograph. They appear only with the first heavy rains of autumn; most people only become aware of these critters when they hear them banging against window panes at night, attracted by strong lights. These are members of the family Pleocomidae, aligned closely to scarab beetles. The generic name means "abundant hairs" and was bestowed by entomologist John LeConte in 1856. LeConte was smitten by beetles and he was a prodigious collector, sending east 10,000 specimens acquired while traveling to California in 1849. I believe he named this beetle Pleocoma conjugans in 1861, the same year he joined the California Volunteers as surgeon to serve in the Union Army during the Civil War. 

(It blows me away that the secessionist states refused to recognize Lincoln’s election in February 1861 - eerily echoing what is going on in our nation now!  JS:  Well, John, they were seceding; what don’t you understand about that?).

Rain beetles are large, reaching 28 mm in length. The larvae are C-shaped, and molt numerous times (up to nine instars) and live as long as thirteen years, feeding upon tree roots before emerging as adults. Females of this species are wingless and apparently await their winged suitors, wafting attractant pheromones from their burrows. The males have antennae with eleven segments, four to eight of which are club-shaped lamellae. The males bear sensory organs within the clubs for guidance to the ladies. So, here we have a long-lived noteworthy insect, but whole populations are unknown to us, appearing but for only a day or two at best. Perhaps the timing of these flights has enhanced survival as predatory birds might be less active and effective in hunting during cloud bursts. I’ve noticed that our local chorus frogs migrate on nights of the heaviest downpours when raindrops splash loudly, muffling the sounds and sights of their passages to water.I placed this beetle in my refrigerator to slow it down for my camera, but couldn’t get a decent shot, so awaited this morning's light for another attempt. Last night I laid in bed feeling guilty over capturing this bug and keeping it overnight, as a day’s delay in his tight schedule might result in a ruined love life!  I consider them to be Rip Van Winkle life forms. Below are some of the photos, along with another scarab beetle found last July, the Watermelon 

B. scarab, note the relaxed vs. spread antenna.  - John

[confession: I was planning to send this right after the snow and canceled meeting, but it got lost in my outbox.]