posted by Alex Dearborn
This morning I met Greg Bjork and Melanie Duffy of Maine Forest Service (MFS) at the Lynch Lane side of Kittery Land Trust’s Norton Preserve. Greg and Melanie are MFS Entomology Technicians who are monitoring the health of tiny Ln beetles released in our woods in 2007.
The beetles’ job is to eat the Hemlock Wooly Adelgid, a small white infestation threatening hemlock stands in increasingly northern latitudes. Left unchecked, its estimated that this blight could wipe out large stands of hemlocks in southern Maine.
Melanie and Greg have shaken a hemlock branch onto the white canvas platform to dislodge whatever is living on the branch. They shuffle through the fallout looking for the Ln beetle.
The entymologists say that the beetle is holding its own in many of the forests they sampled this year, although none were found at our Norton site. They found the wooly adelgid to have increased slightly, although the hemlocks seemed to be surviving. Melanie supposes that the beetles may have moved up higher in the forest canopy this month to find warmer locations, so she will return in spring for another look.
This MFS monitoring will take place twice a year to further the science of “biocontrol” in preserving our forests.
Denise
The buzz that you refer to sounds like that caused by our native dog-day cicadas (also known as “harvest flies”). They can be quite deafening when they are in full song.
Does anyone know if these beetles could be responsible for the deafening buzz I heard this past summer while sitting outside on my deck on Gerrish Island? I’ve lived on Pocahontas Road for 17 years and this past summer I experienced a new and somewhat deafening sound that I surmised was coming from a lot of bugs. The sound repeatedly built up and then dissipated on hot afternoons, much like a wave. Could a large population of these beetles be causing this hard to define sound?