Wild Notes

July's hot, sticky, buggy days are perfect for bike rides along the back roads. Peddling even moderately fast allows me to outrun the bugs and create a delicious breeze. A couple of 20-mile loops near my home in Cable, WI, follow narrow, winding, hilly, blacktop roads with few cars. Sometimes, I'll drive east to Boulder Junction, WI, to the flowy 50 miles of The Heart of Vilas County Paved Bike Trail System. No matter where I go, each bike ride is a feast for my senses.

Wild red raspberries line many rural roadsides. Though small, they shine brilliantly against the leaves and advertise themselves to hungry birds. Red and green are complimentary colors positioned opposite one another on the color wheel. According to my artist friend, putting them side-by-side makes your "eyes vibrate." They make my mouth water! I alternate between popping sun-warmed raspberries into my mouth one at a time to savor the sweet/tart flavors or picking a handful first so that the flavors explode on my tongue. What's a treat for me is all business for the plant. The red anthocyanin pigments protect fruit from UV damage and provide us with healthy antioxidants. The sweet sugars attract us with their promise of quick energy, while tart acids slow the berries' decay. All this rewards birds—and humans—for planting seeds in a new place with some fertilizer.

Deer flies often cut my berry picking short. First, they buzz in tight circles around my head. That's annoying, but the sound lets me keep track of their location. It's when they go silent that I get worried. What initially feels like a leaf tip brushing my arm can transform into a sharp pain in an instant as the little devil uses two scalpel-like mouth parts to make a cross-shaped incision in my skin. Their saliva contains anti-coagulants to make it easier for them to lap up my blood with a sponge-like tongue, but I always squash them with a little pop before it comes to that. Or, since they each defend a small territory, I just hop on my bike and leave them behind. 

During berry season, though, I tend to get distracted. Sweet handfuls of blueberries and the soft, extra-tart fruits of thimbleberries keep me jumping on and off my bike to snack even as the shadows lengthen. It's dangerous to move slowly at dusk near the woods, though. An indistinct whine from the forest soon manifests in an attack of tiny sword-wielding mosquitoes. What feels like a tiny pinprick is far more complicated. As the female mosquito prepares for battle, a protective sheath around her proboscis retracts, revealing six needles. Two of these needles cut through your flesh with sharp, serrated blades. Two of them hold your tissues apart while she works. Another needle probes your insides using chemical receptors to detect blood vessels…and then that same needle becomes a straw for your blood. The sixth needle drips saliva into the wound to keep your blood flowing. To add insult to injury, the mosquito concentrates your blood as she feeds and pees out the excess water to make space in her belly for more blood. 

As I speed away, the silhouettes of more insects appear against the pale blue sky. Dragonflies are a welcome sight. Their compound eyes can lock in on a single mosquito in a swarm and intercept the moving target 95% of the time. Four independently powered wings allow them to fly backward, forward, up, down, hover, accelerate, and make hairpin turns. When one pauses, just for a second, I get a glimpse of a tiny white dot on the outer tip of each clear wing. The pigment filling the cell makes it heavier, preventing the wings from vibrating at high speeds. 

Common milkweed flowers bloom in round, pink clusters in sunny clearings under the power lines. As the evening air becomes more humid, their heady perfume intensifies. This is one of my favorite scents of summer. Moths agree. In the gray light of dusk, you might see the pale wings and cream-colored body of a banded tussock moth flitting among the flowers. During the day, orange-and-black monarch butterflies are the most famous visitors to common milkweed. A monarch mother must lay her eggs on milkweed for her caterpillars to survive. As the larvae eat the milkweed leaves, they also ingest bitter poisons called cardiac glycosides into their tender young bodies. The chemicals make them distasteful and even toxic to potential predators. Many flowers, not just milkweed, take advantage of sunny roadside openings. Although monarchs can't lay their eggs on anything but milkweed, they feed on the nectar of various species. 

While orange wings flit above the flowers, orange fur streaks across the road. Red fox kits are big and playful by mid-summer, and their parents are actively hunting to feed them. Sandy road cuts are a great place to dig a den. Although roadsides aren't always safe places for the kits to play, they do make them easy to see as they wrestle and pounce. 

Juvenile bald eagles beg loudly for food from a branch near their nest when I bike beneath their white pine tree. When young, these majestic birds are all brown and often mistaken for golden eagles. "But they were so big!" the wishful thinkers insist. And it's true. An eagle's first feathers are bigger than their parents' wings. The larger surface area helps compensate for the lack of skill when learning to fly. Majestic as they look, though, these big birds make ridiculous, screechy, chirping sounds, especially when young and hungry. 

Common Loons make much more majestic sounds. As darkness falls at the end of my ride, a loon's eerie wail echoes across a lake. This haunting sound is often confused with a wolf's howl, perhaps for good reason. Both sounds are designed to carry over the treetops for long distances to let their friends and neighbors know where they are. 

Bike riding is my favorite July activity because it combines breeze-producing speed with the quiet ease of hopping off occasionally to taste summer's joys. With every roadway lined with life, there's never a dull moment. 

Emily M. Stone is a naturalist by birth, training, profession, and passion. She explores the Northwoods with an eye toward using science to make stories come alive.