Wednesday, July 20, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Tales from a
Sisters
Naturalist
by Jim Anderson
They’re back...
Back in 1953, while
camping at Big Lava Lake
one night with Lily and Dean
Hollinshead in their big tent,
playing five-handed pinochle
with the Rosebrooks, a sud-
den loud and grating “scree-
haw, scree-haw” shattered
the night, accompanied by
something sliding down the
outside of the canvas walls.
“What in the…” I mut-
tered, dropping my cards on
the card table and heading
for the entrance of the tent.
“Be careful, Jimmy!”
Dean shouted, “Don’t hit the
lantern, it’ll ruin our game!
Besides, you might get one
of them things right in your
face.”
I stopped in my tracks
looking up at the lantern
hanging in the center of the
tent.
“What do you mean I
might get a ‘thing’ in my
face?” I asked, as another
scratching sound came into
the tent air and another some-
thing went sliding down the
side of the tent outside.
I grabbed up the flash-
light, pushed the canvas
door to the side and looking
about very carefully, I went
out into the clear night. Just
as I stood upright, something
went buzzing past my face,
slammed into the side of the
tent.
I aimed the flashlight at
the spot where it stopped its
slide, and there in the bril-
liant light was a beetle of
magnificent proportions, the
winged body was as big as a
cigar, with a head equipped
with a very l-o-n-g and obvi-
ous antennae.
“See ’em?” Dean called
from inside the tent. “That’s
a long-horned beetle. They’re
attracted to the light in the
tent. Go ahead, pick it up, but
be careful, it can bite.”
That was my introduction
to the famous summer night
visitor of the pine coun-
try, the long-horned wood-
borer beetle. The one you
see above is perched on our
librarian, Charlotte Nitcher’s
hand.
They are in a huge family,
Cerambycidae, (Sarh-em-
biss-ah-dee) which includes
long-horned flower beetles,
bark beetles and other tree-
and-shrub enemies. It’s dur-
ing summer that the male and
female beetles emerge from
their pupal cases to fly off
(usually at night) in search
of each other and begin a
new population of beetles.
The female will lay her eggs
in trees that will be perfect
food for her larva, the round-
headed pine borer.
Sometimes they go after
trees that are weak from
crowding, burned, or in
stress. The female smells the
tree’s chemistry, and finds
her way into the cracks in
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the bark to lay her eggs.
The eggs hatch and larvae
immediately start chewing
(boring) into the tree, but it’s
not all one-sided. If the tree
is hardy, as soon as the tiny
larvae begin to chew into the
cambium layer, the tree will
literally pitch it out.
There’s also the “glean-
ers”: nuthatches, chickadees,
woodpeckers and warblers
that — from sunrise to sun-
set — are gleaning the bark
for tasty insects with which
to make a living on, or feed
their babies.
There are also the para-
sites, several species of
wasps and flies that lay their
eggs in and on the larva. The
baby parasites will slowly
feed on the larva and go
through complete metamor-
phosis in their host and then
emerge as adults.
There’s also the predators
who are waiting for the adult
beetles as they take to wing;
screech owls just love long-
horned beetles, as do north-
ern pygmy owls, spotted
owls, barred owls and even
great horned owls. And dur-
ing the day kestrels watch for
them, as they are delectable
food for kestrel babies.
Which is about the
same story for the Prionus
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15
photo by Jim anderson
It will not eat the hand that it rests on, but it can bite!
root-borer which Nugget
publisher Kiki Dolson sent
me the other day. Unlike the
long-horned wood-borer, it’s
not a passive wood-eater; it
can do serious harm to any
living tree, including oak,
cherry, cottonwood, peach,
plum, poplar, prune, English
and black walnut, and some
conifers.
Using pesticides is useless
in suppressing long-horned
and root-borer populations
— an excellent reason to
forgo spending money and
poisoning the earth. The
chemicals will kill the most
effective enemy beetles face:
parasitic wasps, which lay
eggs inside the larvae. When
the eggs hatch the wasps feed
on the living larvae, killing it
slowly — and the ones who
make it to adults are prey
for night-hunting predators,
including owls, flying squir-
rels, and coyotes, plus big
brown, hoary and pallid bats.
The beetles are nothing if
not persistent.
There’s a neat story about
a lovely piece of pine furni-
ture in a California home,
that, some two years after it
was made from local pine,
had an adult long-horned
wood-boring beetle emerge
from the frame in the own-
er’s living room.