1/28/12 WINTER BEACH SCENES, GYPSY MOTHS, AND REMEMBERING THE EDSEL

GPSY MOTH EGG MASS ON RED OAK

THREE SISTERS

BEACH GRASS

GIANT REED GRASS

Saturday, 9:00 AM.  28 degrees, wind W, calm at present.  The sky is overcast and the barometer predicts snow, which there is about 4" more of on the ground since yesterday morning.

        Yesterday turned out to be snowy and wintry by the end of the day, so Buddy and I took a run on the beach, and a few photos as well. 
         We have some unwelcome news for Bayfieldians; the presence of more than a few Gypsy moth egg masses, primarily on oak trees, which are the favorite food of the larvae of this pest.  Introduced into the eastern US in the 19th Century as a silk moth, the Gypsy  moth has been making its way across the continent ever since, and has at last reached northern Wisconsin.  The caterpillars can be very destructive, defoliating entire trees during the summer months.  Usually the damage is mainly a nuisance, but very unsettling when the trees are bare in summer.  Trees normally recover unless the defoliation occurs more than two consecutive years.  Old oaks, our largest and oldest deciduous trees, are most susceptible to real damage.  The egg masses are apparent in the winter as hard, flat, fuzzy, tan colored deposits, perhaps two and a half inches long and about an inch wide.  The female moths deposit the egg masses in bark crevices, branch crotches, even under the edge of house siding, or on vehicles (one way the pests migrate).  Gypsy moths are so called because they migrate from place to place and appear erratically here, there and everywhere, but seldom staying in one area very long.  The caterpillars spin long silken strands which act like parachutes, the wind often blowing the larvae great distances to establish a new infestation.
        In my experience Gypsy moths are more pest than pestilence, and I hate to see broad scale aerial spraying to attempt to control them.  However, if a community  is heavily infested it may become so obnoxious that spraying individual trees may be necessary.  There are other measures that can be taken, which are not as expensive or intrusive as spraying, which might be a topic for another blog.  But at this point, the city needs to have some idea of how many egg masses might be out there, particularly on oaks.
        Aside: I’ve been thinking of what to say about the Chevy Volt, the government inspired/funded electric car that has a propensity to explode.  I’ll make my comment in the form of a question: remember the Edsel?

1957 FORD EDSEL