As we brace for a new bug season, I find myself hoping for a banner bug year. 

Not for blackflies, mosquitoes, midges or wasps, but for dragonflies and their cousins, the damselflies.

A single dragonfly can eat anywhere from a couple of dozen to hundreds of mosquitoes 

Every day, depending on what other insects are available. Unfortunately, they’ll also eat butterflies, which might leave them too stuffed to go after many mosquitoes.

Dragonflies not only help us by eating biting bugs, they are entertaining. They are fascinating to watch as their two sets of translucent wings allow them to fly straight up and down, upside down or backwards. 

They are among the earth’s oldest critters, believed to have evolved roughly 300 million years ago. They were much different back then, much larger and probably more ferocious. Some dragonfly fossils have been found with wingspans of up to two feet.

There is some disturbing news about their future. A recent assessment from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says that about 1,000 of the roughly 6,000 known species of dragonflies and damselflies are at risk of extinction.

Of those, 95 are considered critically endangered.

These insects rely on wetlands, ponds and lakes for life, and pollution and climate change are making life difficult for them. So is destruction of wetlands, which humans tend to see as messy things that should be filled in to allow more development.

Now there is research indicating that winter road salt leaching into roadside storm ponds is harming dragonfly populations. Both dragonfly and mosquito larvae develop in these ponds.

Dragonfly larvae have huge appetites and one healthy dragonfly larvae can consume 11 mosquito larvae in just two hours. That’s a lot of mosquitoes that will not become biting adults that drive us crazy.

The research indicates that dragonfly larvae exposed to large amounts of road salt have smaller appetites, and develop into weaker, less healthy flying adults more susceptible to infections. As luck would have it, mosquito larvae do not suffer the same unhealthy results from road salt exposure.

That is interesting, helpful information and we are lucky to have it. Research on dragonflies is hard to come by because they have short lifespans, emerge as flying insects at different times in different places and are not easy to catch because of their nimble flight movements.

The ICUN said that there is not enough research data to determine the conservation status of more than 500 dragonfly species. Conservation status indicates whether a species still exists, or if it does, how likely it is that it will become extinct in the near future.

Dragonflies are not the only insects affected by changing weather patterns and human development. Research indicates that 40 per cent of insect species are declining and one-third are in danger of extinction.

Scientists who analysed 73 insect studies estimate that the world’s insect population is declining by 2.5 per cent a year and that in another 100 years insects could disappear completely. 

Others say that is alarmist thinking and a world without insects is very unlikely. They say that reported declines are worrying but too little is known about insects to say anything definitive about their future.

In other words, we need to learn more about insects by devoting more effort and time to studying them.

Meanwhile, the bug season begins. While the scientists debate the future of bugs, the rest of us will continue to put up with them. Bring out the head nets and lotions, sprays and creams that are touted as the best stuff to keep them away.

As much as they irritate us, insects are critically important to the environment and all life on earth. No one should wish for their extinction.

It would be nice, however, to see fewer of the pesky types around and more of the good guys like dragonflies and damselflies. 

Despite all the gloomy talk about the future of the good guys, there is hope. We are starting to appreciate the environmental value of wetlands and are doing more to protect them. And, there are enough smart folks around to figure out ways of preventing road salt from getting into their living rooms. 

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 The changes that show we have moved from winter into spring are almost complete. Most ice has gone from lakes and ponds. The woods are brown and bleak without snow.Well, not totally brown and bleak. Bits of pale colour flicker in areas lucky enough to have young beech trees.

 These beeches stubbornly refused to drop their leaves last autumn and held them tightly to their branches throughout the brutal winter. Their blanched and shrivelled bodies dance in the breeze, fake signs of life in the still sleeping forest. 

Juvenile beeches, and some young oaks and hornbeam, don’t turn off the sap flow to their leaves in the fall. Most trees do, allowing a blocking layer of cells to form between the leaves and their branches, causing the leaves to die and fall.

No one seems to know exactly why these juvenile trees don’t follow the usual process and insist on keeping their withering leaves in winter. They finally drop them in spring when new leaf bud growth forces the old leaves off their branches.

There doesn’t seem to be any advantage to holding on to leaves in winter. It’s almost as if these young beeches simply don’t want to accept change.
Watching the wilted leaves flutter aimlessly in the breeze starts me thinking about the state of our human world. We need so many changes, yet like the young beeches we stubbornly hold on to old thinking, refusing to accept change.

We won’t get needed change until we confront our leadership issues. Recent years have seen failed leadership throughout the world. 

COVID-19 and conflicts like Putin’s war have brought failed leadership clearly into focus. We have somewhat okay, but mediocre, leaders like U.S. president Joe Biden, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, and the clownish Boris Johnson of Britain.

 Decent enough folks, but not the strong, decisive leaders we need for these critical times of armed conflicts, climate change, infectious disease, food insecurity and refugee crises.

It is our own fault. We have the leaders we deserve. We continue to elect them through a political party system no longer suitable for the times. 
Our political party system is based on ideologies – my party’s thinking is better than yours. Yours stinks, so elect ours.

 We need to elect leaders who take the best thinking from wherever they can and build policies that change the serious problems facing our world. Leaders not beholding to any party or ideology. Leaders who do not fear making decisions that might cost them votes.

Ukraine has provided an example of the type of leadership we need here. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses his people unshaven and in a T-shirt. He is genuine, saying what he is thinking, not what he thinks others might want to hear.

When Biden offered to evacuate him from his war-ravaged country, Zelenskyy replied: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

Effective leaders speak plainly, but forcefully, unafraid to talk about their dreams and their mistakes. And, they just don’t talk about wrongs that need to be righted – they push ahead to fix them.

Easter weekend provided an example  of a leader making difficult change despite vigorous opposition from those opposed to change.

On television was the 1968 religious movie The Shoes of the Fisherman, in which Anthony Quinn plays the newly-elected Pope Kiril who shocks the Catholic Church hierarchy by announcing that all the church’s wealth, including its art treasures, will be turned over to help feed starving people.

 Pope Kiril’s shocking decision to make change, instead of just talking about it, is pure Hollywood fiction. Fiction, but food for thought.

Our society and election processes have become so tribal it is almost impossible to accomplish any important change. We need to change our thinking about leaders and how we elect them.

 Shocking as it may seem, maybe it’s time to toss out the political system that provides leadership and governance based on the thinking favoured by one group of people.

We are all in this together and working together to elect honest, authentic and decisive leaders is the only way we will achieve the changes needed to solve the world’s problems. 

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It has been more than 150 years since Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment, but the main character of his famous novel could well have been today’s Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Dostoyevsky’s Rodion Raskolnikov is a character who considers himself Superman, a superior person above the laws governing the rest of humanity. In the novel, his friend Razumikhin describes him as “sullen, gloomy, arrogant, proud; recently (and maybe much earlier) insecure and hypochondriac.”

Does that sound like someone who is in the news every day recently?

Sad Vlad Putin has spent years building his image as Superman, and is a domineering introvert lacking any sense of empathy. He is so much more superior to the rest of us that he doesn’t have to follow the same laws. A word from him and war begins, or all free speech is suspended.

Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov kills an unscrupulous pawnbroker, justifying the crime as removing a louse from society. Putin is killing thousands of Ukrainians, justifying his crimes as removing neo-Nazi louses.

His ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine is not a war against another nation. It is a war against civilians; a deliberate slaughter of citizens, including women and children, who he treats as louses to be stomped. His plan appears to be to destroy Ukraine and scatter millions of Ukrainians throughout Europe, where the strains of so many refugees will create political upheavals.

Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov turns out not to be a Superman, just a mediocre human driven half mad by the guilt over the pawnbroker’s murder. He pushes away people trying to help him and finds himself more and more isolated.

Putin’s murders in Ukraine have left him isolated, throughout the world and to some extent at home. Thousands of Russian anti-war protesters have been detained by police since the invasion of Ukraine began Feb. 24.

Guilt and emotional upset eventually force Raskolnikov to confess to the pawnbroker’s murder. He is sentenced to eight years in a Siberian prison but later experiences a mental and spiritual rebirth with the help of a prostitute.

Surely Putin is experiencing some guilt and mental distress over his murderous campaign in Ukraine. How could any human not cringe at the murders of innocent people walking the streets, riding their bicycles, or waiting at train stations while trying to flee the country.

Perhaps someone who is physically and mentally ill?

Many close observers suspect that Putin is suffering from thyroid cancer, or possibly Parkinson’s Disease or a stroke. They say his unusual gait and finger movements are signs that something is wrong.

British media outlets have reported that Putin has been visited 35 times by a thyroid cancer specialist flown to his Black Sea retreat. They also have reported that he has been treated with steroids, and has been taking baths in deer antler blood.

Steroids are a common drug treatment for thyroid cancer and can cause anxiety and hallucinations. They also are known to cause bloating and facial puffiness, which some media reports have noticed in Putin.

The question now is how long before Putin’s transformation into Raskolnikov becomes complete. How long before Putin’s crime chapters end and the punishment chapters begin?

Evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine is being collected, and appears to be plentiful. Putin subordinates, and perhaps the man himself, might be charged as war criminals to be prosecuted before the International Criminal Court.

Putin probably never will be put on trial, and certainly never will see the inside of a prison cell. Things like that do not happen to the rich and powerful in today’s world.

And certainly, the mental and spiritual rebirth experienced by Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment never will be experienced by Putin, the thin-skinned KBG thug who lacks substance and soul.

His punishment will come when his health problem, or the outrage of his own people, can no longer be contained. 

Cancer can be contained, but not so the anguish of thousands of moms and dads whose soldier sons and daughters never returned from Ukraine. Nor can the disgust the world feels for Russia, which already had a reputation as a dark and ugly place.

 Robins are harbingers of spring, which officially arrived almost three weeks ago. So where is the spring weather, and where are the robins?

It’s April, the daffodil month, and winter still refuses to loosen its headlock on much of the country.

Out my front window I see a lake with an ice cover seemingly determined to become permanent. A winter breeze scours it before climbing the shoreline embankment to fondle my house. Its icy fingers probe the smallest cracks and crannies and I feed the woodstove another log from the seriously diminished woodpile.

The weather forecasters offer little relief. They predict small shots of sun and warmth interspersed with bursts of abnormal cold and wet throughout April. We are getting one of those small warmer shots this week, but no real, sustained spring warmth is expected until May.

The winter-like conditions don’t mean we won’t be seeing robins for a while. There is growing evidence that more robins are staying in northern regions during winter.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology says robins now are wintering in every U.S. state except Hawaii and every Canadian southern provincial area.

Also, data from feeder watch programs show robin visitation rates in northern Canada rising steadily. Average winter flock sizes have been increasing as well.

Program FeederWatch, where people count birds in their yards and post results online, reported robins at 59 per cent of Ontario sites during the 2020-21 winter. That compares with 27 per cent 1989, the project’s first year.

There is no solid evidence of why more robins are wintering in the north. One theory is simply that winters are becoming milder.

What we do know is robins are not afraid of winter weather. They maintain a body temperature of 40 Celsius no matter how cold it is. They shiver to generate body heat and fluff their feathers as a shield against cold and snow.

They can handle winter, but what they can’t handle is lack of staple foods that become unavailable in winter. Worms, bugs and other little invertebrates favoured by robins disappear when the cold arrives and snow covers the ground.

Many thousands of robins continue to migrate south in winter, but researchers are discovering that some are staying behind and surviving by changing their diet. They turn to summer leftovers – berries, currents and other small fruits left on vines, shrubs and trees long after summer showers have become snow storms.

Berries and other small fruits are not something we think about during winter. But if you go looking, you’ll find berries on trees and shrubs such as crab apple, juniper, hawthorn, yew, mountain ash, chokecherry and bearberry.

Seeds also are plentiful in winter but robins don’t digest seeds well and don’t have bills designed for cracking. That’s why they don’t often visit bird feeders.

Robins that stay north in winter are not seen as frequently as they are in summer. That’s because berries and other winter fruits are not abundant and the birds have to move about to find them.

Robins are not just symbols of spring, they represent different signs in different cultures – everything from the promise of spring, to the threat of storms and even death.

Many Indigenous people have viewed the robin as a spiritual bird, a symbol of hope and rebirth and a sign of love and good family life. Some have seen robins as spirit guides helping them to understand visions.

Robin symbolism is found throughout Christianity. There is one story, wrongly attributed to the Bible, which tells of a little bird plucking a thorn from Christ’s forehead when he was being crucified. A drop of Christ’s blood fell on the bird’s breast, staining it red. That bird became the red-breasted robin.

Mother Teresa, the missionary named Saint Teresa of Calcutta by the Catholic Church, related that legend in her 1977 book No Greater Love.

“Each of us should try and be that bird – the little robin,” she wrote. “When we see someone in pain, we must ask ourselves: What can I do to give them comfort?”

Whatever the symbolization, we’ll soon be seeing robins hunting bugs and worms on grassy patches and we’ll know that a long, tough winter finally has given way to summer sunshine and warmth.

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