Cockchafers

Red Baron follows the blog of Chicago professor emeritus Jerry Coyne, a biologist who publishes posts called Readers' Wild Life Photos, as you would expect. I rather like to read his post named Hili Dialogue. This daily blog shows a photo of Hili, the cat living in Poland near the river Vistula having a short conversation with her master Andrei.

Hili dozing in perfect harmony together with Cyrus, Andrei's dog

As a devoted Darwinist and atheist, Jerry has more than 10,000 followers and publishes at least four posts a day. Most enjoyable are his blogs about his travels, where he, the gourmet, publishes photos of plates with delicious and sometimes exotic food.

A splendid specimen (©Jerry Coyne)

 Let us return to Jerry's post, Readers' Wild Life Photos, where he recently blogged about Maikäfer, although it is not May yet.

They are cute but wolverine (©Facebook)

Cockchafers are bugs that appear in May. They have become a rare species over the years, but there were plenty of them in my youth. We used to sing the following folksong that possibly goes back to the disastrous Thirty Years' War.

Maikäfer, flieg! Der Vater ist im Krieg Die Mutter ist im Pommerland Und Pommerland ist abgebrannt. Maikäfer flieg!

Fly away, cockchafer! Father is at war Mother lives in Pomerania And Pomerania is burned down. Fly away, cockchafer!

We children did not presage how actual the words were. Soon afterward, Pomerania was burned down by the Red Army.

All children also knew the famous cartoon Max und Moritz by Wilhelm Busch. In their 5th trick, the rascals collect May bugs in a paper bag and let them loose on Uncle Fritz in his sleep.

Schon fasst einer, der voran,
Onkel Fritzens Nase an.
(And the captain boldly goes
Straight at Uncle Fritzy's nose.)

I had not seen any Maikäfer for years. Still, in 2012 on an excursion organized annually by the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft (FMG) on May 1,* for the students of the Academic Year in Freiburg (AYF), suddenly there were plenty of cockchafers. Here are two photos.
*Labor Day in Europe

©GvS

©GvS

Insects have become rare. When Elisabeth and I moved into our new apartment eleven years ago, she asked me to buy mosquito nets for the bedroom windows. Those nets are still in their original packaging. We had no need for them up to now.

When I - rarely - drive through the countryside in summer, there is no longer the need to clean the windshield. As a severe consequence of the insect die-off, we see bird populations decline. So bad!

*