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April 04, 2002 - A worm's-eye view of itThe Suffolk Times • April 4, 2002 worm's -eye view of i*t Times /Review photo by Barbara Stoutenburgh Robins are back from their winter stay in the south. Soon we will be hearing their familiar and cheery spring song. Then during their stay here we will see them looking for, or Is it listening for, their favorite food: the lowly earthworm. AS I WAS WALKING across our lawn the other day I realized that our grass is not green and thick like some we see. Then I noticed about every foot or so I could see a little three- to four -inch green patch that seemed to say something was going on here. And so with a lit- tle detective work and close observation, I con- cluded the little green patches had been fertilized by the castings or waste material of the lowly earth worm. Some might know them as night crawlers. They have the ability to ingest par- ticles of soil along with their daily quota of leaves and grass cuttings that they pull into their tunnels for food. It's this half- decayed plant mat- ter that our earthworms live on. So here we have nature's way of recy- cling soil and plant material for the benefit of the topsoil. I did a little research and couldn't find any mention of earthworms except in the 1500s when a Benedictine nun spoke about the importance of earthworms as bait for fishing. Every schoolchild knows that. And that's about as much informa- tion as I could find about earth- worms until 1777, when the English naturalist Gilbert White studied them and wrote, "The earth without them would soon become cold, hard -bound and void of fermentation and conse- quently sterile." The next mention of earthworms was when Darwin wrote a book about these lowly creatures. He summed it up in this paragraph: "The plough is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man's inventions; but long before it existed the land was in fact regularly ploughed and still continues to be thus ploughed by earth- worms." He studied them, he observed them, he weighed them and came up with the fact that if we didn't have earth- worms in the ground, we wouldn't have the world as we know it today. He called them the original farmers, turning the topsoil over and adding humus and fertilizer in the form of castings on the soil. Earthworms don't have eyes and dislike light. Therefore they spend the daylight hours in their tunnels and then come out in the evening to probe around their holes for decayed leaves, grass clippings and any other decayed vegetable matter that they can pull into their subterranean homes to be eaten later. A good observer will notice, partic- ularly if there are decaying leaves around, that the worm has pulled their tattered parts into his tunnel often with the stems of the leaf still attached. We see these little clusters stems still standing upright where they have be partially pulled into the earthworm's home. The tunnel that the worm lives in lets valuable oxygen get into the soil, which is essential for other organisms to thrive. When it rains the runoff finds its way down these tunnels and gets the water deep into the soil. Regarding `This turning this bring- ing over of soil oi up of soil in the has been form of going on since castings, the thing to the beginning remember of time.' is that when the worm eats, it also takes in a lot of soil through its mouth. This soil passes through the body and is brought to the surface, where it is discarded. There are actu- al studies that show it's been estimat- ed that between 7 1/2 and 18 tons of this material are brought to the sur- face by worms each year for every acre of land, and this turning over of soil has been going on since the beginning of time. No eyes or ears As I mentioned, worms have no eyes, nor do they have ears, yet their skin is sensitive to light, except for red. Probably some of you have looked on your lawn at night with a flashlight and seen these earthworms pull back into their holes because the light- sensitive skin told them some- one was approaching and they had better hide. Sound is picked up by vibrations and so when you walk around at night trying to collect these elusive guys, they often know you are coming and disappear before you can get down to pick them up. The way to fool the earthworm is to use a red light when searching for them. The worm won't recognize the red light and will remain on the surface. I can assure you if you want to have some fun with your children or grandchildren, go out at night, prefer- ably when it is warm after a rain, and take a flashlight. Collect some night crawlers. I don't know about vour granocmiaren nut ours urea to — squeal and holler as they picked up their slippery night crawlers. And remember, they can always be used as bait for fishing. Earthworms have many enemies. One is the mole that throws up a lump in your lawn as it plows along in its never - ending search for beetles or earthworms. Another is the skunk that will dig them up also but, sorry to say, we don't have skunks anymore on the East End. The were done in by DDT. I was surprised to find out that owls as well eat a large number of these night crawlers and, of course, we all know the robin and its charac- teristic pose of pulling back the worm with all its might, only to lose it as it slips away into the ground. The reason worms are not easy to pull out of their holes is that they have some almost invisible hairs that move out like an anchor to help hold them in their tunnel. In my readings I found an interest- ing story that took place out in Ann Arbor, Mich. Residents had sprayed their prize elm trees to prevent the spread of the bark beetle that carried the Dutch elm disease. They sprayed when the leaves were on the trees and when fall came, the leaves came down and some eventually wound up in the stomachs of the earthworms. Somehow the earthworms were able to live with the poison in their body but later it became lethal to robins. In the springtime when the robins returned, they ate the worms and perished by the hundreds, just anoth- er example of how pesticides can travel from one animal to another. It's like what happened with our local ospreys when DDT got in the food chain and eventually weakened the osprey's eggshells so much that the weight of the adult bird would crush the egg. We all remember how we lost so many of our local ospreys to that episode of pesticide poisoning some years ago. P.S. Had a report today of a white peacock running across the North Fork Country Club grounds. It has been around for some time, as well as a beautiful bright -blue one in Cutchogue.