Hungarian composer Béla Bartók wrote "From the Diary of a Fly" as a teaching piece, presumably for very advanced piano students. The short piece describes an insect's frantic narrative using a clever musical onomatopoeia.
It perfectly mimics the erratic flight patterns and clashing, sonic buzzing of a fly. The music follows the insect first in an aimless search for food, but then, it becomes entangled in a spider web.
Finally, after a vigorous, agitated struggle, the fly escapes the bonds of the web.
What is a happy ending in Bartók’s piece might or might not be replicated here at Interlochen Arts Camp.
Every overhang, dorm and cabin eave and lightpole on campus is draped in spider webs. And indeed, insects of all sizes become entangled in the sticky silk.
Our little birds know this. I love watching chickadees, nuthatches and tufted titmice attack these webby structures.
For them, a spider's web is an all-you-can-eat banquet. It supplies a constant stream of protein-rich insects — and the highly nutritious spiders themselves — with which the birds can feed both themselves and their growing nestlings.
But it takes incredible agility. One wrong move, and the sticky silk traps their wings.
I’ve never personally seen hummingbirds harvest insects from the webs here, but to supplement nectar, they are known to swipe trapped gnats out of the silk for vital protein. And hummingbirds don't just raid webs for food; they actively collect the silk to build their tiny, cup-shaped nests.
When hummingbird hatchlings begin to grow, they would normally outgrow their tiny nurseries. Except, the spider silk woven into the walls allows the nest to flex. The structure physically stretches to accommodate the growing babies, expanding week by week until they fledge.
Bartók’s fly escaped, and I am sure many do here, too. The local spiders certainly feed on plenty of their own prey.
But around camp, spiderwebs prove to be much more than an insect trap. Besides being quite beautiful, they are the ultimate breeding season bird feeders.
