The tell-tale circular leaf hole, and just above it, one of these leafcutter water worms.
Next time you are in the woods at a tiny little spring, stare into the first pool it forms and watch the leaves at the bottom of the water. If you watch long enough – at least here in the Catskills – you will start to see relatively large (just shy of an inch long) creatures moving around at the bottom of the pool. They are active all winter long, night and day (I see them more often at night). Even if you don’t see them at first, you can tell if they’re present because they cut roughly circular holes into leaves they find in the water. Such leaves with circular bites taken out of them are definitely the work of this animal. And then- mirabile dictu – this little animal attaches these circles of leaf-flesh onto its back, so it looks, to the eye, like a moving bit of leaf. The leaves they cut are, as far as I can tell, always about the same size – somewhere around a quarter to a third of an inch in diameter. In the fall one leaf covers the whole creature; by now I find they have encased themselves in multiple leaf-circles, typically three per animal. I see them wearing only beech leaves, which (as you can tell from the photo) rot more slowly than other leaves in the Catskill forest.
What are these little things? They attach the leaves to a hard, elongated three-angled casing, and look, inside the casing, like worms; I presume they are the larvae of some insect. I have only found them in small, cold pools, where presumably the insects lay their eggs; such locations are too tiny for fish, and too cold for frogs; but it is possible that these worms are found elsewhere. Their camouflage is so excellent that they could be quite common but we would never see them, unless we did what I must do: spend several minutes regularly staring at the bottom of little pools of water near springs, while waiting for my water-jugs to fill. I am always amazed at the little sacred bits of life around me, in every little place; and how dependent it all seems to be on so many other tiny variables, from the absence of predators to the presence of beech leaves. I’ve lived in this part of the world my whole life, but I’ve never heard anyone talking about these little creatures, and I don’t even know their name. (Click on any of the photos for a closer look).
One of these little creatures, clad in his beech-leaf suit.
Another specimen, with his leaves a bit rotted and the triangular casing clear.
A broader view with numerous holes in the beech leaves.
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