March 14 – Beautiful day for spring skiing at the Kawartha Nordic trails north of Burleigh Falls. Lots of snowfleas (springtails)in many locations, especially where soil and leaf litter were exposed. Active on mild, late winter days. If you watch them carefully, you can see several jumping and disappearing out of sight. They are all black, about a millimetre long, and were once thought to be feeding on microscopic organic debris on the snow surface. This has since been disproved. A new hypothesis is that by late winter they have reproduced to a point where space is at a premium. The overcrowding means that some have to escape to the surface, where they simply wander around aimlessly until colder temperatures force them back under the snow and into the soil. Drew Monkman
