Here we are already well into May and the first squadrons of flying insects are just revving up — their tardiness another consequence of an unusually cool spring.

One of the most visible signs of this resurgent life can be witnessed along Parker Slough Trail near the new Willapa National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, where martins and other colorful insect-eating swallows put on dazzling displays of aerial gymnastics in pursuit of mosquitoes, gnats and miscellaneous bugs.

I’ve been doing a bit of insect eating myself — accidentally — on walks between home and the Beards Hollow overlook. I’m no mouth-breather, but it’s impossible to avoid slurping up a tiny fly or several as I plow like a cruise ship through their milling masses. I feel a little bad about it.

Being a boy and all, eating bugs is an activity that’s popped up in my life. The first time, I was about seven and riding my Schwinn a million miles an hour toward Uncle Tom’s ranch when a big black fly flew right up my nose and — I swear to goodness — never came out.

And then there was Hub Cramer’s clothing store, hometown headquarters for manly sophistication. Though it mostly sold polyester-blend shirts and going-to-church jackets, on a display island jammed between its two narrow aisles were fascinating adult goods like chrome martini shakers and assorted party novelties. One of these latter items was a sealed can purporting to contain candied grasshoppers.

It’s hard now to imagine or convey just how endlessly fascinating this can of insects was to me and my boyhood pal Cale Case. We probably came in and looked at it 25 times before Cale, wealthy with paper-route money, took the plunge and shelled out the magnificent sum of three bucks so our circle of friends could experience whatever the heck was inside.

It’s not like grasshoppers were some exotic life form to us — we’d been baiting fishing hooks with them since we were six. But staring over the brim of that open can felt like the scene in the science fiction thriller “Alien” when a space explorer leans too far over a glowing egg and suddenly catches a face full of monster. Golly, we were excited.

And boy, was I ever disappointed when it turned out the anonymous cocoon-shaped lozenges inside were just candy, through-and-through. Kind of stale, at that.

It was 35 years later when I tasted my first real grasshopper — chapulines are fried in garlic and lime juice, piled in big red mounds and sold in markets in southern Mexico. Local people buy them by the kilo and serve them on tortillas, but I had just one, with the vendor’s permission.

Salty. Crunchy. Not nauseating. But probably won’t have another, thanks just the same.

Insects of all kinds are essential components of our natural environment on the south coast of Washington state. No one likes being bitten by the few species that are drawn to us, but we ought to celebrate them all as essential menu items for the many birds, fish and amphibians that make this such a magical place to live.

Looking ahead to our next issue, we’ll have ample coverage of Loyalty Day weekend — traditionally the first event of our hectic visitor season, when the tourists will be busy as bees in a blackberry bush.

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