Summer in the tundra reveals not only a rapid growth of plants and fungi, but a sudden flourishing of arthropods as well. Thick black clouds of flying creatures rise from the waters and hover like smoke over the tundra landscape. The mosses and lichens are, for a few short months, alive with scurrying beetles, springtails and mites. Such a harvest of food cannot fail to bring in flocks of arthropod-eating birds, and huge formations can be seen swooping and diving above the lakes and bogs in the summer.