Why Are There So Many Maple Tree Whirligigs This Year In New York

Like many people in the Hudson Valley, I am fortunate to have beautiful trees in my yard. Living in Ulster County I get to enjoy a vast wooded area around my home.

In past years I have had to deal with various issues because I have trees that surround my house but this year I am experiencing something I don't remember happening in the past. What is with all the Maple Whirligigs?

Hudson Valley Maple Trees Produced Mass Amount of Whirligigs

I have had the year of the acorn when they pelted my roof endlessly. I have also dealt with the locusts eating all the leaves. That was a noisy summer. I have even had a year when the berry trees produced a bummer crop so I had raccoons living in the tree outside my bedroom window for two weeks until the berries we gone.

This is however the first year that my maple tree has over produces what lots of us call helicopters or tree whirligigs. I have had so many this year that I can't keep my gutters from clogging. This past week I was up on the ladder again because each storm blew a new batch onto the roof and into the gutters. They are true gutter cloggers.

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They also like to get dragged into the house. They have been stuck to everyone's shoes, the dog's paws, and anything else that was left outside. I have never seen so many. So I began thinking this must be a cycle of some sort.

Why are There So Many Maple Tree Seeds This Year

In case you aren't aware Maple Tree Whirligigs are the tree's seed pods. It is ingenious that the seed has a wing on it to help it fly. So why so many? There could be many reasons but chances are it is the result of my tree being stressed from the summer heat. Another possible reason is that this is a Mass Year.

I was stressed in 2023, I think most of us can agree it wasn't the easiest year. So why can't the tree feel stressed too? From what I have dug up apparently if a Maple tree gets stressed it can overproduce whirligigs as a way of going into survival mode.

All over the United States Mapple trees were reportedly overproducing these little flying gutter cloggers due to the heat. It also had to do with the last winter being mild. The other possibility is that is part of a cycle that somehow I missed in the past. A mass year is simply a year when the tree's natural cycle has them overproduce seeds.

So if your yard and your roof are covered in them like mine just remember your tree may be stressed just like you. Take a moment to sit under it with coffee or a cocktail and the two of you just chill. It may also need a hug.

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