Winter time is a slow time for bugs. Being cold blooded the chemistry of life that powers them slows down. Many of their life cycles are adapted to spending the short cold days in their sedentary forms as eggs, larvae or pupae. Those that persist as adults mostly hide through the worst of it, emerging […]
HumBug
An exploration of invertebrates and nature photography
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Small, Slow-moving Targets
Rainy day locals Head’s up: It’s tick season again. It seems they like damp weather. My archives show photos of them primarily in April to May and December to January. In the last week, I’ve pulled one off a dog and one off a friend who had one on her arm. Even if you haven’t […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
On the Wing
Damsels in fall The unseasonably warm and dry weather seems to be allowing some species of insects to linger later in the year than I’ve seen before. Among them are two damselflies. I checked my archives and this is the latest date in the year I’ve ever noted either the rubyspot or California spreadwing (Archilestes […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Creepy Crawlies
Creepy, Cute and Unusual Looking closely at more crawling critters than most folks, you’d think I’d get used to them. But there is one critter that still holds a Class 4 creep factor for me: the common centipede. If you could cross a spider and a snake, centipedes would be the result. Flexible, fast and […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Hunters and Gatherers
Two Killers and a Charmer With the insect season winding down, the imported species of praying mantis (Mantis religiosa) are now mature and can occasionally be seen flying. Insects only get fully developed wings in their final molt. Although there are some exceptions, mantises aren’t among them. Flying they look like less agile dragonfly. The […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Yuck! Flies
It may come as a surprise to some but I don’t like all bugs. There are many I find despicable. Mosquitoes kill more people than lions, tigers and bears combined. Fleas killed my dog. I’m extremely allergic to tick bites. I find flies — not all members of the order diptera but house flies, green […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Dead or Alive
Beetles, Weevils and Dragonflies A recent walk along the Van Duzen River yielded a couple of interesting things. The only dragonfly I saw was a flame skimmer (Libellula saturata). This is the brightest orange dragonfly I know. I rarely see this species; I suspect they travel through my area just stopping to catch a quick […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Big, Ugly
Mr. Big Moth Back when cameras used film, I noticed large sections of leaf chewed away on the madrone tree in my front yard. I found three large green caterpillars gnawing away at them. I watched carefully over the next few weeks until they each spun a cocoon. I put a mesh bag over each […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Oregon Butterflies and Wasps
One good thing about insects as a hobby is there are so many of them and they’re everywhere. The high desert environment of central Oregon is so different from our coastal rainforest that it gives opportunities to encounter entirely unfamiliar species. So, I took my cameras on a trip last week. It was easy to […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Of Beetles and Gadgets
It was cool and windy when my friend and I went for a walk at the Humboldt Bay Wildlife Refuge. Large flocks of geese attested to the success of conservation efforts over recent decades. Egrets, grebes, ducks of several species, mud hens and one of my all-time favorite song birds, bi-colored blackbirds, put in appearances. […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
HumBug: Beetles and Gadgets
It was cool and windy when my friend and I went for a walk at the Humboldt Bay Wildlife Refuge area. Large flocks of geese attested to the success of conservation efforts over recent decades. Egrets, grebes, ducks of several species, mud hens and one of my all time favorite song birds, bi-colored blackbirds put […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
HumBug: In-Flight Photos
Capturing photos of tiny insects is hard enough. They move and wander off the set. They’re so high contrast they can cause exposure control to go whacky. They are so small that auto-focus often selects the background. If all that weren’t enough, add motion and photos of insects on the wing are tricky. F stops […]