A gray whale was discovered washed up on Agate Beach yesterday amid an elevated number of strandings along the west coast of North America this year that has scientists working to uncover the reason for the anomaly. The adult male’s beaching comes about two weeks after a humpback whale that was found entangled in fishing […]
Science
Posted inLife + Outdoors
HumBug: Ashes and Dancers
While I was doing a bit of outside work atop a ladder, several tiny chalk white dots flew with slow grace. They often appeared almost magically as they meandered through shafts of sunlight and then disappeared into the shadows. They were out of range of my cameras and I was too busy to investigate. The […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
HumBug: Late Bloomers Get All the Action
Flowers being few and far between lately, nectar-sipping insects are also scarce. A few straggling rabbit brush plants concentrate relict butterflies, having completed their reproductive cycle living out their lives on instincts alone. I saw five species today, only two of which allowed me to get close enough to take their pictures. Tattered wing margins […]
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UPDATE: Humboldt Alert Test Canceled Due to SoHum Outage
UPDATE: The Humboldt Alert test set for today to coincide with the ShakeOut at 10:17 a.m. has been canceled due to a power outage in Southern Humboldt. PREVIOUS: When the Humboldt Alert system triggers at 10:17 a.m. tomorrow, there’s no need to panic. The Humboldt County Office of Emergency Services will be testing the warning […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
HumBug: Fall along the River
There are next to no flowers blooming now. Most adult insects have lived out their lives, their eggs and larvae sequestered in anticipation of winter. The showiest life is along the river. The large body of moving water moderates the temperatures and many species employ this time of reduced predator numbers to complete their lifecycles […]
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HumBug: Hello, Handsome
While moving firewood, I happened on a small beetle with an interesting pronatum. Its orange thorax was flared outward. A quick look up in Pacific Northwest Insects showed me it was a handsome fungus beetle” (Aphorista lactus). I’ve never seen the words “handsome” and “fungus” in the same sentence before. No accounting for taste, I […]
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HumBug: Friends and Enemies
This week I started to write about spiders and ended up buying a book on mosquitoes. In the recently published book The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator, author Timothy Winegard calculates nearly half the people who ever lived died of mosquito bites. To put things into a modern perspective, mosquitoes kill on average […]
Posted inNews
California Department of Public Health: ‘Refrain from Vaping’
The California Department of Public Health has issued a health advisory recommending people stop vaping, no matter the substance or source, until current investigations are complete. According to a release, as of Sept. 24, the CDPH had received 90 reports of people with a history of vaping who have been hospitalized for “severe breathing problems […]
Posted inNews
Bone Positively ID’d as Belonging to Missing Woman
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office confirmed today that a human femur found near the mouth of the Eel River in June is that of Sheila Franks, who went missing in early 2014. The positive identification — first reported by Redheaded Blackbelt — came earlier this month from the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Forensic Services […]
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HumBug: An Autumnal Walk
Walking along the Van Duzen River, we spotted a medium sized black and orange wasp industriously digging a hole in the sand. Although similar in many ways, she was smaller and had a slightly different color pattern than the locally common great golden sand digger. I posted my photo and ID request on www.Bugguide.net and […]
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HumBug: Caddisflies and Fishing Flies
When I was a boy, my dad introduced me to the joys and frustrations of trout fishing. In his opinion the best bait were what he called “periwinkles,” little bugs that cover themselves with twigs or stones and crawl around in creeks. Skip forward to 1981 and Gary LaFontaine, a noted writer, published a book […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
HumBug: Butterflies vs. Moths
One of the most common questions I get as a bug guy is, “What’s the difference between butterflies and moths?” Although most consider them separate clades within the order lepidoptera, another answer is “maybe nothing.” Some authorities regard butterflies as a day flying sub group of moths. Their lifestyles are very similar. Starting life as […]