The month of October, ending in Halloween, is the perfect time to check out our local spider fauna. Many of the largest and showiest species are at their finest at this time of year. With that in mind, I’ve seen quite a few lately. At my house, at least, the common house spider (Parasteatoda tepidariorum) […]
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Posted inLife + Outdoors
HumBug: A March of Butterflies
It’s been a long, wet and cold March, but one sunny day brought out the early spring butterflies. I watched half a dozen California tortoise shells (Nymphalis californica) feed and chase each other among the flowers clothing my green gage plum trees. I’m not sure if these aerial acrobatics were part of a mating ritual […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
HumBug: Ow! The Lady Stings
I usually discourage folks from bringing me insects since I do not actively collect, but when my son told me he had what he thought was a very fuzzy, wingless wasp, I was delighted. While it might not be politically correct to stereotype red heads as fiery, you might want to give this ginger girl […]
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HumBug: Fly Fishing
A very long time ago I got into fly fishing. It is a highly technical method for fooling an animal with a brain smaller than a pea into thinking that bits of feathers and fluff are something good to eat. Those somethings are usually members of three orders of insects: mayflies, stoneflies and caddisflies. The first books […]
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HumBug: Seasons Change
Seasons change, and with them the insects we see. Headed toward winter now, there are fewer dragonflies. It seems the big common green darners are all gone now, migrated elsewhere. But on a recent stroll along the Van Duzen, I saw several others. A solitary dusty, old-looking western river cruiser and a couple too far […]
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HumBug: Ants
One of nature’s most successful designs has to be the ant. Judging by their numbers and the number of species occupying different niches they are one of evolution’s biggest success stories. It is estimated that they account for about 10 percent of the biomass in some environments and 10 percent of the carbon dioxide in […]
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HumBug:Waiting for Rain
No one needs to tell us 2015 has been a dry year so far. Brown lawns, crops under stress, wild fire dangers all reveal our lack of recent rainfall. There is another group of organisms under stress as well. Although probably not high on any homeowner’s endangered species list, termites are facing a problem. Throughout a […]