Confined to my house for some weeks by illness, I missed my usual walks along the Van Duzen River. Fortunately for me there is seldom a shortage of insects wherever I go. While I was more or less bedridden an inordinate number of tiny flying bugs had invaded my home. Although I had no fruit rotting in […]
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HumBug: Uninvited Guests
The black lights of my “light trap” don’t make for a regular trap; the insects are free to come and go as they please. That’s the trick, though — the lights are irresistible. Moths, of course, come by the dozens, but there are others. An opportunistic praying mantis seeks an easy dinner. A burying beetle […]
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HumBug: Like Moths to a Black Light
Last week I wrote about setting up a light trap in my backyard with only limited success. At the suggestion of some folks in an entomological chat room, I tried it with black compact fluorescent lights rather than Coleman lanterns. The old gas lanterns give off a great deal of heat and frequencies in the […]
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HumBug: Missing Giants
The last couple of nights I’ve been running an experiment to answer a question. When I was a kid, I could leave the porch light on almost any night and there’d be a bunch of insects around it in an hour or so. Lately, I’ve been noticing that there don’t seem to be nearly as […]
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HumBug: An Afternoon on the Van Duzen
Trying to stay up to date with the entomological fauna in my area, I went for an extended hike, braving ankle-deep waters and wading upstream from my usual haunts. I saw quite a few pale-faced clubskimmers (Brechmorhoga mendax), one of my many favorite dragonflies. You usually see them flying within inches of the surface at […]
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HumBug: Silver Spotted Tiger Moth Grows Up
Finally! Early this spring, coming back from the mailbox, I noted a brown glob about the size of my fist on one of my fir trees. On closer inspection, I saw several irregular blobs which all turned out to be bunches of brown furry caterpillars, each a little over an inch long. I wondered what […]
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HumBug: Ethics of Annihilation
The Olympics in Rio and the Zika virus have brought an ongoing ethical debate to the fore. If in the future mankind can use genetic engineering to wipe out mosquitoes that carry horrible diseases, should we? Previously, I mentioned that the humble mosquito is considered to be the single deadliest animal on the planet, transmitting […]
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HumBug: Who’s Your Daddy?
Late last night, I took the dogs out for their final walk when I noticed a small member of the arachnid family of Opiliones on a rhododendron leaf. This is what I learned as a little kid as “daddy long legs.” Sometimes known as harvestmen, they look like a spider with unusually long legs and a […]
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HumBug: Three Critters on the River
Since I started writing this blog, it has been my intention to be as current as possible so that anyone in the area might have the opportunity to see the critters I was talking about. On my recent trips down to the Van Duzen River, I’ve seen an increasing number and variety of “bugs” as […]
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HumBug: Water Babies
One of the most remarkable things about many insects is their ability to completely change their lifestyles through the process of metamorphosis. Like us, the most primitive insects start out as small copies of their adult parents. Their lifestyle will be the same throughout their entire lives as to where they live, what they eat […]
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HumBug: Gardeners’ Woes
Standing up to work the kinks out of my back brought on by bowing in submission to the dandelions, oxalis, and the nameless red-stemmed running weed among my strawberry plants, a tiny flash of orange caught my eye. When it landed in a nearby pear tree, I saw how its red and black elytra covered […]
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HumBug: Return of the Zombies (and Everybody Else)
It is early April, and the world of insects is finally warming up. I’ve spotted more of the “zombie” flies, paralyzed by fungus, that were cropping up last year in early March (“Zombie Dung Flies,” March 1, 2015). I’ve seen a few snakeflies lately. These used to be included in the order Neuroptera with the lacewings […]