Bug Crazy

I've always loved bugs. Everyone claims they were a lonely, nerdy child who spent hours alone. But not many people can claim they spent hours as a child nudging an assortment of small insects down the sloping sides of ant lion pits to see what would happen; digging them up to find the crazy little ice-tong faced critter that could only crawl backward in circles; playing with tiger beetle larvae deep in their burrows, figuring out how to get them to clamp onto a grass stem so she could pull them out to have a look. Nope, most people don't say that in their memoirs. 

This is an unadulterated look at the right side of my "drawing board." I put that in quotes because I'm spending all my time there writing lately. That's OK. I write in big spurts and chunks, and then I draw the same way. It feels sooo good to be writing again, unblocked. Getting up in the morning looking forward to writing. It's a thing.

The Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America by David Beadle and my pal! Seabrooke Leckie is what you'll find me reading a lot lately. What a treat it is to page through and find the moths I've photographed without knowing what they were. 

The Beautiful Wood Nymph is technically a bird dropping mimic, but it's oh so much more when you have a close look. Yep, it's supposed to look like feces to fool predatory birds (who'd wanna eat that?), but gaaah what a beautiful dropping. That bronzy edge to the chestnut border; the olive spots of corruption, and the furry forelegs which are designed to look like squiggly softserve drips...ahhhhh.

When something like this blunders through the dog door and into the kitchen, I get all ate up.

I AM THE NIGHT! RELEASE ME IMMEDIATELY!

All right. Out the door you go.

So on August 1 when I saw a spectacularly colorful beetle clinging by one good leg to the bird-proof netting on the outside of my studio window, it was the most natural thing in the world to haul a kitchen chair out to the hummingbird garden so I could climb up and get it down. 

 I knew it was a metallic wood borer, but didn't know which one. It was a beautiful one.  Holy smokes  what a living jewel.

The Kaufman field guides are the ones I grab first. Small, compact, illustrated with immaculate photos (many retouched for accuracy), these guides are the bomb. My sentimental favorite is the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America. I love it because it's given me so many thrills. Ounce for ounce, the insect guide is the one that thrills the most. That's just because there is so darn much to know about bugs, and no naturalist can know everything. I started to write "amateur naturalist" then stopped. Ehh. I think I safely qualify as a pro at this point. 

 I turned the unfortunate beetle over in my hand, noting that it had somehow lost all but one of its feet. Perhaps through aging? An accident? It was hanging in there. I was so grateful to see it, to hold it in my hand.

I looked it up, posted photos on Instagram and Facebook, and was quickly and cheerfully corrected by a career entomologist named Ted MacRae. It wasn't Cypriacis fasciata, but Buprestes rufipes. Thus we discovered that there'd been a caption switch in the Kaufman guide. These things happen. They've happened to me. Imagine putting together a book like this with hundreds upon hundreds of photos to match to their names. This small error does not diminish my love for Eric Eaton's book in the slightest. It is incredible and I'm grateful to have it. You should have it too. 

The underside was particularly ridiculous. 

Buprestes rufipes is a wood borer, with a grublike larva that chews through already dead maple, oak and elm trees. Do not hate it. It doesn't kill your favorite trees. Just hope that you get to see one some- day, too. It is a spectacular insect.

Another thrilling ID from the Eaton/Kaufman guide: the Mydas fly! I knew I'd never seen anything like this gigantic fly. At first I thought it was a tarantula hawk, and that's what the Mydas fly wants you to think it is. But the head and antennae were all fly. The abdomen had a blunt end, no stinger. Good ruse!

The closer I got the more fly-like it became. The sweet thing was placidly sponging up nectar from the milkweed blossoms with a tongue that was standard-issue housefly--tipped with a spiny sponge. 

Will ya look at the honeybees on this milkweed?? This photo begins to capture the riot of activity in my favorite Monarch Meadow. 

It also begins to capture my joy at its conservation. This is the single best stand of common milkweed I've ever seen. Acres of it. And it was getting mown twice a summer, once just before bloom peak, and once again just before the cut plants struggled back with another attempt at blossoms. I will never forget the day I came back from the bus stop to find it being mowed. Late instar monarch caterpillars were being thrown through the air. We got out of the car and flagged my neighbor down.

All I did, back when the kids were still riding a big yellow school bus and Liam was about half as tall as Phoebe, was to speak with my neighbor, show him the displaced caterpillars, and suggest that he not do that second mow. That we leave the milkweed for the butterflies and bees. 

We took all the caterpillars, some 70 of them, home to our meadow to grow up. Sweet SuperLiam just happened to be wearing his cape when he was pressed into service to pick monarchs and transfer them to uncut plants in our yard.

please forgive your mother Liam, for posting this photo. You were and are the sweetest boy.

The meadow has never been mowed in late summer again.

This is the result.

The magic here is that the milkweed, having been mown in June, is bursting into bloom at precisely the time that bees, butterflies, and monarchs especially need it most. Ovipositing female monarchs are presumably ecstatic to find young, tender shoots to lay their eggs on, and a big drink of sticky nectar to boot. 

This, by the little black scent glands on his hindwings, is a male, but you get the picture.

There will be more posts from Monarch Meadow. I cannot stay away. Perfection is a real draw for me.

Pitcher Plants and Peacock Feathers

 I have this pitcher plant chock-full of insects; I had to share. So I took them to Science Club, which Mrs. Hendrix and I teach on Wednesday afternoons.

The kids were all over it. After a brief lesson on carnivory in plants (imagine!) I gave them some tweezers and encouraged them to find out what kinds of insects the plant had been trapping and digesting.

It wasn't long before we had a good pile o' bugs.

There were a lot of houseflies, some bumblebees; wasps and hapless moths, but the bulk of the catch was hoverflies of the family Syrphidae. I felt kind of bad about that because I really enjoy syrphid flies, especially the big ones that look like yellowjackets, the way they hover, humming loudly, right in front of your face, as if to say BOOGA BOOGA. When I get one in the house in the summer I always try to catch it because they seem to die very quickly in the confines of a house. Sweet bugs. I love their little downcurved abdomens, twitching as if to sting, which of course they can't.

We found an Asian multicolored ladybird beetle chewing her way out of the pitcher! Not stupid. She fell in, took a look at the carnage beneath her feet, and found her way back out. I guess you have to be resourceful to take America by storm. (AMLBB's are a huge pest; once introduced for alfalfa aphid control, they're now wintering by the bazillion in homes all over the East and Midwest). 

Once we had identified all the insects we could using the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America, I asked the kids to stuff the dead insects back in the pitchers. It was awesome.

This was a very special Science Club. I had also brought a huge sheaf of peacock tail feathers that a friend had given us. See, you can balance a peacock feather on your hand or nose or cheek or what have you, and it will stand up elegantly. You only have to move back under it when it finally starts to topple.

T. was extremely good at it.  He passed 800 seconds and at that point nobody really cared to count any more. Chet Baker in the background, checking the premises as usual.  The Bacon loved this meeting, and only tried to grab a few feathers off hands and noses.

Phoebe comes to Science Club when she can. I have to say she looked kind of grown up around the 4th, 5th and 6th graders. Sigh. I've tried tying her up, putting a cinder block on her head, but she's 5'9" and still going. It's not easy to have a supermodel in the house. Makes me feel kinda sawed-off and lumpy.

That durn blonde boy is shooting up, too. He loves running around with a peacock feather on his nose.

Gross, Liam. Do you really want to put a tailfeather on your tongue? Don't you know where that feather's been? Bleh.

M. put it on his cheek. My favorite photo from the melee. M. loves birds, especially nighthawks. We showed him his first in September (a huge flock was migrating right over the school grounds) and he about self-combusted with excitement. I smile just thinking about that moment.

And a melee it was. Kids running and laughing everywhere, their faces alight with the wonder of air resistance and gravity, crispy dead hoverflies and plants that eat meat.

Science Club. It's whatever we want it to be.