On this date…
As I was stuck in bed again today, I decided to indulge in one of my favorite pastimes where I go back through my photo archives and check out what was happening on that day’s date in years gone by. One of the reasons that it is such a bummer to be sick right now is because this is a truly excellent time of year to be observing wildlife — especially in the world of spiders and insects. Apparently, May 19, 2009 was an especially good day for this, and I thought I would share just a small fraction of the arthropods I photographed.
This is a Frit Fly (Family: Chloropidae). Photographed on Oleander (Nerium oleander). These flies are tiny… about 2 mm… that’s the height of the letter “N” in the words ONE CENT on a penny.
This is a Soft-winged Flower Beetle (Family: Melyridae). This one is exploring the inner depths of another Oleander flower. These beetles are also quite small.
This is a Cixiid Planthopper (Family: Cixiidae). If you are looking for truly bizarre-looking insects, you need look no farther than to browse the superfamily of planthoppers. This one was hanging out on the side of a utility shed.
I’m fairly certain this is a male Black Widow (Latrodectus hesperus). Most people would not recognize the significantly smaller and more pattened males as widows from the top-side view, but as you can see they do still have the characteristic hour glass shape on their abdomen. (It’s also possible that this is a Brown Widow, but I think I got the ID right… I hope my fellow bug enthusiasts will let me know if you disagree!)
As if that weren’t enough critters for one afternoon, these discoveries were also made that day:
I know this post was a little on the “nerdy-insect-lover” side of things, but I truly hope to interest more people in learning about their local bugs, or at least to take a few moments here to enjoy the beauty and diversity of this amazing subset of life.
Sometimes it feels as though my entire life is on the “nerdy-insect-lover” side of things, but I say there’s nothing wrong with that! Sure, my friends and family thought it was a little weird when I was first getting into insects about three years ago, but at this point in the game I think my passion for insects has made them all slightly more tolerant and respectful of them. I know that I for one will always look forward to your bug images, Harsi (but you already knew that) 🙂 Seems like May 19th 09 was a pretty good date for bugs! Many of these I don’t believe I’ve seen yet. I can’t help you with the spider, I don’t know too much about widows… all I know is that brown widows, black widows, and false black widows all reside around my home, and since I can’t really tell them apart, I prefer to give them their space.
Chris… I had you in mind with this post! I wasn’t sure if anyone else would be thrilled by seeing so many arthropods, but I figured I’d have at least one fan. (Well, that’s not entirely fair, Ruth is also a BugGuide contributor and she is always interested in learning more. 🙂 I think for me, the writing was probably on the wall even when I was quite young. My parents like to tell me the stories of when I used to visit the Smithsonian Museum at 3 or 4 years old and hold the large hissing cockroaches and millipedes. (I gather it freaked people out a bit to see a chubby-cheeked little girl gleefully holding such insects!) As I got older, I could never understand why people were squeamish about insects… and more importantly, I could not comprehend their irrational desire to squash everything that happened to cross their path. Like you, Chris, I’d like to believe that my interest in insects has had a positive impact on those closest to me. My husband no longer squishes anything (other than the occasional mosquito, ant or flea)… instead, he yells from wherever he is in the house — “Hon, I’ve got something for you to rescue.” OK, so, he’s not too keen to know anything about them, or handle them himself… but, at least he’s more (as you said) “tolerant”. 🙂 Other family members and friends often send me photos or call me with descriptions of bugs they’ve seen — I love being able to help them identify things and wherever possible, I try to inject a bit of good PR and some factoids. I give all the Latrodectus a wide berth too… I confess that I still feel I am in the infancy of my understanding of spider ID, but I just recently got a copy of this book which I’m hoping will help: http://www.amazon.com/Spiders-North-America-Identification-Manual/dp/0977143902
I think when I was a kid I was a lot like you; insects, and all other animals for that matter, were interesting, and I spent a lot of time outdoors so they were just a part of life, and I enjoyed learning about them. From my experience I think this is the norm for a lot of kids, but what happened to me, and what I think happens with a lot of people, is that society (be it our parents, friends, etc) subconsciously teach us for some reason or another to be fearful of insects. The insects that get the most attention seem to be the harmful ones, giving the entire group a bad rap. I’m not sure when it happened with me, but past early childhood most of my life I lived in a sort of insect “dark ages,” irrationally afraid of any small multilegged creature. It wasn’t until about three years ago when a wildlife biology course forced me to get up close and personal with insects did I finally again remember, “hey! these things aren’t so bad” and ever since then I’ve been trying to spread the message 🙂 Harsi, you’ll have to tell me of that spider book is any good; my arachnid literature collection is, well… nonexistant. But hopefully that can change soon.
Wow… so interesting to hear about your insect “dark ages”. I agree with what you wrote and think this is true for so many kids. It seems like such a shame that they get so much negative input about insects early on — butterflies and ladybugs being the consistent exception to the rule. 🙂 It pains me to hear so many young people write ALL insects off as “icky” or, worse still, aggressively seek to obliterate any small thing that they see crawling near them. I think a lot of that is, as you say, conditioning from parents and older siblings. This is one of the reasons that I always relish the opportunity to spend time with kids and try to change the way they think about these things… then, maybe THEY can teach their families a thing or two. 🙂 It sounds as though you are on the same page with me, Chris, and I’m so very glad that you found your way back to appreciating these marvelous creatures. I will indeed let you know about the spider book once I’ve had a chance to familiarize myself a bit… for my birthday, I also got this excellent textbook which you may be familiar with: http://www.amazon.com/Borror-DeLongs-Introduction-Study-Insects/dp/0030968356