BestBug

What strange little insects, that looked like miniature beetles with longish snouts. Turns out, that's more or less the definition of weevils.

These are in the subfamily Baridinae, probably Odontocorynus scutellumalbum. What a mouthful of a name! It may change though, because according to Wiki, "the higher classification of weevils is in a state of flux". I imagine it's an exciting time for entomologists.

Several were feeding on Rudbeckia. Not being familiar with weevils yet, I'd temporarily named the photo files "besbug" as shorthand for black-eyed-susan-bug. It started me thinking, what if people were as interested in insects as in electronics. When showing off your creepy-crawlies, you could tell your friends that you got a really good deal at BestBug.



Anyway, I found another one on a daisy.

I didn't notice until processing the photos back home, that there was something sinister lurking below.



Eek! I think that little weevil is in for a big surprise.

I wish I'd realized the whole picture when I was there. I wonder who came out alive. Who won Best Bug? In hopes of the preservation of local wildflowers, I think I'd have to root for the spider.

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Update:
In case you've got a dark computer screen, let me lighten that last picture up for you.



Eek!

Spider heaven

The only good thing I can think of about the drought is that mosquitoes weren't much of a problem this summer. Bugs were down overall, I think.

One day before we had a frost, there was an explosion of tiny flying things. You may have to click the picture to enlarge it enough to see, but it was clearly spider heaven.

Now that it has frozen and warmed up again, the explosion is of those ladybug look-alikes, Asian ladybird beetles (Harmonia axyridis).

Harmonia! If ever a species needed renaming, it's this one. How about Discordia detestabile. OK you can tell I don't really know Latin, but you get the idea.

Summer camp

Away freeway trolls
and skull poison



Away chainsaw dogs
and anything downloadable



Welcome butterfly people and snake elves



unfamous artists
and freeform laughing



dark and beautiful
names that mean shadow



and drowsy bee biographers



Stand still long enough



Measure the angles of coyote eyes



Change your mind about
what is highly collectible



Get broken spiders back in love

Scribe

I don't have to read it.



I wrote it!

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Black and Yellow Garden spider, aka Golden Orb Weaver, aka Writing Spider (Argiope aurantia).

Submitted to the Friday Ark.

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I don't check my sitemeter obsessively like I used to. But it can be barrel-o-monkeys funny now and then, so I try to look from time to time.

"Chicken nest boxes" has taken a back seat to both "white fuzzy caterpillar" and "yellow fuzzy caterpillar" as top search terms.

Apparently, googling "Alcohol and rambling pic" brings first Woody Guthrie, and then me (a post in which I rambled and offered that many alcohol laws were dumb). The ways of the internets are strange indeed.

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It's taking me a while to get back up to speed with all the blogs I read. But I noticed that a few of them had featured the same meme in the past month.

It's one of those "Things I have done" lists and I'm not going to reproduce the whole thing, but here are the things I've done that neither Stu, Ron, nor Chris have done:

11. Visited Paris
75. Gotten divorced
90. Gone to Thailand

I was going to add

108. Piloted an airplane

but that would probably be cheating. My uncle just let me take the controls for a little while.

One side of my family is a flying bunch. My mother flew an airplane before she drove a car. One uncle was an Air Force pilot, and another uncle and three cousins flew small planes for fun & profit. One of those cousins became a Delta pilot.

On the other hand, my Dad was afraid to fly. I used to tease him about it all the time. Especially later, after I had flown and really enjoyed it. Then somehow I developed a fear of it too. I can fly in a plane. I just really, really, really don't want to.

I'm rambling again.

Stalking the Earth

I bought a birthday card once with a dinosaur on the cover. Inside, instead of "Happy Birthday," it read, "Congratulations on another year of stalking the Earth."

In birthday terms, I've probably been stalking for more years than I have years remaining to stalk. But it's amazing what can still surprise.

I saw a velvet ant this week. I don't think they're particularly rare, but this makes only the third time I've encountered one.



She was in a hurry and wouldn't pose at all. When I looked up the latin name, Dasymutilla occidentalis, I read that they make an odd sqeaking/squealing noise when captured. So now I'll have to try that next time I see one. They're also called cow-killers because of an extremely painful sting, though I haven't found anyone who has first-hand knowledge of it.

During the weekly cat walk, George investigated a humongous fungus. A champion champignon!



I don't remember ever seeing a mushroom this large. Some wild critter had left small scratches on the surface - it must have been curious too.

Hubby found a spider hiding between some rocks in the creek.



Turns out there are fishing spiders! Dolomedes tenebrosus or scriptus. I think this is the latter. The leg span can reach 3 inches (7.6 cm). I like spiders reasonably well, but I think I'd have to put this one out if he came in the house... I've seen enough spy movies to know that a spider that big and hairy would definitely want to crawl all over my face in the middle of the night.

What new thing did you discover this week?

Eek

Who besides me is thinking of Bladerunner now?

For more critters, visit The Friday Ark.

Hidey Spidey

Peek-a-boo.

I see you.



This is a Black and Yellow Garden spider, a.k.a. Black and Yellow Argiope, a.k.a. Golden Garden spider, a.k.a. Golden Orb Weaver, a.k.a. Writing Spider (Argiope aurantia).

She was in the middle of the path where I was walking, and I wanted to photograph her in the middle of her web. But Jasmine had other ideas and disturbed it, making her flee to hide among the leaves.

According to this website, these spiders eat their webs every night and rebuild the next day.

The males of the species look quite different.

They look a bit scary, but aren't dangerous unless you're a fly.

Bugs!

Crouching spider,



Hidden grasshopper.



A female spider with her spiffy egg sac.

Sorry, don't have time to ID the bugs this morning! If anyone knows, please leave a comment or email and I'll add the info. I'm thinking that the last one may be a wolf spider.

Edited to add:
Thanks so much to Thingfish23 who has identified the first "spider" above as, well, not a spider but a Harvestman. (I really should have known that. His body didn't look quite right for a spider.)
Order Opiliones.

The second one's a Northern Green-Striped Grasshopper (Chortophaga viridifasciata), according to this site and this one. (Thanks again Thingfish23.)

Thingfish23 also says that the third image above is of a "nursery web spider" (Pisaurina mira).

Edited again:
Sisu says the third one is a wolf spider.

Get ready for the Battle of the arachnophiles!

If anyone else has an opinion on the identity of the spider in question, please email or leave a comment.

Interesting spider

I found this spider down by the creek. Judging by the way his legs were folded (and by the way he didn't budge when I poked him with a stick), I think he had recently met his end.

I was able to look him on up on this really cool spider site, and found out that he is a marbled orb weaver (Araneus marmoreus). Not a dangerous spider at all.

A word of warning, though. Do NOT look at the pictures of brown recluse spider bites on that page unless you have a strong constitution.

I don't have a strong constitution at all, at least not about medical stuff. I confess that I have felt a little faint ever since viewing the spider bite pictures.

The only time I ever really completely fainted was at a first-aid lecture. There was a drawing of a tourniquet and a chopped off leg involved.

People are usually sympathetic about this at first, and sputter satisfyingly, and agree what a horrible thing that was to be showing to impressionable young girl scouts.

Then they always start pressing me for details about the drawing.

When they find out that, well no, the drawing wasn't really all that graphic, it was just a simple line drawing... they start snickering.

It's hard to stop them from laughing long enough to properly explain about my very vivid imagination.

Anyway, it's probably not a bad idea to familiarize yourself with what the brown recluse spider looks like. The map shows that they are found in Alabama, but I've never seen one.

In general I am not superstitious, although at this point I feel obliged to say "knock on wood".