@pb-n-jae submitted: 1. A tiger swallowtail, who our neighbors found in their yard and brought over to this bush (we think he was at the end of his life, hence why he was just in the grass unmoving and apparently unable to fly)
2. A cool bug we found at the beach that we had never seen before! Thanks to some guy who wrote his masters thesis on the isopods of the region, I was able to identify it as Ligia pallasii, a rock louse!
3. Not a bug per se, but some kind of decapod (maybe a sand shrimp?). There were tons of them ranging in size from about 3cm/.5in to about 6cm/1in in length and the bigger ones all had those big red antennae. We saw them in Bandon, Coos Bay, Oregon, if you’re able to ID it. Cool little dudes though!
Some great friends! Hope the swallowtail had a nice butterfly life and got to have one million babies. How lucky to have found a rock louse! I’ve never seen one irl either. They are very cute and get quite large. They usually live in tidal zones or rocky beaches, and have gills so they can breathe underwater when escaping land predators. Neat! The lil shrimpy lookin’ dude is a California beach flea aka the long-horned beach hopper. They’re a type of crustacean and amphipod. They dig burrows in the sand and eat seaweed. :)
