Discover Top Posts Tagged with #my bugwatching

California BugDex - Part 1

This is my collection of invertebrate photos/observations in California. I’ll keep updating when I find more. Since Tumblr only allows 30 photos per post, however, I will need to make multiple posts to cover everything.

Also be sure to check out this bug ID resource:

* BugGuide.net

#my bugwatching #insects

I forgot to include this pretty boy in my previous posts. Apparently he’s a Blue-Frosted Banner (Catonephele numilia). What a gorgeous fellow; it looks like somebody painted orange dots on him.

#bugs #butterflies #mycontent #bugwatching #my bugwatching #insects

I never posted on my Tumblr (just to Twitter) about this trip from last year, so I thought, why not post it here?

I was in Canada visiting relatives, and learned about the existence of The Victoria Bug Zoo. Obviously, I had to go.

The ‘zoo’ is geared mostly to kids, but it’s plenty informative and very adult-friendly as well. (Just don’t be surprised if you have to share the place with lots of human larvae.) Although from the ouside it seems to occupy a relatively small building space, it’s a surprisingly large collection, and there’s plenty of variety and awesome things to check out. I spent several hours there. I wanted to stay longer, but I was travelling with my family and they were getting bored and antsy for lunch. (haaa! … sorry)

There are a number of docents leading regular tours to the zoo, visiting the different exhibits and giving informational talks, as well as giving people the chance to pet and even hold the bugs themselves. In one of the photos above I’m holding a female Malaysian stick insect (Heteropteryx dilatata), a very hefty buggo! She was beautiful and had grabby little feet. :3

I also held a giant milipede– a giant African millipede, I believe– which was freaking incredible. All those dozens and dozens of soft little feet clinging to your arm at once and undulating in little waves made it feel like gentle rippling velcro. Eeeee I love milipedes so much. Gorgeous.

They had a number of tarantulas and I held one of those as well. I’ve kept tarantulas as pets when I was a kid but I didn’t hold ‘em back then. I was always nervous about the urticating hairs. Bites, eh, not that big a deal, but dang, fiberglass-hair made me wary. Anyway, point is, first time I held a tarantula. I was surprised– it feels like they have little cat feet! All that weight placed on such a teeny tiny padded surface area, distributed perfectly and silently.

The centerpiece of the Victoria Bug Zoo’s collection is an incredibly impressive leaf-cutter ant colony. A large number of plexiglass chambers are mounted onto the wall, and huge lengths of clear pipe run along the ceiling and across the room. Holy crap you guys. I could spend hours staring at all the parts to this colony. (well, I kinda did heh heh) In the photo up there– I had to borrow that particular one from TripAdvisor because I was only snapping pictures with my cellphone and they were largely crap– it doesn’t even show the entire thing, and doesn’t really do it justice. It was so much fun.

In that same photo, the small terrarium the kid is pressed up against? That has hissing cockroaches. If you look at the fourth photo in this collection, that’s the one. They had the terrarium decorated with dollhouse stuff for the cockroaches to stamp around in and feel like Very Big Bugs. I admit I found it very cute.

I also got a photo of a freshly molted Giant Brazilian cockroach! (that is why he is shock-white) He finished molting while we were there.

Other photos– the spiders here are a Martinique Pink Toe Tarantula and, of course, a Black Widow. After that is a White-spotted assassin bug. They had some really cool beetles, too, and other stuff I’m forgetting now!

I essentially had to be dragged away from there. XD But seriously, def. worth checking out if you’re ever in Victoria BC. So funnnnn. And the docents did a great job. Seriously, hats off to them.

This is a repost on a new blog. The original post was on April 8, 2017.

#bugs #mycontent #bugwatching #long post #spiders #cockroaches #my bugwatching #arachnids

I keep seeing these guys running around at night that look like mealworms, I finally took a photo to look it up because I am so curious what they are...

And apparently they ARE mealworms???

I've also seen a lot of little black beetles all over the neighborhood and oh my god they are darkling beetles (the mealworm adults), aren't they. We just have a crapton of them living around here. It's so weird to see them in the great outdoors, I used to raise them to feed to my reptiles or whatnot when I was a kid.

#bugwatching #my bugwatching

Got to visit Monteray. Finally, finally touched the deep sea isopod (Bathynomus giganteus) for myself. Very smooth just as you'd expect. The lady there was nice and chatted with me and I told her about how I recently acquired their tiny terrestrial cousins. She told me how the giant isopods seemed to molt one half at a time, and she was surprised when I told her the land versions do that too. She also mentioned the aquarium is not allowed to feed them rotting fish even though they would prefer rotting fish. Safety thing for the humans I suppose. She also said they roll up into balls just like rolly pollies. Just wild to think they are so incredibly similar.

#isopods #my bugwatching #crustaceans

A series of photos of a little beetle I found among the thistle. He was trying to reach across to the next flower. (He eventually made it) As you can tell by the antenna, he's definitely in the scarab family (Scarabaeidae), I'm guessing the genus Hoplia in particular.

Next, some photos of an Orange Sulphur I went chasing after, and then some hoverflies. Also some type of black beetle that was about a half inch long. Some kind of darkling beetle, I assume. I see larger, smooth darkling beetles around here, the ones that raise their lil' booty up if you startle them, but this one was smaller and had lots of bumps, so it caught my eye. Still learning how to use the macro lens on my phone.

#bugs #bugwatching #my bugwatching #beetles #flies #butterflies #insects

More bug photos! The first is obviously some sort of stinkbug. I think it’s a Say’s Stinkbug (Chlorochroa sayi) in particular. The second photo is some sort of stinkbug nymph I found running along the hot ground, although I have not ID’d it yet.

The first middle photo is that same thread-waisted wasp I saw the last time (Genus Podalonia), the second is a different type of wasp with iridescent blue wings, the third is a fly perhaps in the Thyridanthrax genus (in the bee fly family).

The final photos are a pair of mating wood-boring beetles in the genus Acmaeodera. That’s a huge genus but I’m thinking the species may be quadrivittatoides? (That species name sure is a mouthful!)

#bugs #bugwatching #my bugwatching #mystuff #insects #true bugs #wasps #flies #beetles

Insectarium in Utah (Part 2)

Indoors, they had a selection of other species on display. This included a large leaf-cutter ant exhibit (with clear plastic tubes the ants walked through to various chambers) and a bunch of others. Unfortunately, the lighting and the reflections in the glass/plastic containers made it nigh impossible to get decent pictures. I’ve shown a few of the clearer photos, though. The first is a goliath birdeater, the second are some walking sticks, and the third is a couple young Black Beauty Walking Sticks (Peruphasma schultei). I was very excited to see the Black Beauties, because previously I’d only seen pictures of them. They’re such a fantastic species. I love their little eyes.

The museum also had a nice collection of dead specimens. Again, though, the lighting and reflections were terrible for photos, not to mention a lot of these collections were mounted very high up on the wall, well above my height-- making them hard enough for me to see and impossible for any children to. I found it a strange choice. Still, whoever owns these collections (I’m assuming they’re on loan to this museum, as often is the case) gets huge props for the presentation; the beetle collection with all of the beetles facing the single gold one in the center is especially eye-catching. Sadly, these various species did not have any labels. The museum only provided incredibly broad descriptions of each of them (such as “walking sticks & kin” “beetles” etc). It’s a shame. I feel the museum could do a lot better on improving how it displays these/giving info.

To be honest, I expected myself to not enjoy the dead insect collections, because I always strongly prefer to see bugs alive and happy. But it was admittedly very cool to see some species in real life that I previously only knew from photos online, even if they were dead. Also, seeing all the different kinds of species in one family grouped together really lets you appreciate the distinctions of the families. It was also fun to see how many I could identify right away without any help.

Also, there were giant bugs. About a hundred million different kids were crawling all over them (because that was their purpose) but I had to sit on them anyway despite the germs. I almost got stuck lodging myself into the chrysalis, but it had to be done for science. God, I’d love a caterpillar that size in my bedroom.