Month: January 2021

Insect Wish List

This week it’s been cloudy and cold with few chances to look for insects. So I decided to see if iNaturalist and BugGuide.net allow sorting data by location. Happily, they do, and I’ve had fun looking for the most intriguing insects that have been seen in my area… things to add to my wish list. I decided to draw them, and now it will feel like an extra “win” if I ever see one of these insects.

Treehoppers have spiny protrusions above their heads, and adult oak treehoppers are red, yellow and orange on a blue and white backdrop. Treehopper mothers care for their eggs and young, something not many insects do.

Mantidflies are in the same order (Neuroptera) as lacewings. They are so improbable looking–it would be incredible to see one. Also called mantispids, they’re often nocturnal, as are several of the creatures on my wish list, so I’d like to buy a blacklight for our back yard this year.

Velvet ants aren’t ants. The females are wasps without wings, and the males look like furry wasps. In fact, in some species, males and females look so dimorphically different that scientists don’t know which ones belong to the same species unless they’re seen mating. I was pleasantly surprised to learn they live in Oregon.

I’ll need to get lucky (maybe with the blacklight) to see a tiger moth, or any of the many moths on my wish list. However, I think I’ve seen a caterpillar of this moth. They look like wooly bear caterpillars, fuzzy and black with an orange head and tail, but they also have long white hairs above the black.

My list is well over 50 insects I’d like to spot. I’ve decided to draw one per day for a while. I’ll either share more next week or, if I’ve seen some new insects, I’ll post those.

Cheers!

Camera Comparisons

Here’s a damsel bug that I saw on a sunny day last week. I took this picture with my iPhone and a clip-on 15x macro lens. This Nabis genus bug is favored by farmers because it eats pests of common crops. My attempt to photograph it with my Nikon was unfavorable, however, because the insect was too high up for a tripod, and I’m not able to get any focus at all without leaning on something to steady my hand. Below is one of the better (!) pictures I took with the Raynox 250 handheld. Total blur.

Here’s a picture that came out decently on the Nikon. I had the camera ready on a tripod, and peeled back a layer of bark to find this squash bug residing underneath:

I’ve been trying to make the f-stop as big as possible, to expand the area of the insect that’s in focus. This one’s only at f/4, but for that, the shutter speed is fast enough to stop the action. The Nabis bug above is at f/20, but the shutter was open 1/10 of a second. On the squash bug, it’s 1/125th of a second.

Here’s the same squash bug taken with the phone. It’s only at f/1.8, but with a very fast shutter of 1/167. The phone does an incredible job, really, of freezing and capturing motion. It’s just unable to get any closer than this, or to get much detail in smaller subjects.

Here’s a mediterranean seed bug shot on the Nikon. I was able to rest the camera on the log, so the bug’s eye is somewhat in focus. This is f/5 at 1/13 of a second.

Here are two bugs taken with the iPhone at the same location. The image is at f/1.8 and 1/20. Because the bugs weren’t moving very fast (it was a cold day), I got away with the longer exposure. These bugs, by the way, weren’t documented in the western U.S. until the mid 1990’s. They probably came here with seeds, and appear to thrive on Oregon grass seed farms.

I’ll do more experiments this week. After assembling the pictures for this blog, I wonder if I should focus more on exposure time than f-stop? I’ll see what happens and let you know.

Cheers!

New Lens Week

I got a new multiplier lens this week (a Raynox 250), and I’m trying to learn aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. Sometimes the auto focus on my Nikon works with the lens, but I do need to steady the camera against something solid like a tree or a rock. Above is a bagworm. I rested the camera on the sign. The larvae was so small, I thought it was an adult moth, and it was only in looking at the pictures later that I saw the cool mosaic of sand and dirt particles the insect covered itself with.

This is a tiny wasp I found on our compost bin. With my naked eyes, I thought it had a blue abdomen, and I couldn’t tell if it was a fly or a wasp. I’m pretty sure it’s a bethylidae family flat wasp. You can see how narrow the depth of field is with this lens. The wasp is only a couple millimeters long, and yet while the top of the head and thorax are in focus, the back of the wings, legs and antennae are blurry.

Here’s the last picture I’ll share for the week. This, I think, is a dusky lady beetle. There were maybe a dozen of them beetling around on a few rocks in the sun. They are super tiny, about two millimeters long. I read that these beetles were introduced to California to eat mealy bugs, which are scale insects that can ruin some greenhouse crops. I found a website out of New Zealand with good information on the lady beetles here.

It’s exciting that on sunny days there are some insects out and about. I hope to have more to share next week.

Insect Countdown: #1 Plus Bonus

To make my Top 40 list, I considered the rarity of an insect, its attractiveness, and its story. In the end, I decided that lucking upon this Golden Tortoise Beetle was my favorite encounter of 2020. I only saw one individual in my yard on May 25th and never saw one before or since. Thanks to the time stamps on my images, I know the entire sighting was about 2 1/2 minutes from start to finish.

Charidotella sexpunctata beetles are metallic gold when they’re relaxed and at rest, but this one must have been amped up, because even when I first spotted it, it was red. The way the beetles change color, by the way, was only uncovered in 2007, according to this Scientific American article. It involves a three-layer structure in their transparent shells. I’d love to see a golden one!

And now for a bonus Best Insect of 2020. I saw this snail-eating beetle on December 17th, when I was in the middle of my countdown for the year. It would have been in the top 10, I think, had I put it in the hat with all the others. The purple luminescence on its abdomen is really striking, and the adaptations it has for eating snails are remarkable. I wrote about this Scaphinotus genus beetle in my most recent column for Mt. Pisgah Arboretum, which is where I saw it.

Happy New Year, and best wishes for a bountiful 2021!

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