CalevPhoto

That does look a bit like a flea!

While photographing last week, I found a shiny green beetle that was kind enough to let me get some shots of it.  I found it curled up and hiding in a plant stem and managed to annoy it enough that it started walking around.

When it came time to identify this beetle, I didn’t have much hope.  After all, there are thousands of “shiny green beetles” out there and I didn’t have too much hope of figuring out what this is.

To my surprise, I think I do know what this is.  It looks a lot like a flea beetle (family chrysomelidae, subfamily alticinae).  I am not 100% sure, but it does look awfully like a flea from the front - doesn’t it?

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A different rove beetle?

Some time ago I blogged about a rove beetle that I found in my backyard.  It was very peculiar in that it raised its tail like a scorpion and confronted me as I tried to take its picture.  Looking at the date, I blogged about this beetle in January of last year.

One of the interesting things about keeping a blog is it has caused me to ask questions that I normally would not ask.  The following came up with another similar specimen that I found over the weekend.

After looking at these pictures, I had the following questions.

1. Why did I find this beetle just now?  They are not common during other parts of the year.  Are they common during just a small part of the year?
2. This specimen looks a bit different than the other one.  It is slightly reddish while the other one is more pitch black.
3. It also did not raise its tail as a threat, but instead ran away quickly.  There were also several of them instead of just a single one as I found before.  It certainly seemed more docile than the other one.

I’m not sure if I have a perfect answer for these questions, but I did a little bit of research and have some ideas.

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It’s a beetle. Hard how could it be to identify?

Last weekend while looking under logs and stones in my backyard, I found this cute little beetle.

I found a number of these scurrying after I picked up a bag of gravel.  They clearly did not like to be in the open as they tried to hide under whatever they could find.  Although not evident from the shot, the back reflected a greenish color.

According to modern estimates, there are about 350,000 beetle species identified so far.  Scientists believe that the total amount of beetle species on the planet is somewhere from around three to eight million.  The end result, the chances I’ll be able to identify this beetle are not great.

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Some new bugs for the year

I always enjoy getting out and taking some pictures of bugs, so I was very happy that during the weekend we had a brief respite from the rain so I could get out and photograph.  The frustrating thing with insect photography is figuring out what I took pictures of afterwards.  Despite the fact that most of my shots are from my backyard, I’m still finding new bugs each time I photograph.  At first things were a bit slow, so I took this picture of a dandelion while looking for interesting critters.

This image is part of a ‘geometry in nature’ series that I am working on, though I doubt it will end up in the final collection.  It came out as I expected, but I haven’t been able to make the yellow stronger and I think the shot is missing some ‘oomph’ in general.

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The mysterious beetle larva

I must admit that sometimes I really wish I had chosen birds over insects. Sure, birds can be more difficult to find - or at least more difficult to find a great variety of them.  However, consider this.  There are somewhere between 9,800 to 10,050 known species of birds in the world.  According to some lazy research, there are approximately 320 species of birds that frequent Washington State.  I suspect in the area around Puget Sound, the number is smaller.  Sure, species identification can be difficult at times.  However a trained specialist given a good look at the bird and the sounds the bird makes can make a reasonable guess at the species of the bird.  Even the most difficult sightings can be whittled down to a handful of possible species.  Also, it is highly unlikely that I will come across a species of bird here in Washington State that has not been extensively studied already.

Contrast this to identifying anthropods.  I’m not exactly sure how many anthropod species have been identified.  However, there are currently 900,000 known species of insects, which are a subset of anthropods.  Just in Washington State, over 700 species of spiders have been identified.  Even today new species are occasionally found here.  Therefore, it can be very tricky identifying whatever I find.  This specimen currently perplexes me.

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The mysterious beetle solved?

I mentioned in a previous post that I found a strange new insect when photographing this weekend.  I picked up a bag of dirt and found some interesting things underneath to shoot.  As I was above to coax a millipede onto a white sheet of paper, I noticed something tiny moving in the dirt.  I zoomed to 5x on my MP-E 65 and took several shots in an attempt to capture it.  Unfortunately none of them turned out as well as I would have hoped, but I received two shots that were decent enough to attempt identification.

I looked through my Audobon field guide to no avail.  The bug just didn’t appear to be there.  So I got out my huge hardcover book on insects and slowly went through the hundreds of shots, hoping for a match.  After some time, I may have found a match.  This appears to be a spider beetle - family Anobiidae, subfamily Ptininae.  Here’s another shot of it.

Unfortunately the shots I found in the book and those on the web have so far not provided an exact match.  I suspect this may be because my book covers only insects in eastern North America.  For some reason, I have noticed that many books seem to discount the western half of the United States.  Perhaps this may be because they don’t want to dedicate large portions of a book to insects that only exist in one geographic area.  I remember as a young child being dismayed after seeing an interesting animal in a guide book only to find that it only lives in the West.  Still, this makes it even more difficult for us in the Puget Sound.  Though we share many insects with the East, we also have a number of our own which don’t seem to be covered in many guide books.  Even the Audobon guide, which supposedly covers the entire country, tends not to cover insects particular to this region.

Therefore my current theory is that this is indeed a spider beetle, but is either a less common species or a species isolated to this part of the country.

Even still, though this remains a bit of a mystery it is always exciting finding and learning about new creatures in my backyard.

The beetle from hell

Most of my insect shots come from my back yard, where I often walk around picking up objects and seeing what I could find. One recent day, I was rather excited to find this interesting little bugger.

At first I thought it was a type of earwig as they look somewhat similar.

This dead earwig was found in our house and was the first insect I ever shot with my then new MP-E 65.

However, all earwigs that I had seen had the typical red head and longer pincers on the end. I was a bit puzzled what this bug was. Even more peculiar was how it raised its tail as if it were a scorpion. Initially, I really thought it meant to sting me, though I doubted that it had the capacity. Here’s a closer look at it.

So I posted the pictures on a forum where there are people more knowledgeable about insects than I, and I found out that this is a type of rove beetle called the “Devils’ Coach Horse Beetle”. I felt that was a rather odd name for a beetle, so I decided to do some research. Wikipedia actually had an article about it and I found out some fascinating information.

1. The beetle originates from the British Isles, where it is the largest beetle found. It has migrated and become more common in North America but it is not native to our continent.
2. It received its name because it eats carrion and in medieval times people believed the devil would take the form of this bug to eat sinners.
3. As I thought, it does not have the capacity to sting you. However, it supposedly can bite you and inflict pain. Generally I do not pick up bugs with my bare hands though, so there was little worry of that happening. Supposedly carpenter ants can bite too, and I have photographed tons of them from mere millimeters and never have I been bitten.
4. They are natural predators of slugs and snails, so it is not too bad to have them around. Unfortunately they also eat earthworms, which I would much rather they leave alone.

This final photo was the closest I got. Knowing that I had some decent photos, I then let the beetle get back to its business.

Certainly since beginning insect photography I have learned quite a bit. There are a number of others species out there that I have no clue about, but with each new critter I unearth I learn a little bit more.