As I mentioned before, I have had the chance lately to get a bit of reading done. While wandering through a used bookstore some time ago, I picked up a copy of Life in the Undergrowth. When I finally received some time to get some reading done, I sat down and went through it.
This is a very entertaining book. If you like insects, and you enjoy watching shows typical of Animal Planet and The Discovery Channel, this book is for you.
It is intended to supplement the television show presented by the BBC of the same name. The book reads very much like one of those shows, which IMHO is good in some ways and bad in some ways.
Continue Reading…
Posted 1 year, 8 months ago at 5:15 am. Add a comment
Very often as I follow the insects and other small creatures in my backyard, I come across a mystery. These aren’t truly mysteries, as I’m sure someone knows the answer, but in my research I am unable to find an answer as to why things are.
Take for example, this lacewing that I found recently in my backyard.
This lacewing appears to be dead. It has grown pale white and has some ’stuff’ on it. In cases like this, I do not know truly what has happened but I can comment on what I have observed. Continue Reading…
Posted 1 year, 9 months ago at 2:24 pm. 1 comment
This weekend I decided to check around my backyard again for some interesting shots. I have grown to know my yard very well – with a good idea of what I can find where. It’s not a very large yard at 10,000 sq ft and it’s in the center of suburban Bellevue. Still, with a bit of patience and some searching I am usually rewarded in time, even though spring hasn’t really hit yet so most insects are not in plain view.
Still, I was a bit bored of the usual places, so I decided to pick some place new. On the side of our house, in a spot where we rarely go, we have a giant camellia that has grown taller than our house. I decided to crawl under the lower limbs and found a spot in a pile of leaf litter near an old fountain that is no longer in operation. I then started going through the leaves to see what I could find.
In some respect, I was a bit disappointed by the day because I was really hoping to find a beetle. While I did not find a beetle during the hour I spent outside, I learned that there are a number of springtails that occupy our backyard. A lot of the smaller creatures were difficult to photograph and often wound up disappearing on me. I only managed to get two shots of this springtail before it disappeared.
What interested me most about this shot is this is not the typical globular springtail I normally find in the garden. Upon looking at my insect book, this appears to be an Orchesella villosa, a species that is originally from the British isles but has since migrated over here. Of course, given the huge number of springtail species out there, there exists a high probability that I am wrong. However, the picture in my book certainly looks similar. I found a number of these, but this was the only one I managed to get a picture of. OK, at least I think I saw a number of them – as with the naked eye they just look like a speck. Usually I am forced to take all of my springtail shots at 5x.
Seeing so many springtails in the leaf litter reinforces to me the fact that they are instrumental in the creation of soil. Also, they were incredibly numerous, though it took some patience to get one into view. They can be quite frustrating to find in the viewfinder, especially when they are moving (which was the case with this one). I have come up with a new technique with the MP-E 65 though that has been bringing me some success. I start at 1x or 2x and once I have the subject in focus I slowly zoom to 5x. I have found success in this method even when the insect is mobile.
This springtail was much more patient with me.
This is the standard globular springtail that I normally see around the garden, though I suspect it may be a slightly different species than the one I normally find. For reference, here’s the kind I normally see.
The new springtail differs from this one in several remarks.
1) It is “hairier”
2) It is bigger – both shots were at 5x.
3) This one was found in rather wet wood, while the other is almost always found on leaves.
Therefore I suspect that these are both different species of globular springtails, but I have no idea which ones. I did manage to find springtail site, from someone who obviously knows a lot more about springtails than I do.
The final springtail I took for the day was on my kids’ slide, a location where I almost always find something. Unfortunately by that time the batteries in my MT-24EX had already died. I currently power my MT-24EX with 4 Eneloop batteries, combined with a CP-E3 with eight more Eneloops. While the CP-E3 still had power, the lamps on the MT-24EX can only be powered by its batteries, so my flash worked but the lamps did not.
This appears to be another Orchesella springtail, but a different species than the first one. From the pictures on the site above, this may be an Orchesella cincta, but again that is only a guess. It’s fascinating what you can find when you just look a little harder. What seems like a lifeless, cold place becomes a thriving metropolis of creatures when you begin to look closer.
Posted 2 years, 6 months ago at 5:15 am. 4 comments
