Scudderia mexicana
Tag: insects
Chrysoperla
I was wandering around the yard with my sketchbook, looking for some inspiration, when a little bug landed on my page. Yay! Lacewings are highly beneficial to gardeners and farmers because of their voracious appetite for small soft-bodied plant pests like aphids and small caterpillars.
Diabrotica undecimpunctata
I used to own a shirt covered in green beetles with black spots. Here’s me wearing it back in 2017 (aside: this was taken at our old place, that burned down in the Palisades Fire of 2025. Gah I miss it.) One day someone at work told me that my shirt beetles were Diabrotica, a major agricultural pest. It stuck in my head, because I thought “Diabolical Diabrotica”.
These guys cause damage to crops in the larval and adult stages of their life cycle. Larvae feed on the roots of the emerging plants, and the adult beetles eat the flowers, leaves, stems, and fruits of over fifty different types of crops and wild plants, including corn, peanuts, beans, apples, cherries, clovers, lettuce, potatoes and, yes, cucumbers. The beetles can also spread diseases such as bacterial wilt and mosaic virus.
Who eats them? Wolf spiders!
boring
We offered a beginner’s class at Nature Journal Club today, and thirty people came! After spending an hour learning the basics, everyone wandered off to journal their curiosity. Having just done a training on identifying invasive borer beetles, I was interested to record some data about insect activity on a fallen oak log. Boring? Nope, fascinating!
Apis mellifera
There was a lot to notice on today’s muddy hike—fungi, spikemosses, roaring creeks, first flowers, gorgeous views. Lots to wonder about too, including why the pollen on the bee’s legs was a darker shade of yellow than the pollen it was collecting.
Paropsisterna m-fuscum
Our nature journal group met at Will Rogers State Historic Park to journal the fire recovery. Will Rogers himself loved eucalypts, and many are planted there. I noticed that the epicormic growth and the crown sprouts were all being ravaged, and took a closer look.
exoskeleton
Just in time for Halloween, a discarded (exo)skeleton.
Andricus quercuscalifornicus
A little something I’m working on for school walks at the state park.
Schistocerca nitens
Reading up on this grasshopper, I learned that it is a problematic invasive species in Hawaii. In 2004, a major swarming event on the island of Nīhoa devastated approximately 90% of the island’s vegetation. Likely introduced to Hawaii several decades ago, it has since spread throughout the archipelago, aided by its ability to fly over 300 miles across open ocean!
That last fact blew my mind. 🤯
native bees
One of the highlights of Wild Wonder Day 2 was the session on native bees with scientist/artist Nina Sokolov. I met Nina last year; she’s a total badass. She snatches bumblebees right off the flower with one hand.
hashiworks 