I noticed some teensy grasshoppers on the basil plant, and learned they are first-instar nymphs of a Schistocerca species, commonly called bird grasshoppers, many of which swarm as locusts. It’s probably the Gray Bird Grasshopper, Schistocerca nitens; I have observed adults here in the yard.
I’m in a group chat called Bug Group; we post photos of any cool arthropods that we come across. One of our members just came back from Guyana with many dozens of amazing macro shots. We asked him to do a Zoom session where he talked about the trip and the critters he saw, and he was happy to oblige.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
Just in time for Halloween, a discarded (exo)skeleton.
A little something I’m working on for school walks at the state park.
hashiworks 