Bug Shutterbug!

Insect macro photographer Kolby Kirk

Spotted Tree Borer Beetle

Discovered this handsome fella in the Buckeye Flats Campgrounds in Sequoia National Park last month.  The spotted tree borer (Synaphaeta guexi) is 11-27mm in body length and is most commonly found  from April to July.

Beetles of May (part 1)

Well, it’s been waaaay too long since my last post.  I’ve been concentrating on a different project for the last few weeks, but I’ve always had my camera on the ready for any springtime insects I come across.  And boy, have I come across a lot!  My last post shared with you my excitement of finding a scarab beetle outside my apartment.  Since then, I’ve found and photographed over a dozen different beetles around California.  I’d like to start sharing with you again.

The project I’ve been working on the last few weeks has allowed me to get closer to nature.  I’ve decided it’s about time I get back into shape and work off some of my weight.  To do this, I’ve resolved to hike 100 times before 2010.  So far, I’ve hiked 12 times in the last 25 days and hope to keep on pace of three hikes a week in order to meet my goal.  If you would like to track my progress, head on over to 100hikes.com.  Along with GPS tracks, maps, and videos, I’ve included photos from my hikes which now and then include insect shots.

Speaking of which, here’s a handful of beetle photos I’ve taken in the last three weeks:

I have a lot more beetle photos to post – it’s just a matter of finding the time to edit them!

Scarabs Are Here

It rained briefly on Friday night, bringing out chafer beetles in respectable numbers.  The plant-eating beetles are in the same family as scarab beetles (Scarabaeidae) Yesterday evening, I found over a dozen hanging out around the lights of my apartment complex.  These beetles are easily spooked, dropping off of the stucco wall and onto the ground when I got too close.  On the way out this evening, I spooked one (of three) from a well-lit wall of my complex and when I returned a half hour later, it was still playing dead.

These chafer beetles (Serica perigonia) are one of 40 Serica found in California. They are brown, reddish brown, to black in color, have a subtle iridescence under strong light, and measure 7-9 mm in body length. The three Serica perigonia I caught each measure about 9 mm. At first look, I thought that their coloring look a bit drab, but when I photographed them using my ring flash, the iridescence of their elytron really came out.

Notice their beautiful fork-like antennae (called lamellate antennae) in the photo above.

No, the beetle isn’t dead in the photo above. It feigns death for long periods of time when it feels threatened.

I captured three and brought them into my apartment to take a few photos.  I placed them on my desk in a glass vial next to a vial of dead beetles I found in the Mojave a few weeks ago. I had hoped to identify the Mojave beetle specimens eventually but hadn’t made much progress… until now! Incredibly, three living Serica perigonia were able to help my identify the three dead beetles as Serica perigonia.  I probably wouldn’t have been able to ID them if I had not placed them together on my desk. What’s the chances of that?

If you want to see more photos of California scarab beetles, check out the punctate bear beetles (Paracotalpa puncticollis) I photographed in Joshua Tree a few weeks ago and blogged here.

Resources:

• Field Guide to Beetles of California by Arthur V. Evans and James N. Hogue
• Bugguide.net – Family Scarabaeidae – Scarab Beetles
• Cockchafers or ‘Maybugs’ and other Chafers

It Came From Outer Space!

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while now:

In February, I found a some sort of pod attached to a tree branch.  I wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but I knew it wasn’t a natural bloom from the tree.  I cut it off and brought it home with the idea that I would find out sooner or later what was in it.  For weeks, it sat motionless in a plastic container on my desk.  It didn’t grow or shrink.  It didn’t change color or wilt along with the leaves I cut off with it.  It didn’t do much of anything, actually.  After a month, the plastic box with the pod blended in with the rest of the stuff on my desk.  From time to time, a book would be placed on top of it.  My keys.  My wallet.

In early April, I went on a weekend trip to the desert (as reported here). When I returned…

IT HATCHED!

The plastic container was filled with over 60-70 baby praying mantises!

For a week, I watched the population grow to about 100 mantis hatchlings. Some ended up dying soon after their birth and littering the bottom of the container. Others were eaten by the marbled cellar spider (Holocnemus pluchei) I had in the container long before the pod (which I now know is called an ootheca).

Looking in from time to time, I was able to photograph the birth of a mantis. It pops out of the pod and hangs from a thread as it untangles itself. Click on the image below to view it large.

Eventually, I let the baby mantises loose in a bush outside of my apartment.

Maybe in a few months, I’ll have a few adult mantises to photograph!

Joshua Tree Trip Report – April 24-26, 2009

This past weekend was my third and final trip to Joshua Tree for a while. I ended the month completing 3/4ths of my New Year’s resolution of visiting the Mojave Desert every weekend in April. The trips began taking the toll during the five hour drive through Friday-afternoon traffic and the seemingly endless search for a campsite (I finally found one after an hour-long search in the dark).

The entomological theme of the weekend would have to be beetles, beetles, beetles! The trip offered a good amount of bug photo opportunities, but beetles seemed to be everywhere. The Mojave had quite a few flowers still in bloom, as did the Sonoran, and the bugs came out in great numbers to sample the flowering feast. It is interesting to note that I found at least one or two small beetles for each flower in the Sonoran Desert, and yet the same flower just 40-50 miles to the north in the Mojave would be in bloom, but without any guests crawling around inside the pollen-filled flower.

I spent most of my free time hiking around, peering inside flowers like the purple Mojave aster (Xylorhiza tortifolia) or the pink beavertail cactus (Opuntia basilaris) for insects. It’s amazing how much life I found living on just one healthy golden cholla (Opuntia echinocarpa) in the desert. I spent at least a half hour at one 4-foot tall cholla looking at beetles, ants, stink and assassin bugs, jumping spiders and bees. Looking up from my camera from time to time, I would see lizards climbing through Mojave yucca, or a butterfly landing briefly on a desert sunflower (Gereae canescens).

During the course of the weekend, I photographed over a half dozen beetles, many of them I found and photographed for the first time. I had a difficult time identifying some of these, so if you could help, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment:

This is a master blister beetle (Lytta magister) the largest beetle I’ve ever captured! It is so large, in fact, I saw it crossing the road while I was driving 45 mph. According to the excellent Field Guide to Beetles of California, the master blister beetle can grow as large as 33 mm. However, from the mandibles to the end of the elytron, this specimen measured 38 mm! I captured it and photographed it on this creosote bush before releasing it. (They normally feed on Encelia farinosa, or Brittlebush).

This not-yet-identified weevil seems to be saying, “What are you lookin’ at, buddy? Haven’t you ever seen a snout beetle eating before?”

This is a small 3-4 mm metallic wood-boring beetle (Anthaxia sp.). This is the only photo I could take before it flew off.  They seem more skiddish than other beetles I’ve photographed. With those eyes, I bet they have better vision than most beetles as well.

This one was photographed on the same flower as the Anthaxia and weevil above.  It measures about 3-4 mm.

I first photographed this mystery beetle last weekend.  Here it wades through the jungle-like bloom of a teddy-bear cholla cactus (Cylindropuntia bigelovii). It measures about 3-4 mm and has fine white hairs covering its elytron and pronotum.

A cactus bee (Diadasia opuntiae) takes a rest inside of a teddy-bear cholla cactus flower. It was common to find these bees rolling around in the pollen for many minutes at a time. I guess life is good for these solitary bees without a queen bossing them around. I’m not sure of the gender differences of cactus bees, but we nicknamed them “bachelor bees” since they always seem to lay around and drink nectar all day.

A stink bug nursery is set up on the tip of a golden cholla cactus spine. The white objects are the eggs and the dark objects are the newborn stink bugs, each measuring about 1 mm.

This ant was patrolling a golden cholla cactus when I found him.

Did I mention you should post a comment?  Yes, please post a comment if you can help identify any of the insects or if you just want to share something. Here’s more photos from my trip:

Joshua Tree Trip Report – April 17-19, 2009

Last April, I visited Joshua Tree National Park with about a dozen of my closest friends.  We hiked through a desert in bloom. We found a few desert inhabitants that we had not seen before. At night, we laughed around a campfire while roasting hot dogs and making s’mores.  We laid out on large boulders and enjoyed the expansive starry night. It was a very memorable trip. Anyone following this blog knows that I’ve become a desert rat since that April trip, having returned many times. Early this year, in fact, I resolved to go to the Mojave Desert every weekend in the month of April, hoping to catch some of that magic again.

I’m happy to report that the magic was back in the desert last weekend!

It wouldn’t be an easy task for me to explain the greatness of the weekend. Even superlatives won’t be able to express the awesomeness of the experience. Nonetheless, the weekend will be referenced for years to come by me and my two friends who were there to experience the magic. For Nathan, this was the first trip to the area and he’s already to go back within the month. For Peter, this was his second journey to the park. The first trip was so memorable, he brought his girlfriend with him this time. While we sat atop a 70-foot boulder and watched the sun set over Pleasant Valley, he got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend. She said yes.

Joshua Tree NP is for all types of lovers, especially nature lovers. It has taken many years of searching, but this would be the trip where I photographed my first (and second) desert tortoise. I also photographed the beautiful punctate bear beetles with its iridescent green pronotum and yellow elytron. Two of them, in fact! We joked on Sunday morning that the only way this weekend could get any better is if we found a rattlesnake… and we did!

Here are a few of my favorite nature photos from the weekend:

A juvenile blister beetle (Nemognatha lurida) rests on a leafy-stemmed coreopsis (Coreopsis calliopsidea).

A short-horned grasshopper (Acrididae) perfectly blends into the gravel of a wash.

I watched this cricket hunter wasp (Chlorion aerarium) efficiently and quickly dig a burrow into the desert. I sat just outside of its burrow, where it brought out earth,  increasing the size of its underground home. It would use its specialized mandibles to grip and carry gravel, some pieces as big as itself.

While searching for desert tortoises, I came across two cactus bees (Diadasia opuntiae) seemingly fighting over territory: a hedgehog cactus flower (Echinocereus engelmannii). They fought long enough for me to switch lenses on my SLR camera. (View the slideshow at the end of this post to see a macro shot of this fight.)

Sadly, this southwestern speckled rattlesnake (Crotalus mitchellii pyrrhus) is dead. We witnessed its demise after unsuccessfully trying to save it from being run over by vehicles as it tried to cross a paved road. After it was run over while curled, Nathan and I used a stick to move it into the desert. We watched as it violently writhed for about ten seconds, its mouth wide open and bleeding, before it stopped moving forever. Even though it has the means of killing me in about an hour, I still felt sad when it died.

My first encounter with a desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii). This beautiful creature didn’t mind our presence and walked by us and into this shaded spot under a boulder to escape the afternoon sun.

This is the second desert tortoise we met in the park. Like us, it was hiking through an area north of Skull Rock. It too didn’t seem to mind the four of us taking photos and video of it, a good sign that it hasn’t been threatened by humans, thus has not become fearful of humans.  Either that, or its a diva tortoise looking to get a break in Hollywood.

I got to use my butterfly net for the first time on this trip, something I’ve owned for over a year. My first and third swing of the net EVER captured these flying beauties, punctate bear beetles (Paracotalpa puncticollis). Since I’m a bug shutterbug and not a bug collector, I released both after taking photos of them – including photos of one flying away! (see the gallery below)

Here’s more photos from my trip.  Please post a comment if you can help identify any of the insects:

Just Published: Flowers

Just in time for Mother’s Day, a book of flowers!

I found forty of my favorite flower photos and finely fashioned them into this full-color folio. (*whew!*)

Click on the image below to find out more.

Spider Saturday: Portraying Size

One of the difficulties nature photographers have is providing the viewer with a sense of size. Take a photo of a building and the viewer knows how large it is based on their knowledge of the average height of the building’s floors. But take a photo of an insect sitting on a rock and the viewer can only guess how large or small it is. Case in point: last weekend in the Mojave National Preserve I photographed two spiders, but can you tell which one is larger in real life?

If you guessed that the dark gray spider was bigger, you’re right. But how much bigger? And how small is the light tan orb weaver spider? Without any reference point or knowledge of these two spiders, it’s near impossible. The internet can do a lot of things, but showing objects at actual size is also near impossible due to differences of screen resolution. To remedy this, most scientific photographers provide small keys to reference the size of their specimens. I too bring a long a small ruler to measure specimens when I’m out photographing insects because it is so easy to lose touch with their true size after taking the photos. I measured both of these spiders in the field. The body of the dark gray spider (Plectreuridae Plectreurys) measures 13mm while the body of the unidentified orb weaver measures a little less than 1 mm. Less than one millimeter. Here’s a size comparison of the two spiders:

Even with the knowledge of the size in millimeters, it still might be difficult to grasp how small insects can get, the orb weaver in particular. It might be easier to compare the spider to something many of you might have in your pocket right now: a dime. I photographed a dime using my Canon 65mm F/2.8 MPE lens, which can photograph up to five times life size. The following images are not cropped.

Mojave National Preserve Photo Galleries

Non bugs:

Bugs:

Mojave National Preserve Trip Report (Part 2)

April 5th, 2009

Part 2 – Where are the insects??

If you missed part one of this two-part report, click here.

–
Those of you with fine-tuned observational skills might have noticed that the first part of this Mojave National Preserve trip report failed to mention any bugs. The fact is that I went most of Saturday without looking for insects to photograph. My goal was to explore on Saturday and concentrate on finding and photogging bugs on Sunday. I wouldn’t be disappointed!

I should admit now that the first photographed insect occurred around dusk on Saturday. While hiking around Shadow Valley in search for a campsite, I discovered the unmistakable silk tent of the Western tent caterpillar (Malacosoma californicum) on a creosote bush. A few caterpillars were out of the nest for me to photograph. This wouldn’t be the last time I’d see these colorful, social moth larvae today.

After a cold night of camping where temperatures dropped below 30°F (-1°C), I packed up and headed south on Cima Road. It was another beautiful day in the desert. It was a little breezy – gusts up to 20mph – but wouldn’t last beyond 8-9am. My goal for the day was to check out the Hole-in-the-Wall campsite and info center, but I was in no hurry. My first stop of the day was at the ghost town of Cima. It consisted of a half-dozen or so buildings and a dozen rusted vehicles. It also had a simple building still in use as a market and post office (closed on Sunday). I stopped and explored the remains of a small home. The ground around the building was covered in pieces of wood and metal from the home. Of the scraps of metal strewn across the desert, I could identify a metal mattress frame, screen door, and a heating duct- all possibly over 50 years old. I spent an hour turning over the remnants of the dilapidated material looking for insects. In that time I would find two centipedes, a nest of harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex), a beautiful desert spider and a small beetle with a blue sheen. I don’t know how, but I also spotted a tiny spider the size of a mite, no more than 1 mm in body length.

The large gray/black spider (Plectreuridae Plectreurys) measured about 13-15mm. It crawled in jerky movements based on vibrations or movement around it, which reminded me of how lizards move. The dark side of this wooden plank was obviously its lair for I found three dead beetles sucked dry in her trash.

The centipedes were not happy to have been disturbed. It has been years since I’ve captured a centipede, so I was a little intimidated by their speed and reflexes. I recently read up on the centipede and learned that they have unique “legs” called gnathosomes or gnathopods which are pincer-like appendages used to inject venom into their prey. They spend most of their time during the day under logs, stones, or in this case, a sheet of metal in order to keep from dehydrating. At night they hunt for anything they can catch and, based on how fast they move, that’s probably quite a bit. They eat mostly insects, but have been known to capture and eat lizards and small rodents as well. I’m having trouble identifying these centipedes, so if you can help, please leave a comment.

The small beetle I found measured about 7mm. It has a nice bluish-green tint to it in the light. It was very difficult to photograph, even in the small container I used to temporarily house it while I snapped away.

I could have spent all day in Cima looking for insects, but I was drawn by a desire to see more of the park. I headed west on Kelso Cima Road for five miles until I came to Mojave Road. This unpaved road has more history behind it than the nearby Route 66. In fact, Mojave Road was the Route 66 of its time before the Chicago-Santa Monica highway was built. This 138-mile trail is not much different today as it was when American pioneers traveled across it in their wagons in search of a new life and prosperity the decades following the Civil War. But even this layer of history can be peeled back. At one time, this was once used by Jedidiah Smith, John Fremont and other American pioneers. Before that, the Mojave Indians in the early 1800’s used this trail. And even before that, it is said that Spanish Franciscan Francisco Garces might have used this very trail around the time our forefathers were signing the Declaration of Independence.

The road is well groomed, thanks to local support, but with all dirt roads in the desert, it has become corrugated, making it a slow drive for my non-4WD vehicle. Going at speeds of about 15mph (24kph) allowed me to check out the scenery and keep an eye on the road for any crossing creatures. This is how I found my next insect.

It wasn’t hard to spot this large darkling beetle crossing the road. The black Eleodes measures about 4 cm from maxilla to pygidium. I found it just as it discovered its next meal, allowing me plenty of time to get out my gear to photograph it. I’ve seen Eleodes many times in the Mojave Desert, but this was the first that had striae along the elytra rather than a smooth abdomen. I believe this is an Eleodes obscura.

I drove 11 miles of dirt roads before arriving at Mid Hills Campground, one of the two “official” campgrounds in the Mohave National Preserve (“Moja”). The place was empty and it was immediately clear why. A 2005 wildfire had destroyed much of the woods in this area. Even today it still looks like the aftermath of a nuclear war, with blackened dead trees and dark brown earth. Life is slowly returning to the area, but I wouldn’t want to camp here given all of the other options. Besides, I don’t know who would pay $12 for a campsite when you can camp off the side of the road for free.

I continued south on Black Canyon Road which is still unpaved at this point. I assume most visitors on this road come up from the south, where the pavement ends immediately north of the Hole-in-the-Wall Campgrounds and Info Center. I wasn’t ready to check out the center quite yet. Just north of Hole-in-the-Wall, I took a mile detour down a dirt road. It was there I would spend the rest of my time in the park photographing a single creosote bush. For some reason, this bush had more life than anything I could see in the surrounding area.

If you’ve kept up with my blog, you’ll know that my favorite insect to photograph at the moment is the syrphid fly, more commonly called the hover fly. So you could only imagine how excited I was to find this single creosote bush covered in them! Along with 4-5 different syrphids attracted to the flowering bush were drone flies (Eristalis tenax), cactus flies (Copestylum Mexicana), flesh flies (Sarcophagidea), green bottle flies (Phaenicia sericata), and even spotted what looked like a fruit fly (Tephritidae) with their distinctly marked wings. Along with the flies were a few kinds of bees, most I’ve never seen before outside the covers of a field guide. Along with honey bees – by far the most represented at the bush of any insect – were 2-3 types of other bees. I spotted a few small mining bees (Andrenidae) and something that looked a lot like a leafcutter bee (Megachile sp.).

Here’s my favorite syrphid photo of the day. I’m not having any luck identifying it, so if you can help, please feel free to post a comment.

Winged insects weren’t the only visitors to this creosote bush. One or two families of Western tent caterpillars (Malacosoma californicum) could be found climbing on the bush, looking for food.

It was getting close to 3pm and I wanted to stay in front of the weekend Vegas visitors, so I reluctantly left the creosote and headed home. Before I left the park, I stopped in briefly at the Hole-in-the-Wall Info Center, where I gathered pamphlets to read in order to plan my next trip out to the Mojave National Preserve. I have a feeling the trip will be sooner than later!

Also coming soon will be more photos – lots of photos! – taken on this trip. Stay tuned!

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