The Magnifying Glass

Skeeters

There is no gentle way to introduce a post about mosquitoes, so the picture above will have to do. 

Over the last few weeks we have had our share of rain and with the rain comes the bugs. As I walked the yard today I noticed a little container tucked away under a tree. It was full of shells collected at the beach and as I got closer I noticed some movement in the water that had accumulated. The movement was what you see in the jar above, mosquito larva. 

We have "raised" mosquitoes in the past to study their life cycle. It is fascinating and informative for the kids to understand the stages they go through and just how little water it takes for the larva to live and grow.

Mosquitoes need very little water to lay their 200-300 eggs... every third night of their adult life (4 to 8 weeks.) The larva hatch out in about 24 hours and spend anywhere from 5 -18 days in the water before becoming adults. As they grow they molt, shed their skin, four times before becoming a pupa (the little curly things you see in the water above.) When the time is right they brake out of their pupal case and rest on the surface of the water while their body hardens, preparing for flight.

We are usually pretty vigilant about cleaning out standing water wherever it may accumulate... the beds of toy dump trucks forgotten behind the shed or the little wheelbarrow full of special rocks... but today reminded me that I need to talk with the kids again about turning over containers and trucks and all the other little places water likes to pool up and make perfect little homes for mosquito larva. It may seem hopeless in this very wet province, but taking care around the yard can make a difference. 

Other sources of standing water you may check for in your own yard:

• Saucers under plant pots
• Trash can lids
• Bird baths (change the water a few times a week)
• Open recyle bins (water gets caught in the containers in the bin)
• Old tires
• Tire swings (drill holes in the bottom of the tire to let water drain)
• rain barrels (empty twice weekly or cover)
• Covered boats 
• Children's pools
• Rain gutters (make sure they are clean and flowing)

When so many eggs can be laid in so little water every emptied drop counts.

Have you had a buggy summer? What kind of bugs "bug" your family the most? 

~Dawn

 

Aphids are so cute!

I live with a bug lover. My daughter loves to watch insects fly, crawl, eat, molt, swim, well you get the idea. She ardors six-legged creatures of all shapes and sizes.

Now when you are a bug lover living in the cold and icy north it can get tough. So when fate intervenes and brings you some sap thirsty little buggers, when there is still ice out on the bay, you jump at the chance to study them. 

Where did these tiny specimens come from?

It would seems these flowers not only brought beauty to our table but also a few hitchhikers...aphids. 

Once they were spotted it took no time at all before they were being studied.

 

She quickly got her microscope and as they came into view exclaimed, "Aphids are so cute!" After I took a peek myself I had to admit that they were kinda cute in a buggy sort of way. They are not cute on my flowers, and really not cute in our garden in the summer, but under that microscope with their tiny black eyes and long sweeping antennae they were a bit cute.

She begged me go out to the shed to retrieve one of her bug containers, the containers that had not seen the light of day since the frost either killed, or drove into hibernation, every last worthy specimen. 

We are leaving on a long trip soon so we could not keep these little cuties long term, much to my dismay you can imagine. 

For long term care of these and many other arthropods we turn to the book Bug Zoo by Nick Baker. He has great advice for building habitats and for the care and feeding of many things that creep and crawl. 

Are there any insects out in your neck of the woods... either indoors or out? We would love to hear about what you have been observing.

~Dawn

Make a Mason Bee Nest

Where we live, crocuses and forsythia are the very first flowers to bloom as winter transitions to spring. That happens to be the best time to put up a mason bee nest, and this year we’ve tried our hand at it.

Mason bees are small plant pollinators like the familiar honey bee, but they are solitary and do not produce honey. With no hive or honey to protect, they virtually never sting (unless extremely provoked) and are safe to be handled gently by children.

Mason bees use nests to raise their young. Although they live alone, they happily lay their eggs in cavities near fellow mason bees in miniature human-made communes.

Mason bees are considered true “natives” in North America (as are similar bees around the world). By comparison, honey bees—thought to have originated in Asia and cultivated in Europe and Africa since ancient times—are rather recent arrivals to North America (1620’s) and Australia (1820’s).

Here's a mason bee nest at our local nature center.  You can see that the bees use mud to seal in their eggs into the nest holes, where they will mature into adults and eventually emerge to greet the world.

You can buy mason bees by mail-order and for the past few years we contemplated doing this. However, you must place your orders in the fall (breeders quickly sell out). Plus, we know that mason bees live in our area because we’ve seen their active nests at a local nature center (see photo above).

You can also buy nests, but we’ve learned that they should be replaced at least every two years—if not annually—because they quickly become infested with fungus and mites that kill the growing bee larvae.  Adult mason bees can then carry these pests to new nests and spread the problem.

So, it seemed more logical to make our own nest from found materials, and to hope that local mason bees would find their way. We scavenged a large chunk of an old fir tree on one of our neighborhood walks for our nest.

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Below are instructions for making and installing your own mason bee nest. There are lots of tutorials around; here, I’ve distilled the best of them.

1.  When choosing wood for your mason bee nest, select wood that isn’t treated and avoid aromatic wood such as cedar. Our bit of fir tree is 7 1/2” x 8” on its face and 7” deep. A 7” deep block of wood (4” wide or wider) will work fine.

2.  Mark holes for the nest cavities, setting them about 1/2” apart. Drill holes(do not drill all the way through). The ideal hole width is 5/16” (8 mm). The ideal depth for a cavity is 6” deep. Unfortunately, standard drill bits only drill holes 3” deep. You can try using 3” holes, as some suggest, although shallower holes tend to produce far more males vs. females.  I opted to make 6” holes.

3. When you’re finished drilling, cover the front of the nest with chicken wire (I used two overlapping rectangles nailed down to the sides, creating a “bubble” an inch or two away from the nesting hole entrances). This keeps out the birds and squirrels.

4. Consider nailing a shingle as a sloping “roof” to direct water away from the entrance to the cavities. We sawed some wood away to create a one-inch “awning.” You can also place your nest under an overhang for additional protection, as we’ve chosen to do.

5. Mount your finished nest (on a post, fence, or building) facing south and avoiding direct sun.

6. Do not spray insecticides near your mason bee nest.

7. Mason bees need mud to seal their eggs in the nesting holes. We’re keeping a bit of garden bed near our downspouts moist from now until fall so our bees will have mud for their nests.

8. Last, you’ll need nearby flowers to attract and keep mason bees.  But that was why you wanted them in your garden in the first place, right?

If you are amateur mason bee keepers like our family, set the nest up and then keep it undisturbed for a year or two. Then take the nest down and discard it. We’ll make a new one again in late winter another year if all goes well ~ we’ll let you know if we manage to attract any mason bees to our garden.

You may be more ambitious than we are, in which case you may want to line your holes with parchment paper, harvest the nests in November and store them in the fridge. Take a look at this PDF link to learn more.

~ Nancy

Hoppers

We have some hoppers around here. Some are big, some are small, some are green, others brown but they all hop! At first everything my daughter saw hop was a grasshopper or a cricket but she started to notice differences and ask questions. Sometime mid summer we got the book Bug Zoo and read up on the care and feeding of grasshoppers, crickets and the one bug missing from our identifications, katydids.

They all belong to the order Orthoptera, which means ‘straight wings’ but grasshoppers are in the suborder Caelifera while katydids and crickets are in the suborder Ensifrea. Since I am not an entomologist that does not mean much to me beyond the fact that crickets and katydids have more in common with each other than they do with grasshoppers.

One obvious thing that crickets and katydids have in common is the length of their antennae. This is also the biggest and best clue to distinguish them from grasshoppers. Grasshoppers have very short antennae while katydids and crickets have much longer antennae. After that it is a matter of identifying the crickets and katydids that live in your area. We have noticed that most crickets around here are brown to black and they also don’t have noticeable wings like the green katydids we see.

 Here are a few other things we have learned about our hoppers:

 

Facts about grasshoppers:

• There are over 8,000 species
• They are also known as short-horned grasshoppers
• Most eat a variety of plants

 

Facts about katydids:

• There are over 6,400 species about 255 of which live in North America
• They are also known as long-horned grasshoppers or bush crickets
• Many eat a variety of plant material but others are predatory eating insects, snails and small invertebrates.

 

Facts about crickets:

• There are over 900 species
• Only the males chirp. Their chirping rate depends on the temperature and the species.
• Many people belive they create their sound by rubbing their legs together but it is their wings they rub together to make their chirp.
• They are omnivores eating a variety of plant matter and even other dead or dying crickets.

And since Eren is lovin’ kids looking at bugs in containers here is one of my little bug hunter with some of the bigger grasshoppers we find hopping and flying around our yard. It is a continual catch and release program around here.

Do you have any hoppers in your neck of the woods? 

We would love to hear about them and see pictures in the flickr pool or a link to your blog post in the comments.

~Dawn

Hummingbird or Hummingbird Moth

 

We have been enjoying watching hummingbirds at our feeders this year.  (although I haven't caught a good photo of one yet)

But while we were outside one day this week, we saw what we thought was a baby hummingbird whiz by.  The boys yelled for me to grab my camera.  And as we approached it as it hovered by our purple verbena, we found it was not a hummingbird at all.

One of the boys noticed its proboscis and declared it a butterfly, but when we looked it up we were all wrong.

It is a snowberry clearwing hummingbird moth.

And no wonder someone named it that.  Although with its black and yellow stripes it resembles a large bee, this moth has the same distinctive "hover" that most hummingbirds do.

The hummingbird moth is in the same family as sphinx moths.

This post from Birds-n-garden shows some great photos of the entire life cycle of the Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird Moth.  And now we are on the search for these great moth eggs and an opportunity to raise them.

Here is a little video we found on youtube if you would like to see these amazing little moths in action.

If you would like to attract these little creatures to your garden, their host plants include honeysuckle, viburnum, hawthorn, snowberry, cherry, and plum.

Have you ever seen a hummingbird moth?

Dragons and Damsels

Not a fairy tale, just a few of our local nymphs.

Last year we had the wonderful experience of watching a dragonfly become an adult and fly away for the first time. This spring we have been fortunate enough to have a few more close encounters with the fascinating early stage of life for these amazing flyers, the dragonflies and damselflies.

It all began early this spring with some frog eggs. Upon collecting some pond water to create a habitat for our soon to be tadpoles we realized that we also collected a damselfly nymph. We had seen them in books but this was our first experience with a live baby damselfly. 

 

Notice the three feathery gills as the back end of the nymph. Those external gills distinguish the damselfly nymph from the dragonfly nymph. We have read that most damselflies complete their life cycle of egg to nymph on to adulthood in one year. This nymph will molt several times, becoming darker each time, before leaving the water to become an adult damselfly. These delicate predators like to eat mosquito larva, also known as wigglers, so they are very beneficial.

On Earth Day we found ourselves at a local lake and my daughter came to me with a handful of very dark spider looking creatures. 

My first thought was that they looked a lot like dragonfly nymphs but they were not quite the same as the ones we had observed last summer or had seen in our books. Well, really my first thought was to freak out a little bit but I kept that to myself. I have come to expect this kind of thing from her.

When we got home we found this web site, which explained that there are two different kinds of dragonfly nymph. We had made our acquaintance with the other type of dragon nymph.

 

Dragonflies spend most of their life in this nymph form, some up to two years, before becoming the adult flyers you see darting around catching mosquitoes on the wing. We did not keep any of these lake dwelling nymphs for observation but after a trip to our frog egg pond with her dad my daughter returned with a dragonfly nymph. The same type we had seen last summer. 

We created a habitat for it and set out to research what we should feed it. They are described as the “ogres of the pond or stream” in this book and she suggested a bit of raw meat tied to a string for feeding. We discovered that it also eats the larva of other insects, such as mosquitoes, along with tadpoles, small fish and even other nymphs. We have tried a variety of things and it is indeed a ferocious little predator. Like the damselfly this dragonfly nymph will molt several times before leaving the water to split out of it's skin and begin life as an adult.

Many fairy tales have ferocious dragons and delicate damsels along with themes of amazing transformations. Pond life may not be a fairy tail but the stories that unfold in the pond are ones worthy of telling.

If you are interested in learning more about these amazing creatures this video is a fascinating look at the life of both dragonflies and damselflies as nymphs and adults.

Eren also has a great post in the archives about the differences between the adult flyers and Annie recently recommended a storybook about a young girls experience with dragonflies.

 ~ Dawn

On the Shelf: Eliza and the Dragonfly.

As the days lengthen and warm here in Vermont, and the snow finally disappears in the last places that it was hanging on, we find ourselves able to get out into the woods and down near the creeks and streams that run all spring and summer long.  This has me thinking about dragon and damselflies and reminded me of a lovely picture book that I thought I might share.  Eliza and the Dragonfly, by Susan Caldwell Rinehart (with illustrations by Anisa Clair Hovemann), is the story of a little girl who learns to appreciate the beauty of the natural world, even in it's less obviously beautiful forms. 

In the beginning of the story, Eliza finds a dragonfly in her house, and shares her discovery with her aunt Doris, an entomologist with a flair for the dramatic.  On their trip to return the dragonfly to the local pond, the pair discover a dragonfly nymph which Eliza finds ugly and a little repulsive.  She is fascinated nonetheless, particularly by the promise of the what the nymph will become, and the rest of the story follows Eliza's observation of the growth of the nympth throughout the summer months until the day it finally becomes the wonderful creature Eliza hoped for.

There are a number of things about this book which I love and which I think makes it a particularly good read.  The watercolor illustrations are evocative of warm, sunny days and the basic plot of the story has just enough mystery to keep curious children interested until the very end.  However, I particularly like the elements of the story that are threaded throughout the book in less obvious ways.  Through her experience of watching the natural process of dragonfly growth and transformation, Eliza has a chance to discover the good that can come from just being who you are and letting go of feelings that you should be any different.  Watching the dragonfly get comfortable in his own skin, on his own time, inspires Eliza to do the same.  This is a great message for kids (and adults) of any age.  Scientific information about dragonflies, observation of animals in the natural environment and the process of metamorphosis is also neatly woven into the story and lays a great foundation for learning more about insect life cycles. 

Eliza and the Dragonfly is published by Dawn Publications, a publishing house that specializes in books aimed at helping children develop healthy connections to the natural world.  This book is a part of their Sharing Nature with Children series, and ends with two pages of factual information about dragonflies as well as a list of resources for learning more and planning lessons. 

If you and yours are interested in learning more about dragonflies (or their insect relatives, the damselflies) you can check out this post from The Magnifying Glass archives.  Also, if you are interested in trying your hand at raising some dragon or damselfly nymphs yourself, you can buy them here and here.  I think we may just give it a try this spring! 

--- Annie

Cicada Summer

There is, so far as I know, but one creature that is excited, quite literally vibrating, over these long stretches of 100+ degree days. 

The cicada. 

We hear him, and legions of his friends, singing from the leafy tops of our trees beginning around 9:30 or 10 in the morning and ceasing only after darkness has fallen. In the hottest part of the day, their songs reach such a fever pitch that you can hear them, even indoors, with the windows and doors shut, the air conditioner and ceiling fans running at full blast. Nothing can drown out the dog day cry of the cicada. 

Have a listen: 

Some days, this song sounds to me like lemonade and grandmothers fanning themselves on porches, barefooted children running through sprinklers and fiddle music. 

On others, on those days when the heat has drained my spirit, it sounds like a funereal dirge. 

The cicadas don't seem to be bothered much by the moods of their listeners though, they sing on. 

So, as their music is the anthem of our summer days, and because we have a rapidly growing collection of their shed skins, we thought we'd better find out more about these rather vocal critters. 

Here's what we've learned: 

Cicadas are fairly large insects with big eyes that are set rather far apart. They come in an astonishing array - 2,500 or so known species. 

They are born from eggs that a female has deposited in a small cut that she makes on a twig. They burrow into the ground and live the bulk of their lives there feeding on root juices. 

Finally, they emerge from the ground, shed their skins and fly to the tree tops to sing and mate. Some species spend only a year underground, others as many 17 years. 

They are not, as is commonly thought, locusts. That's a whole 'nuther beast. 

It is the male cicadas that make all the noise. I tell my boys that they are singing love songs to the ladies. This elicits much eye rolling. My middle son said during a particularly loud performance, " Man, they really, really, REALLY want to get those girls attention, don't they? Can the girls not hear very well, or what?"

Here's an excerpt straight from wikipedia about the interesting way in which arduous young cicadas make their intentions known, 

"Male cicadas have loud noisemakers called "timbals" on the sides of the abdominal base. Their "singing" is not the stridulation (where two structures are rubbed against one another) of many other familiar sound-producing insects like crickets: the timbals are regions of the exoskeleton that are modified to form a complex membrane with thin, membranous portions and thickened "ribs". Contracting the internal timbal muscles produces a clicking sound as the timbals buckle inwards. As these muscles relax, the timbals return to their original position producing another click. The interior of the male abdomen is substantially hollow to amplify the resonance of the sound. A cicada rapidly vibrates these membranes, and enlarged chambers derived from the tracheae make its body serve as a resonance chamber, greatly amplifying the sound. They modulate their noise by wiggling their abdomens toward and away from the tree that they are on. Additionally, each species has its own distinctive song"

Interestingly, the cicadas have made their way into cultural iconology. Throughout the ages, the cicada has been seen as a symbol of youthful short-sightedness. Other animals are diligently making preparations for the winter while the cicada is lazing the day away singing songs to his lover. Ah, young love. 

Turns out cicadas are also seen as delicacies to some Asian and Latin American palates. 

 

We have yet to see one actually IN his skin though... so I'm not sure how those chefs manage to get them from leafy heights to chilled plates. I guess that's a question for further research. (You can see a really neat photo of one here)

 We'd also like to know if it is a particular temperature that triggers their singing to begin and then to end. So if you need us, we'll be out back with our clocks and thermometers waiting for the music to start.

 

Butterfly Whisperer

The butterfly obsession continues... and as fascinated as my boy is by his winged friends, I am equally fascinated by watching the scientist in him emerge and take flight. He is learning so much, and so am I... there's so much more to know about butterflies than I ever imagine possible. So prepare yourself, I'm going to be very long winded today :-)

Our most recent adventures in lepidopterology began when we found some very tiny (about 3/8 of an inch) Black Swallowtail caterpillars on our parsley. (Like Eren's!) This was a triumphant moment because my guy had planted the parsley not for culinary use, but specifically to attract these caterpillars. He was so impressed with himself that it worked!

His caterpillars grew by leaps and bounds, shedding their skins at least 3 or 4 times and eating us out of house and home. Interestingly, some got quite fat before going into their chrysalides, while others were not so large. 

We're wondering if this has something to do with the sex of the caterpillar, or the availability of food vs. the number of caterpillars present. Maybe it's the age of the caterpillar or could it be that when other caterpillars are forming their chrysalides it sends some signal to the others that it is time?... Ready or not, here we go? We're thinking on ways to test out our theories in the future. 

See, my young scientist is finding that there is no satiating a hunger for knowledge. The more nature teaches him, the more he craves to learn from her. 

But back to the caterpillars... My boy's favorite thing about these guys is their funny defense mechanism. 

See those orange "horns"? They are not always visible. They come out when the caterpillar is alarmed. It is an osmeterial gland that forms a dual purpose - the first is to look frightening. The caterpillar throws it's "horns" about in a very threatening manner. It also looks a lot like a snake tongue, don't you think? The second purpose of the osmeterial gland is to create a very foul smell that wards off potential predators. And does it ever stink! You can't imagine what a LARGE odor can be made by such a very small critter!

Now about the time all the caterpillars formed their chrysalides, we had begun working on planting a butterfly garden. My guy found himself with even more questions... what would attract our local butterflies? Where could we find those plants? How should they be arranged. 

He also wanted to know if butterflies preferred a certain color flower. 

So he began devising ways to find out. This involved lots of sketches of elaborate butterfly houses that he would build over our garden, so that he could sit and watch, make notes about which flowers the butterflies visit. But how to keep a constant supply of different colored flowers blooming and at the ready? 

Eventually he decided that it would be easier to conduct an experiment with some sort of faux flower set up. Again... elaborate plans, this time for silk flowers and misters, or pumps, or manually dropping sugar water in each flower. 

Finally we read up on existing research about butterfly color preference, and found our study model in Martha Weiss, a Georgetown University Professor, and lauded scientist, who studies the interplay between plants and insects, and also the learning capabilities of butterflies and wasps. 

Following her example (which we read about in a fascinating book called An Obsession With Butterflies), my boy came up with this: 

... paper flowers with a pipette in the center that has been filled with sugar water. 

That original set up soon morphed a bit because he thought it was hard in such a small space for the butterflies to land accurately. He thought the flowers should be flat against the box to give them the ability to land and just walk onto the flowers. 

We also wrote to Ms. Weiss and were so crazy excited that she wrote back. Imagine the squeals and excitement preteen girls give the Jonas brothers, and you'll come close to how my boy felt when a "real live butterfly scientist" wrote to him. Not only did she write, but she treated his interest and his  experiment so respectfully. She spoke to him as another scientist. 

Ms. Weiss graciously gave him some tips for conducting his experiment. She even explained how to hold the butterfly and, using a straight pin, unroll its proboscis and dip it into the sugar water, teaching it that these flowers are a good food source. 

He's done this three times so far, about a day after each butterfly emerges from its chrysalis. Each and every  time that the he gets a butterfly to drink on its own, he glows with such pride... his experiment just might work, his babies are eating, he has accomplished something really special. Real science. We have seven more caterpillars pupating at the moment, so there is more of that wonderful feeling to come. 

It's been less than 24 hours, so we've got no definitive color preference results, but we're hopeful. Each of the caterpillars will spend a couple of days under evaluation (we will be making note of how often each different colored flower is visited) and then the butterfly will then be set free. 

It looks as though we may be learning about far more than flower color preference through our butterflies though... 

See how the butterfly on the right is much more colorful and larger than the other? It is a female, and the one to the left is a male. In most animals it is the male that is more showy right? Well we have learned that female butterflies don't judge their mate by his coloring. One interesting study found that females did not even mind  if their mates were dyed various colors. In the case of butterflies it is the MALES who seem more moved to action (wooing or fighting) on the basis of color.

We've got parsley in with our pair now and are watching carefully to see what we can learn from them about mating behavior and (fingers crossed) egg laying. 

And yes, I'm a little worried about where that might take us, but also so excited to see what comes next. Stay tuned!

- Stefani

Dragonfly or Damselfly?

On hot summer evenings near lakes and rivers, sometimes you see a fast little whiz go by you.  Dragonfly?  Damselfly?  I have heard both of these terms used interchangeably.  "They are the same thing, aren't they? I heard a friend say last week.  I answered, "I don't think so, but I am not sure of the difference."

So, we had to look it up.

No, they are not the same.  They both belong to the order odonata ... we've brgun talking about how animals and insects are classified and some of the latin words are really fun to say...like odonata. 

Because both the damselfly and the dragonfly belong to the order odonata, they have the following things in common:

• Both have large heads and eyes compared to their bodies.
• Both have two pairs of wings with lots of veins visible
• A long thin abdomen

However, there are differences between the two. 

• Dragonfly eggs are round.  Damselfly eggs are cylindrical.
• Dragonflies are faster.
• Damselflies have hinges enabling them to fold their wings together behind them when resting, dragonflies do not. Dragonflies hold their wings open and to the side when at rest.
• Dragonflies are larger and fatter in most cases.

Can you guess with photo above is the dragonfly and which is the damselfly?

Yes, the top photo is the dragonfly and the bottom one is the damselfly.

Happy weekend!

-Eren