Category Archives: bugs

  Guest posting: The pictures and text are from my nine-year old grandson, Finn.Alistair Preparation is important before going to hunt dragons with your grandfather. After all, dragons are wily and skittish. So before heading out, we checked our equipment and refined our stalking … Continue reading →

  Damselflies are mating again. Courtship is simple: The male looks for a good egg-laying site and then shows it off to a potential mate. Usually the site is an aquatic weed near the water’s surface, but this particular damselfly male has ineptly chosen … Continue reading →

  The darner season is upon us.  Darners are a group of large, colourful, dragonflies that relentlessly patrol shorelines for insect prey. Happily, they are voracious eaters of mosquitoes. Unlike some groups of dragonflies that hunt from a perch—and so … Continue reading →

  In Acorn and Sheldon’s book, Butterflies of British Columbia (Lone Pine Publishing, 2006), the Anise Swallowtail is described as the most common swallowtail west of the Rockies. Locally, I have had frequent views of both Western and Pale Swallowtails: e.g., butterfly love, yard delights, butterfly … Continue reading →

  I use my camera to record things seen, and this blog to record things learned about things seem. This normally effective formula failed with these two unknown shield bugs mating on a daisy: I have not even been able to discover … Continue reading →

  The crab spider (Misumena vatia) can change colour from white to yellow. This allows it to become almost invisible as it sits on similarly coloured flowers while it waits to ambush an unsuspecting pollinator. The favourite local perch of the … Continue reading →

  Why is that wasp eating my deck furniture? Wasps gather wood fibre from dead wood and mix it with saliva to use as a nest-building material. The wood may come from trees or plant stems, but also from a human’s … Continue reading →

  This is the season for viewing a Bombylius fly. Last year’s posting about this bee-mimic fly was also made mid-April. This year’s images are strikingly similar, same species, same dried grass, same flowers. The difference is that I now know a little … Continue reading →

  Bumble bees are back. The first to appear are the only ones to have survived the winter: the queens. They have the monumental task of feeding, establishing a nest, laying eggs and raising the first generation of workers.  The … Continue reading →