Natural History : BUGS

Sunday May 5, 2013 High 70s 11-130

Stink Beatle- pinacate bettle, it is a species of the darkling beetle. This bettle is noted for its defensive tactic of standing on its head and spraying noxious spray. I found this bug under a log, and it was very quick and hard to catch, it would run, hid under some leaves and then play dead, it look me a while to catch him. It was a shiny black color and had some light lines on its back that were a slightly lighter color.

Armadillidiiae vulgare- is in the insect family it is part of the Woodlice family, they can roll their bodies into a ball shape and this process is known as conglobation. I found this under a log, and it was very easy to catch, it rolled into a ball first and I then caught it. It looked like it had a sturdy outside shell, so I was amazed with its ability to roll into a ball so quickly.

This is hard to see, but its a picture of a massive spider, I haven't been able to identify it because it was really hard to even take a picture of and its not very visible. It was huge!!

Forget-me-not- Myosotis - with close to 50 species in the genus there is a lot of variation, most are small and this one has blue and yellow. they can tolerate partial sun and shade. I had not been to my site in two weeks so this was the first time I had seen these flowers. They must have just recently bloomed!

I have noticed, the horse tails have grown much larger close to 25-45% larger than they originally were two and a half weeks ago. The sword ferns seem to be not a as vibrant green, some seem to be dying while others are slightly brown in places. The salmon berry is also done blooming, so that is also a new observation this week. Overall my site was very very green, and seems to be growing like crazy. The hill side was covered in this beautiful purple flower which I am unsure what kind of flower it is, possibly not native, I will post a picture below.