bugs

Sep 10 2011

Insect Friends

Last weekend we visited two different gardens, and L found some insect friends in each.
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At Auntie’s, she came across this big friendly ladybug.

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The next day, she was inspired to make a caterpillar house and look for caterpillars while visiting grandma’s.

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She didn’t discover any caterpillars, though grandma reported seeing some lovely green and black ones on her tomatoes a few weeks back. But she did find two green grasshoppers on the geraniums next to a rose bush.
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So into the caterpillar (now grasshopper) house they went. They didn’t stay long, but they humoured L and didn’t seem to mind too much. After testing out the box they went back to napping on the geranium.
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Maybe next time she will find a new insect friend!

By jill • by Jill, Geeky, Relatives, The Kid • 1 • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Jun 6 2011

Caterpillars

Do you know what I dreamed about last night? Caterpillars at Filoli! - Lucy

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One of the neat things about visiting Filoli is that you never know what you will see. The flowers are changed often, and the wildlife varies as well according to the season.

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Recently we have seen wild turkeys and deer, and even both in the same day! The turkeys are hilarious…very self-assured birds who sometimes walk in front of a car, puff up, and gobble gobble at you.  The deer are so used to Filoli that they do not bolt at the first sight of visitors…esp. since we stay mostly at a distance.

There is also a resident rooster at Filoli, and though we have never seen him, we hear him often. Sometimes they let one of the chickens roam around in the garden…the last time that happened, Lucy was just a baby. She was scared of it even from a distance, and wanted to run away.

Oddly enough, her grandmother was also scared of chickens. She related this to me one time when we were walking through Filoli (possibly the same day as the chicken episode). Lucy has also shown a great dislike of chickens and roosters at petting zoos…so I think this might be an inherited trait.

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Anyway, the last few visits we have been noticing…caterpillars! There are the little tiny green ones that dangle on strings hanging out of trees and get stuck in your hair (they have these every year at Stanford too), and the regular sized ones with stripes or spotty patterns. Here are some of the cool caterpillars we found recently.
Anyone able to identify them?
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By jill • by Jill, Relatives, The Kid, Time Capsule • 1 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sep 2 2009

The bug

One warm August night a few weeks ago, Mike pointed out a big, stripey bug on our front porch. None of us had ever seen anything like it!

So we looked up the big bug, and found out it was a June bug.  This site said:

Ten-lined June beetle Polyphylla decemlineata Family  Scarabaeidae

Identifying Features: Large size, brown and white stripes, silky hairs on sides.

This impressive beetle is most readily seen in July and August as the males fly about in search of females. They are attracted to night lights, and the large parking lights of a store complex can be swarmed with these.  The males antennae are large and antler like, and they are used to sniff out the scent of females. This beetle lives as a larvae in the soil for three years before coming an adult and during this time it eats roots, which does not endear them to tree crop growers.  The adults feed on conifer needles during their brief life above ground and also can feed on walnuts or apple tree leaves. If you dare to pick up one of these beetles it will probably make a loud wankkkk sort of squeak, kind of like a toy baby doll.

Lucy, braver than any of us, proclaimed she was going to pick it up to see if it would squeak…but in the end, didn’t do it.

I think she’ll stick to ladybugs.


By jill • by Jill, Geeky, The Kid • 3 • Tags: , , , ,

Aug 9 2009

Lucy’s inchworm

Lucy and I had been wondering what was eating some of her plants…and yesterday we discovered an inchworm. We had a lot of fun getting it a leaf, watching it eat, and inch. We left it on the table overnight, and in the morning it had eaten a small hole in the leaf.

Afterwards we looked up some cool videos of caterpillars turning into butterflies…and the inchworm song.

By jill • by Jill, Geeky, The Kid • 2 • Tags: , , , , , ,