Ladybug

Remember when you were a kid, and  you were either lonely, sick or sad?  Then a ladybug appears on your finger or if you're lucky rests herself on the tip of your nose and as you look into her eyes, you feel better?  Mishy had another visitor by her favorite riverbank in her small world.  First she flew quickly passed me and landed quite close to me.  I asked her to stay still 'if you please, because soon winter will come and I know you are cold blooded and you will hibernate during the winter.  So I might never see you again" and with that, she stayed still for me to take her picture.

I had to be quick because her little wings actually beats over 80 times a second! That's even faster than a hummingbird who beats 50 times a second.

A lady bug is a sort of beetle and she wears either an orange or red dress with black spots or in some parts of the world, she will don a black dress with red spots!  In choosing, well naturally selecting these clothes she is actually very smart, because in the natural world her bright colored clothing is often viewed as unsafe or unpleasant to eat.  So birds won't eat her and if that fails, she's got another trick up her sleeve and she just falls to the ground and plays dead.

Tiny lady bugs can eat aphids which can destroy crops and plants and her name actually came from a Legend that dates back as far as the Middle Ages at a time in Europe where crops were being damaged by pests.  Farmers began praying to the Blessed Lady, The Virgin Mary, and well legend says that soon lady bugs began to appear and saved the fields from pests! So you see this is when her new adoptive name was lady beetle, which through time she has been introduced simply as "LadyBug".  She's been known to bring luck and good fortune and Mishy was sure fortunate enough to have seen her.

Grasshopper on the river bank

While sitting on the water's edge waiting for a view of a salmon or trout, Mishy had a great surprise!  I looked down beside me and there on the grass sat a tiny grasshopper!  At first it didn't really look alive let alone look much like a grasshopper.  It blended in so well with the dead leaves on the grass, I wasn't quite sure what it was.  But suddenly it seemed to look up at me as if to say, "well, are you going to take a picture or am I going to have to wait here all day?" So with that, I grabbed my camera from my bag as he  patiently waited for me to find the correct setting to take the most perfect shot my camera has ever taken so close up!  I thank you wherever you are.

Shrinking Plants and Animals!

By now you must have heard about the effects of global warming on our planet.  Changes in temperatures, extreme weather changes like droughts, heat waves, tsunamis.  There is less oxygen in our oceans and shrinking glaciers! It's all pretty sad and scary stuff!

Now recent studies have shown further results that many of our species of plants and animals are also shrinking because of warmer temperatures and lack of water.  This is probably the scariest thing to happen in Mishy's Small and Shrinking World!

Spiders, beetles, ants, cicadas and my favorite insect of all, bees have all shrunk because of climate change.  Shoots and fruit are between 3-17% smaller and fish have shrunk up to 22% for each degree of warming! But there is hope and evidence is seen in all life forms.  One simple word, adaptability.  Darwin calls it, Natural selection.  Whatever changes occur in climate change or  its effects, life forms will adapt.  

The Grasshopper

There is nothing quite so whimsical as a grasshopper!  They're fast as lightning and chirp like birds!  If you've ever tried catching one, you know how difficult it is.  Mishy saw one along the road and it stayed until she got her camera ready (I guess grasshoppers like having their pictures taken too!). 

I didn't bother trying to pet it, it would have most likely seen my hand coming any ways with one of it's 5 eyes! Yes thats right! Grasshoppers have 5 eyes (3 of them they call simple and 2 are compound).  With all of these eyes they can see far away, backwards, forwards and even sideways!  That's very fortunate for them, but they don't have a nose so they have to breathe out of holes along the side of their bodies.

Did you know that there are over 10,000 different kinds of grasshoppers?  They love to eat corn, oat, barley, clover and wheat so some farmers don't like them too much!  But they can still be helpful to farmers by eating poisonous weeds and leaving nutrients in the soil.  So the next time you see one, please don't try and catch it and let them work their magic instead! They may even smile for the camera! 

The Queen Hornet!

I was walking through an abandoned field the other day, when I looked down and noticed a dead grasshopper on the foot path.  I bent down to take a closer look with my camera, when a bee buzzed and hovered and landed on it.  I was scared to move, and wondered what interest a bee had in the grasshopper any ways!  When I came home, I read more about what I saw and what I saw had amazed me!  

Turns out it wasn't a bee after all!  It was a hornet instead! Hornets, they say are the most eusocial insects of all.  They are actually very gentle and social and in fact even shy and prefer to evade conflict outside of their nesting area. They have been given to myths and stories about their stingers being lethal when truthfully they are no more dangerous than a bee or wasp sting.

Now for the story of what really goes on in and around the Hornets' world!   It is a sad but true tale, and I will share it with you.  As it was October, what I was looking at here was actually a hornet carrying food back to the nest.  Back in April, the Queen Hornet left her winter hideaway to build a little nest where she would put down her first egg.  In a few weeks' time, possibly in May, the larvae would hatch and soon would go through metamorphosis (these larvae will eventually become her "workers").  Shortly after in June, the Queen Hornet was attacked by an intruder in the nest.  Soon her first worker reached adulthood.  By the end of June, Queen Hornet was attacked once again by the invader, but this time her 4 adult workers had killed off the invader.  By the end of July there were too many workers (over 180!) so they had to find a new place to nest.  So they had relocated.   In the beginning of August, the Queen Hornet laid down more eggs which would eventually become males and females (Young queens).  Well I guess you can sort of figure out what happens next.  By the end of the month both the males and females had emerged into adult hornets. Two months later, roughly around some time in October, the Queen Hornet dies.  Death by malnutrition from neglect from her workers.  Soon after her death, there will be the mating of the new male and female adults and the young queens will hibernate until April when the cycle will start over again.  The last of her workers will die in the first cold frost of November.  Told you it was sad, but I hope I haven't confused you! If I did, Watch THIS!

Monarch Butterfly

It was a beautiful August afternoon in a field of gold, walking with my son when he took the camera out of my hands and in a moment a shot was taken of a beautiful little monarch butterfly.  In fields, bugs and flies run rampant and thrive.  So if you want to capture a view or a touch from anything smaller than your hand, the fields are where its at.  

Milkweed

In fact if you ever want to see a monarch butterfly, I guarantee you will find them in a field where milkweed exist.  That's because milkweed is the only plant that a monarch butterfly's larvae ever eat! So now you know how to attract a monarch butterfly to your garden! Just plant some milkweed seeds.  The female lays her eggs just on the underside of the milkweed leaves.  Depending on the temperature, the eggs will hatch in about 3 to 12 days later.  These eggs will eat the plant for about 2 weeks and then, can you guess what the larvae grows into? 

That's right..a caterpillar!  In a while the caterpillar gets bored so he just hangs around, well rather hangs upside down on a nearby branch for a few hours while its outer skin is shed and he enters into the chrysalis stage for about two weeks before he becomes transformed into a beautiful monarch butterfly!  

Time lapse film on the stages of the monarch butterfly

The Wasp

While waiting for the bus, another small visitor came into Mishy’s world.  It was a cloudy dreary day outside, so I decided to wait inside the bus shelter when suddenly I heard a loud buzzing sound! Yikes! A wasp!  At first glance, a wasp looks a lot like a bee, but there is one simple clue that will help you notice the difference right away.  It’s their tiny wasp-like waist, which bees don’t have.  Before the off chance of getting stung by this little critter, I pulled my camera out from my bag and began to move in very close to take some photos!  Another co-operative model and I’m telling you from the heart, these tiny creatures just love having their pictures taken.  As a firm believer that all living things have a purpose, I would never kill anything.  A wasp has benefits to life on the planet, maybe not on this day in the bus shelter with me, but at some point in his life he will do enough good to justify his existence here on planet earth!  For example in a farmer’s field, a wasp will eat caterpillars that would otherwise destroy his crops.  An aggressive and predatory wasp will also be found a lot between August and October eating food in the garbage containers!   The female wasp is the one to watch out for as she is the one with the stinger, but it’s the male wasp that starts the wasp colony by laying eggs!  That’s a switch!  He does that until there is enough wasps in the nest and then she will become more fertile to do it herself.  Now that’s what I call a great partnership! I guess the only problem is that their nest is made up of wood and mud, so it must be very difficult to keep clean!

Katydid So!

While visiting a friends house in the country, I came upon something most unusual.  This wasn't an ordinary country house mind you.  It had a fancy fridge big enough to step into, a stove as smooth as glass, a flat screen TV in every room, a large and shiny BBQ on the porch and an inviting Jacuzzi bubbling outside!  I spent a great deal of time opening and closing the screen doors to keep the moths outside that fluttered excitedly just by the porch light!  Just then, something flew in and whizzed by my ear!  I followed it into the kitchen where it made a rest stop on the counter!  Hurriedly I grabbed my camera, and took a few pictures and it wasn't shy either.  The closer I got the more it looked to me like a flying leaf? A quick discovery led me to beleaf ..sorry believe that it was a "Katydid" .. a funny name, but the stick insect gets the name from the mating sound that it makes when it rubs or scrapes its two front wings together.  But I really don't think it sounds like its saying "Katy-did"?? :) Maybe you can come up with something different! But in the meantime, this is the name it has.  A Katydid can grow up to 64 mm long.  It has 4 wings and when he or she sits down, they fold nicely.  You can usually find them eating leaves in the trees and since this house is surrounded by trees and shrubs, it would make sense to see them around here.  Just like the 'cicada' the female Katydid lays her eggs in crevices of twigs, and bark and then in the spring the eggs hatch a nymph which will molt and shed its covering until it becomes an adult in the summer!  As for the 'Katydid' on the kitchen counter? I gave him or her a piece of lettuce from the fridge and as it stepped onto the pad of paper, I leafed it alone to see another day...

Ew Stink Bug!

Well word must have gotten out about my new blog, because today at work, a bug slowly eased his way across my telephone wanting to get his face on my page! He moved at a snails pace, and at first glance I thought it was a cockroach! But cockroaches don't like the light and my office is as bright a room as any!  They also move so fast, whereas this little guy in Mishy's small world crawled around without a care in the world.  It turns out, I am the one in the dark when it comes to bugs!  Apparently according to some, this guy is quite common.  He's known as the "stink bug" and he's looking for shelter, mostly because he knows winter is coming soon.  If you see one, don't bother swatting or stepping on them (not that I would ever do that anyways! yuk!), but if you do you will soon find out why they get their name! Turns out stink bugs..stink.  Yes, they give off a very foul odor when crushed.  In fact, experts suggest using a vacuum to suck them up.  Personally, I would rather do what I did today, wait until they crawl onto my posty note and send them off outside again, but then they'll just make their way back inside.  Maybe they'll just find another place to hide in.  With the temperatures dropping in September and October, the Stink bug will be on the rise.  So be aware, and keep your eyes on the ground.

The leetle Beetle

 So there I was on the bus.  It was early in the morning, and you can see what day it was by the date on my newspaper...that's right.  Wednesday morning and the sun was beaming from the side windows making it quite difficult for me to read the news, so I laid the paper on my lap and in an instant, a flyer dropped down to take a look.  It was a beetle of course.  Why not?  Did you know that beetles as a species, take up over 25% of all known life forms?  In fact 40% of all insects species are ... beetles.  So it's no wonder that one of 400,000 species decided to land on my newspaper today!  But what kind of beetle was it?  Well that was the hard part in determining.  So after doing the best I could to narrow down the possibilities, I came up with 'the Scarab beetle' which is common in North America.  If you can do better than me, feel free to write me and I will post your name with your finding on my blog!  So now I had to put aside the paper, and find out more about the beetle.  It goes through stages much like most insects.  First the female lays the eggs from several dozen to several thousand, to the larvae stage (which can last for several years) and then the Pupa to Adult.  The adults lifespan can go from weeks or years depending on the species.  After a little more reading I find the scarab beetle specifically enjoys a diet of decaying organic matter, which include dung (poo) and with that I placed the newspaper by the window and set him free :)  

The Amazing Cicada!

 Just when you thought it was safe to go outside.. You may be on your bicycle going for a ride or hiding under a foot bridge for shelter under the rain when you spot one...you move in for a closer look.  Come on its okay, you're just curious!  
What is it? you wonder...should I get closer?  It's a Cicada.  They are benign to humans, so don't worry!  What that really means is they don't bite or sting, although they might mistake your arm for a tree limb! They are the longest living insects in the world!  With some species living up to 17 years before venturing out from underground in large numbers!  They spend years living on tree sap below the ground.  Cicadas are very noisy and somewhat like a cricket, they sing to attract a mate.  The male Cicada's song sounds somewhat like a 'clicking' sound which resonates from a hollow base of his abdomen.  The contractions of his stomach muscles will repeat this clicking and once he's won the heart of a female cicada, she makes slits in the bark of a twig, where she puts her eggs. Watch this little movie from my favorite story teller and photographer, David Attenborough who will show you the life cycle of the Cicada.


Click here to see The Amazing little Cicada!!

Freddy the Frog (a.k.a.Founder)

From his humble beginnings, Freddy entered the watering hole like some of his lucky buddies who survived as an egg then hatched and grew into a tadpole.  It took weeks and weeks of sticking himself onto whatever green flotation device that went by before Fred developed legs.  About 9 weeks he recalls, "I was getting sick of that boring diet of algae and was able to eat insects, dead though as they may be, and some plants.  Although I promised Lilly, I would leave her alone, if she would allow me to crash at her place once in while.  She agreed, and now we are the best of friends."  And so Freddy became larger still and after going through the awkward stage of resembling a miniature frog with a very long tail, he grew to be quite a dashing looking full grown frog.  Which you can see by the picture.  Although, some may disagree in our eyes, Freddy the Founder is quite the prince indeed.