Journal #4
USA, California, Alameda County, Lat: 37.863630 Long: -122.261120, Elev: 64m, 30 April 2020, Coll: E. Antunez
Method: Hand catching
Time: 4:00pm-5:00pm and 8:00pm-8:30pm
Busy week for me but I did manage to step outside for a bit and look for some bugs. During the day, around 4:00pm I went for a little stroll. Went to throw my trash away when I came across a crane fly hiding behind a thrown-out bed frame, or at least I’m pretty sure it was a crane fly because to be honest, I still have a hard time telling them apart from mosquitoes. I decided to go to Willard Park just to take a little walk and found recently bloomed flowers that looked so beautiful! As I got closer, I saw these yellow aphids I had never really seen before! They also seemed to be a bit larger than the green aphids I’m used to seeing. I was sitting on the grass for a bit and I saw a little critter crawling around in the grass. It was kind of hard to catch and I had to pull out a little grass patch but I got a quick pic of a woolly darkling beetle! It looked so cool because the sun was out and the hairs on its back gleamed a nice light brown. I also saw a few Argentine ants crawling around in the grass. I went back home and stopped to look at some plants near my house and saw some snakeflies perched on a leaf. I went back out a little later with Amanda and saw a couple moths. We sort of saw the same insects, so I wasn’t sure if we could both post them but I think we both did anyway. There was a pretty large Lacinipolia moth on our window screen and it had an interesting design on its wings (good for camouflage). We also saw a couple smaller moths near a light along with some mosquitoes that somehow found their way inside our apt. building.
Species List:
1 Crane Flies
A couple clusters of Oleander aphids
1 Woolly Darkling Beetle
Argentine ants
Multiple snakeflies
1 Yellow V Moth
1 Lacinipolia Moth
1 Brown house Moth
2 Mosquitoes
Species Account:
The woolly darkling beetle was my favorite specimen that I found mostly because when I looked it up, it said that it was a nocturnal beetle and I found it on a pretty sunny day. I had also never seen a beetle with so much fuzz on it. It also had some pretty long hind legs which I learned they raised to secrete its defense smelly odor. I’m glad it didn’t secrete its defense odor, which I was unaware that it did until after the fact. I was also curious as to why it was covered in reddish-brown hairs. I wonder if they use them as sensors since they are considered nocturnal insects...
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