How Long it takes Snails to Eat Paper

As I started out on the morning's walk the other day I noticed this group of garden snails converged on a round paper thing . . . what looked like a lid of some sort to a food container maybe . . . on the sidewalk.  The paper was wet, probably from overspray from the sprinklers in the nearby planter of star jasmine ground cover, also probably the snails' home and shelter.

Nearing home after four miles or about an hour later, the snails had pretty much consumed the paper.

Large Amounts of Milkweed Bugz

Are large milkweed bugs (Oncopeltus fasciatus) pests?

In years passed the milkweed bugs have been plentiful on the milkweed plants for several months, then the population goes down as either the milkweed declines (sometimes due to monarch caterpillar feeding) or weather changes or something known only to milkweed bugs.  In other words the bugs seem to be part of a self regulating natural cycle.  They ebb and flow among the milkweed fluff and since the milkweed needs regulation itself they seem to leave no mark in their passage.

Since I noticed the first group of them in late May, and the first bug maturing to adulthood in mid-June the large milkweed bug population has, well, enlarged.

There are hundreds of them of all ages on the milkweed in the backyard and they have moved to the milkweed in the front yard as well.  Aside from feeding on the milkweed, which is their birthright after all, do the bugs do any real harm?

I suppose if one were freaked out by bugs in general or bright orange and black bugs specifically one might be troubled by the sight of the large conglomerations of them.  Possibly they could interfere with the success of monarch caterpillars, another milkweed specialist, by taking up feeding positions or reducing the vigor (as if that were possible) of the milkweed.  I haven't really noticed that being the case, but who knows? maybe a female monarch will avoid plants loaded with the bugs.  There have been few monarch caterpillars in evidence this summer but maybe that's not the milkweed bugs doing.  But wait.

Just about the time I'm agreeing milkweed bugs are not pests I was shocked to find a small to medium mass of bugginess on an aeonium plant, an offspring of Juan's aeonium no less.  Are they feeding there?  Are they breeding there?  Since the first discovery five days ago, the bug bunch has grown in size and numbers as seen below.  Aeonium is not remotely related to milkweed, but unless these guys are just resting up for their next foray up the milkweed, I'd have to say that Oncopeltus fasciatus finds something useful in aeonium.

Grasshopper Life and Death

This bright green grasshopper (schistocerca nitens, I presume) caught my eye on top of a borage plant.
I suspect they have pretty good vision, at least detecting motion and large black objects well; this one moved away and sidled behind the bristly stem as I approached with the big scary camera.

It appears to be a female and if so, has a lot of growing to do: bad news for those borage leaves.  Adult females often are 3" long; this one is just over an inch.

The nymph stages of the grey bird grasshopper are found in different and often bright colors; the very small ones are what I call focus free green:  it seems like their surface defies autofocus by means of its pebbly surface resulting in sub-par photos typically.

The adults make the final molt into winged beings that are mostly greyish brown, though not unattractive.

One day I found this very large and unusually bright brown female among the fennel stems.  Surprise, she was dead, a dried out husk of short horned hopper quite possibly the mother of the next generation shown above.  Does it make you feel uneasy referring to an orthopteran with inhuman starey eyes and hinged mouthparts as mother?

Still, this one undoubtedly mated and inserted her eggs into the good and seldom-disturbed soil in my garden under the phlomis.  Never visited by her offspring she ended her life clinging to a food plant; later a fly visits her carcass looking for a meal or a place to lay eggs.

Anise Swallowtail

See July 11 post for the tale of the anise swallowtail.

The Rise of the Small Assassins

Another exciting part of the alarming increase in the presence of bugs in the garden is the sudden rise of the assassin bugs.

Zelus renardii was one of the first loves of this blog, going way back to 2005 with this post in which I ruminated about the difficulty of identifying buggies due to the vast varieties of them, some poorly studied or documented.  Since that time dedicated professional and amateur entomologists (and arachnologists and other -ists too) have built up wonderfully helpful resources online with new information including blogs, photo galleries and even online keys to help identity based on appearance, behaviors, times of emergence and geographic distribution of species.  Thank You.

And oh joy, Z. renardii now has a common name:  Leafhopper assassin bug.  Not sure what the basis of that name is, but I'll run with it.

I found several adult leafhopper assassin bugs on the fennel, including this one which the distended abdomen . . . a gravid female from the looks of it.  Here is another view of her with a green stink bug looking on among the fennel flowers.

Assassin bugs lurk slowly among flowers where other buggies come to feed and Pow, grab them with their forelegs then pierce the prey's body with the long proboscis and suck out the juices.

This assassin has captured a green bottle fly (Lucilia sericata) near a bud of the red buckwheat.  I just read a reference (see under Remarks) that suggests this species and other Zelus actually secrete sticky fluid and present it on setae (hairs) on the forelegs as an attractant to prey similar to a sundew plant.  Wow.

Green and Red Bugs

There is an explosion of bugs happening in the yards now, not only of numbers but of species.  In particular, the true bugs of sub-order Heteroptera are going nuts.  These two, a small sampling, were found in close proximity both location wise and color wise.

The stink bug on top is Thyanta pallidovirens, red-shouldered stink bug.  I don't think this species has ever visited us before unless it was one of the less colorful variants.  Smaller considerably than our usual green stink bug (Nezara viridula).

The bug hanging almost spider like from a borage seed is Creontiades rubrinervis.  It looks as though it was feeding on the seed, but this group of bugs (Mirids) is most commonly found sucking plant juices and many of them are crop pests.  Heteropterans go through a gradual, or hemimetabolous, metamorphosis.  As they grow they molt and change shape and/or coloration until the final molt produces a winged reproductive adult.  This one is a sub-adult; you can see the wing buds.

First Flowers

Oops I missed posting on bloom day in a timely fashion, but that doesn't mean there weren't flowers that arrived exactly at the appropriate times:
The first (and 2nd) rudbeckia hirta of the summer;

a cactus I've had in a pot for years offers up its first ever bright orange blossom.  The bud enticed for many days but the flower had faded by the second afternoon.

Of the multiple morning glories one blooms its first on the front porch; another one that nearly died waiting for me to transplant it puts out a flower which later faints into the nearby fencepost;

an unusual and unnamed aeonium blooms after years of pretending to be dying;

and the uncarina roeoesliana blooms beautifully but in vain since there is no pollination partner anywhere near here.

A Beautiful Katydid

Forktailed bush katydid (Scudderia furcata) glowing in the early morning light is freshly molted and perfect.

Now, to find a mate.

Early Morning Greeter

When I visit the back garden before the sun has crested the house or the RV and the cool night shades still linger among the hairy rudbeckia and borage leaves, I am greeted by this crane fly that startles up from his resting place closer to the soil.  Down there the shadows and cool last longest and I've disturbed the repose of this fly that we associate closer with the damp of spring.

A male crane fly can only be seeking one thing other than cool shade and that would be a female to mate with; unless he already has and therefore would be waiting to expire among the rank summer foliage.  This looks like one of the Tipula crane flies, maybe T. paludosa.

First Mantis

I noticed this mantis the other day as I was preparing to water the adenium plant it was lurking on.  At first I thought it was a molted mantis husk because it was so light in color.  I reached out to examine it and it moved on up the sparsely leafed and heavily thorned branch it was on.

Later I found the actually shed exoskeleton dangling from another branch, much less lively but similar in color to the real mantis.

This looks like Stagmomantis californica, the species of mantis that has been stalking my garden, except the coloration is much lighter and the stripes on the legs are missing.  In this previous post is a mantis of the same age showing the coloration I typically see.  I know there is color variation in California mantis, and I also wonder if they have some ability to change color to match their environment.  This light one blends in so well with the shiny grey bark of the adenium branches.

I also wonder how many insects it takes to grow a mantis.  Not only is this adenium sparse (not sure which species it is but it has much fewer and smaller leaves and flowers than the typical Desert Rose you see), but it is growing in a pot on the patio, making for what I imagine are slim pickings in the prey department.  Still, the little white mantis continues to stalk among the thorns, the first and only mantis I've seen in my garden this year.

Anise Swallowtail

When a new species breeds in my garden, it is a moving experience.  I feel humble, exultant, proud, nervous, awed, and hopeful.

On June 19 I first noticed four small (2nd instar) caterpillars of anise swallowtail (Papilio zelicaon) on the foliage of a fennel (foeniculum vulgare) in the back yard.  I've grown fennel for several years now, but the past two years the patch has enlarged.  Perhaps it's finally reached a size acceptable to breeding anise swallowtail.  Anyway, I was really exciting by this turn of events but nervous because of the numerous caterpillar preying polistes wasps cruising the fennel.  On June 21 I checked and there were still four, and one of them recently molted.

I took a short trip to Chicago for a few days and though I did ask Mr. Cardui to check on them, 

I mostly left the caterpillars to their fate.  

While in the windy city, I saw a spider.

Upon my return to Tustin on June 27 I found the caterpillars to be greatly enlarged.

I could only find 3;
by June 30 only one of the original four was still to be seen feeding among the foliage.

I did see some black gooey droppings among the leaves; quite possibly from the intestinal purging of one of the caterpillars just before marching off to pupate . . . but where?  After the June 30 sighting I did not see any more caterpillars.  I looked all over the fennel plant, having read that these caterpillars commonly pupate on the fennel.  No luck finding any and so it seemed the wasps may have had their way with my Papilio zelicaon population.

It wasn't until July 8 that I noticed this pupa on the Eriogonum giganteum, St. Catherine's lace.  You can see how the pupa is supported by a silk lashing around the middle.


The pupation site is about 6 feet away from the fennel where the caterpillar fed.

A few days later on the early morning of July 11 the pupa has changed color, indicating that eclosure is imminent.  How soon I had no way of knowing, but when I checked during lunch break around noon it looked the same.

It was a sunny warm day, a good day for butterflies.  Later on, at about 1:30 I took a look and the butterfly was fully emerged, wings filled and rigid, beautiful.  I went for the camera; still there when I returned but had climbed higher on the buckwheat.  I barely raised the eyepiece to my eye when the butterfly made one beat of its wings then flew off and up strongly to the east and over my house.  I was privileged to have glimpsed it at least.

This is the empty pupa showing how it is split to let the butterfly free.

I noticed several drops of whitish fluid below the pupa, and wondered if this is meconium.  Compared with meconium of monarchs and mourning cloaks I have seen which is bloody red, if this is meconium (waste product from metamorphosis expelled by the butterfly) it seems so pure.

Does this have something to do with what the caterpillar fed on, the amount of waste produced, or have I simply witnessed the birth of an rarified butterfly spirit?