Interesting Beetles

I think insects are cool--as long as they're not in my house or biting me! Recently I saw a couple interesting looking ones. Before you go "Blah, insects," keep in mind that insects make up something like 95% of the species on this earth. And yet we don't know much about them. Sure, grizzly bears, whales, and elephants might be more charismatic, but let's face it, I'm not in a good place to take photos of them. So we're stuck with insects today, in particular two beetles.

I was on a picnic when this black beetle with the long antennae landed on one of my nieces. I wanted to get a closer look, so I transferred it to my leg. After a little research, it turns out that it's in the Family Cerambycidae, Longhorn beetles. This is a huge family, with over 20,000 identified species. Goodness gracious, did I have any hope of identifying it? Fortunately, those long antennae help distinguish it, along with the black body and white markings.

According to one posting I found on the internet, that little white v-marking, the scuttelum, between the head and thorax is a distinguishing mark for the white-spotted sawyer, Monochamus scutellatus. 

The white-spotted sawyer didn't stay still for long, but jumped onto my plate. It's preferred food isn't fruit salad, but rather conifers. Adults will eat needles and small twigs, while the larvae bore into the wood and create galleries under the bark. If one larvae gets too close to another, it will get eaten--they are cannibals! (See insects can be pretty interesting!)

Okay, onto our second insect. While I was hanging up laundry I heard a strange buzzing and saw this insect on some fabric on the ground. It was nearly two inches long and appeared to be stuck. Henry took great interest in it and I had to keep him from eating it. 

It was only after I had moved it to the grass that I realized it was a beetle. I tend to forget that beetles have wings. This particular beetle with its distinct markings made it relatively easy to identify as a member of the Family Scarabaeidae, or a Scarab beetle. This is another huge family, with about 30,000 members. Some scarab beetles were considered sacred in ancient Egypt, while the Japanese beetle is considered a pest in the United States. 

This particular scarab beetle appears to be a ten-lined June beetle, Polyphylla decemlineata. The straight reddish brown antennae indicate that it's a female, while the males have curved or fanlike antennae.

This species feeds on the roots of various plants as larvae and on pine needles and leaves as adults. Many species of scarab beetles are great recyclers, feeding on dung (scat), and thus are known as dung beetles.

Okay, that ends today's lesson on beetles. I bet you feel smarter! I'll be on the lookout for more interesting material to help enrich your life. Any requests?

Finding an Apricot

This past spring, the huge apricot on the side of our house was filled with beautiful apricot blossoms. We were hopeful that we would get a crop, because last year we had a late freeze and didn't get any apricots. But alas, we also had a late freeze this year, and so we resigned ourselves to another apricot-less year.

However, one day I was walking in the yard and a bit of orange caught my eye. I looked closer and found it wasn't one of Henry's chew toys, it was an apricot! I did a little dance of joy and picked it up, devouring it quickly. Apricots are one of my favorite fruits.

I looked up at the tree and saw that although there weren't apricots in the lower branches, the higher branches had a few of the brightly colored fruit. Early settlers to this area planted apricot and other fruit trees to feed themselves and the miners that were searching the desert for riches. This particular tree is about 50 years old.

I'm not the only one who likes the apricots, the birds are continually up in the tree. This apricot has a peck mark from a bird. Due to the long fall, many of the apricots are bruised, so I have to eat them quickly. It's such a hardship.

I have other competition for the apricots--Henry and Desert Boy. Both seem to like apricots a lot, and for awhile I was worried about Henry's lack of appetite for his dog food. Then I discovered that I was finding pits under the apricot tree and not apricots--because he was eating them. 

This time Desert Boy gets the apricot and hurries off to enjoy it. We planted a variety of other fruit trees a couple years ago, but the late freeze got everything except the apples. We should be enjoying them in a couple months. I can hardly wait.

Exploring a Lava Tube

I've had the opportunity to explore some lava tubes in different areas of the deserts, like El Malpais National Monument in New Mexico, Wupatki National Monument in Arizona, and Snow Canyon State Park in Utah, to name a few. The lava tubes fascinate me, as I think about the time when hot lava was flowing right where I am standing now. The lava was just the right consistency and temperature and moving at just the right speed to leave behind a tube. 

Many times the entrance to a lava tube is where part of the lava tube collapsed. It's common to enter a lava tube, go for a short while, and pop out another entrance at another collapse point. 

Here's my brother Andrew coming out of a secondary entrance, which has a gate across it to protect bats part of the year. Yep, you've guessed it, we're going to start on another Andrew adventure. That means it's got to be good! Andrew took his friends Bobby and Shae caving. I went along with Desert Boy to take photos and provide commentary.

As you might imagine, lava tubes are usually just a tube, but once in awhile the lava did some crazy things, and here Andrew is checking out a side passage. He is doing his best to lose Shae and Bobby, but it is hard to get lost in a lava tube.

Please note he is not wearing Desert Survivor-approved caving gear. That lava is really sharp, and the floor is littered with loose boulders that make footing treacherous.

As we continued further into the cave, I spotted this little cave cricket on the ceiling. He can hold on to the lave just fine, and likes to spend part of his life cycle in this lava tube. The extra long antennae help him find his way around in the dark. When I saw him, the ecologist part of me got all excited and I couldn't resist taking a photo. Okay, now back to the caving adventure. 

And then we come upon a sight even more amazing than a cave cricket--it's Bobby! (Or is it the ghost of Bobby?) If you missed Bobby's earlier adventure, click here to read all about it.

Bobby is trying to light up this huge passageway with his lights. Bobby and Shae followed Andrew, and as the passage kept getting smaller, Andrew kept going, and they kept following. Eventually it became a crawl, and still they followed him. Then it became a squeeze on the belly. And still they followed. And for what?

To see cool formations like this ice stalagmite. Okay, it's not that cool of a formation, but lava tubes rarely have formations, so you've got to take what you get. The floor of the cave was also covered with a thin layer of ice. Sometimes when they took a step, the ice broke, and they plummeted through to cold water below. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

Or maybe they were following because they trusted Andrew with their lives. (Okay, I expect to see a few comments about that!) Perhaps they couldn't resist the adventure of seeing what else was in the lava tube. I understand the feeling.

Nevertheless, Shae, Andrew, and Bobby survived their trip through a lava tube with only a minor amount of dirt and no obvious blood. And look at the smiles on their faces--I think they enjoyed it!

Monsoon Weather

It's late summer, and that means in many North American desert areas it's monsoon season. Giant clouds build up over the mountains, get excited, and send down lightning bolts and deafening thunder. Every once in awhile the clouds even release some moisture and we get some rain.

Monsoon weather is found across the globe. We generally have monsoons during July and August, when winds blow moisture from Mexico and Arizona up towards our direction. The winds heat up as they cross the hot land, and when enough moisture is present in the air, the combination creates clouds. These clouds build and build, forming large thunderheads. They are really cool to watch, but they also can make mountain hiking dangerous due to the increased lightning activity.

 
Here are some actual rain drops hitting the windshield! Of course the wipers don't work that well on our desert vehicles, because the hot sun makes the rubber on the windshield wiper blades crack and we use them so infrequently that we forget to replace them.

During one recent monsoon rain shower, I went out in the garden to weed. My garden has been terrific at growing weeds but so-so at growing what I planted. The cloud cover and gentle sprinkles made for a perfect temperature to make my garden look more respectable. Meanwhile, Desert Boy and Henry were playing in the sand and then in a muddy puddle. I figured we had better try to clean up Desert Boy, especially because he was wearing a white onesie and now had a very black behind. So we went to clean up any self-respecting person does: we went to the kiddie pool! Here's a 22 second video of Desert Boy cleaning up in the pool, with a little help from Henry.

Following the dip in the kiddie pool, sure enough, Desert Boy was much cleaner.
He was also sporting some extra curves with his bulging diaper. And that's how we end up when we begin discussing monsoon weather!

Desert Destination: Kane Spring

Out in the desert, between two roads, is a solitary Russian olive tree. Russian olive trees only grow where there is water, so I knew there had to be some water there. I even learned the name of the spring that was supporting the tree, but it took many years to finally go visit it. And then last week, I did.

The first thing I saw when we got out of the truck was the sign reading Kane Spr and the old watering trough, now empty. This didn't look too promising. Was the spring still around?

I started circling around the tree and eventually came to a wet area with lots of watercress. Being an ecologist, I pulled up a handful and began examining the roots to see what little critters I could find.

After just a moment searching, I found what I was hoping to find, a tiny springsnail. The water in this spring had been flowing for thousands of years, because this little snail certainly couldn't have crawled from the nearest spring, which was probably at least five miles away.

The spring channel led to this little pond. I was amazed that I hadn't seen it in the first place! The vegetation around it grows so tall that you can't see it from where we parked. 

A large bird flew by, letting us know that the spring wasn't home just for springsnails. It looked like an owl, and I started searching for sign. See the background of the photo? There isn't a single tree in sight.

Up in the tree was a large nest, but I couldn't see anything in it.

The owl came back and landed on a tree branch. I could see that it was a long-eared owl. Wow! This desert spring was definitely worth the stop.