In March of 1882 a little known journal that had been founded only two years prior was about to go under – nobody wanted to read it, and its owner was tired of putting any more money into it. But an enthusiastic entomologist named Samuel H. Scudder, who at that time, after many years of…
Category: Insects
Say’s trig
Yesterday my wife called me – “You need to come to Mahoney’s [our local garden center], there are tree crickets on every Holly bush.” I promptly grabbed a few containers and was there in a matter of minutes. And indeed, the place was resonating with soft, bell-like calls of dozens of crickets, but I did…
Scorpionflies
The Estabrook Woods near the town of Concord, MA have over the years become my favorite local place to find interesting insects and ancient plants. It is also a great location to let my dogs exercise their primeval desire to chase little furry things (always unsuccessfully) and wade in stagnant, swampy water. Recently I wrote…
My crumbling beliefs
I always assumed that there existed at least a few immutable truths about the natural world, dogmas that had no exceptions, no matter how hard you looked for them. One of them, I thought, was the rule that flies, which cartoons and children books made me believe were the favorite food of frogs, should be…
Hanging in there
Things have been keeping me away from updating the blog, but I finally found a moment to write about one cool animal that usually shows up at this time of year in Massachusetts – the scorpionfly (Panorpa). Or at least that was the original plan. Since I had, literally, only one, rather lousy shot of this…
Helmeted katydids
Porgera, a gold mine in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, is not a pleasant place for a biologist, especially if you are aware of the massive environmental damage of its operations, or the frequent human right violations that this mining camp is known for. But we had no choice but to sleep with the…
The Smaller Majority 