Freshly showered

These are a couple of baby geraniums I picked up at the grocery store. One needed extra water the day after I transplanted it. And I got more than I bargained for.

The water on the leaves was absorbed. On the petals, it stayed put. Why is that?

And what is that on the stem?

Very clean carpet beetle.

The other geraniums, in their pot:

Pink and very red. No carpet beetles.

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Compré unos geranios chicos en la tienda de abarrotes. Aquí, uno recién rociado, con su pasajero, y los otros, en seco.

Se evaporó rapidamente el agua que cayó en las hojas. pero en los pétalos persiste. ¿Porqué será?

¿Y el pasajero? Un escarabajo de alfombra, Anthrenus verbasci, bien limpiecito.

In the absence of raccoons

I keep the BirdCam loaded and aimed at my birdbath, where raccoons occasionally come to drink. Every few days I check the photos. Usually, they're of juncos and chickadees, chickadees and juncos, and sometimes a raccoon tail, just leaving. This week's take was a disappointing series of me, out in the night murdering slugs.

As I went to replace the memory and start the camera going again - never give up! - I saw movement on the edge of the lens. A little springtail going around and around, following his own footsteps, like Piglet. The BirdCam delivers, one way or another.

"There's gotta be an end to this path."

"Maybe back this way?"

I'll have to send this in to the Springtail group for an ID; Entomobrya sp. or Orchesella, possibly.

While I'm at it, here's a carpet beetle that dropped in to visit. He's a giant alongside the springtail.

Not a raccoon, either.

He never stopped running

I fed my carpet beetle larva generously with prime wool hairs from my carpet, and a filet of dried fish tail from the hermit crabs' treat shelf. And he looked happy enough in his pill bottle, wearing a red wool scarf and stuffing himself with fish.

But the minute I tipped him out, riding on his piece of fish, he abandoned it and took off running. The only time he slowed down was when he hit a little wall around the lid I'd moved him to. A few seconds later, he was up and over and racing for shelter.

I gave up.

Fat carpet beetle larva, momentarily paused.

I'm happy with my new flash gizmo, though; the whole length of the larva is evenly lighted, and there are no deep shadows, which I always got using only the ambient lighting and the on-camera flash.

Now, to find a critter more willing to sit still for me.

Trial and error and error and error

I bought myself a gizmo to slave* an auxiliary flash to my on-camera flash, hoping to get more light on my tiny critters, and even out the shadows.

*(How it works; a sensor in the box sees the flash go off on my camera and instantly sets off the flash attached to it. I can put it anywhere, nearby or not so near, behind, above, beside, bouncing off a reflector or straight at my critter.)

And since then, for the last two days, I've been spending every spare minute learning how and where to put it. By trial and error, of course; and mainly error. Like shooting an entire series of a running carpet beetle larva, and then finding out that I'd forgotten to turn on the extra flash. Or shooting through a separate lens without checking to see how clean it was. After half a dozen sessions of this, the larva is not pleased with me, at all.

Meanwhile, isn't this a pretty baby slug?

Sleeping 1/2 inch slug on a wet maple leaf. Taken with only the on-camera flash.

More trials tomorrow. I've had it for today. So has my larva.

The secret beauty of carpet beetles

Sometimes the old and familiar takes you completely by surprise. Something you took for granted turned out to be completely wrong. Case in point . . .

I settled down this afternoon to practice taking macro photos again. For subjects, I had a small green worm, a hitchhiker in the eelgrass I collected for my hermits; and a carpet beetle.

The worm was fairly co-operative, given a tiny pebble to cling to for security. But there's not much to him; a long tube, green on the bottom, brown on top. A green spot at the head end. That's it.

Full length, stretched out, about 1 inch. A ribbon worm.

The carpet beetle was another story. After being incarcerated overnight (6 months in beetle years), he had one thought on his little mind: escape. I got dozens of shots of his retreating rear end. I gave him some grains of sugar, which did slow him down some, but only enough to gather energy for another run for freedom. Eventually I capitulated and put his glass plate over ice. Time slowed down. I got a couple of passable head shots.

Facing his captor. Defiant.

Even on a 1 mm. long beetle, coming in that close for a macro leaves a narrow band in focus. If I get the eyes, I get a blur for the body, and vice versa.

And at this distance, the flash works, but the beetle is in the shadow of the lens. I'll have to get a slave flash for better lighting.

Same photo, processed in a different program, (free Picasa), with sketch lines added. They give definition to the scales and facial features, but fade out the colours.

Now, here's the surprise. I've examined, fed, housed, cajoled, and photographed dozens of carpet beetles. I think they're pretty, with the orangey-brown, black, and white pattern. And they're available. They keep volunteering by sitting on my drapes or kitchen wall until I collect them. But other than the patterned back, the rest is done in a dingy battleship grey. Or at least, that's what I've seen.

But now I'm zooming in a bit closer, and the colours appear. In every photo from that distance, the legs show up green. The antennae are a reddish rust colour, the outer mouthparts green, the next ones in, white.

The camera overdoes the colours, so I desaturated them for the photo above; he's still wearing red, white, and green. I compared his colours to the worm's taken in the same spot. The worm is as I saw him, even at full saturation. Should I trust the camera? I'm not sure.

Now I'm sorry I released Mr. C. into the garden once the photo session was done. I need another carpet beetle! And a better light. What other glories have these critters been hiding all these years?

A hint of pink

I think this is the first carpet beetle I've seen since this summer, an unusual state of affairs. He didn't want to stay around for photos, but I tempted him with a slice of cranberry.

Stopping to investigate ...

"Thanks, but I've got places to go."

At least I caught him with his wings half out. Is that pink on his back his true colour, or a reflection of the cranberry?

Brainy dust

I was sweeping the kitchen floor, when a speck of dust escaped from under my broom and ran for cover. Not fast enough; I was faster.

"Dusty", running still, under glass. She's about 1 to 1.5 mm long, not counting legs. It's hard to measure a critter that won't stop running.

Smithsonian Science posted an article yesterday, entitled "Brains of tiny spiders fill their body cavities and legs, Smithsonian researchers discover." They measured the brains of nine species of spiders, of all sizes, giant to pinhead size, like Dusty, here.

As the spiders get smaller, their brains get proportionally larger, filling up more and more of their body cavities. ... “The smaller the animal, the more it has to invest in its brain, which means even very tiny spiders are able to weave a web and perform other fairly complex behaviors,” said William Wcislo, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. “We discovered that the central nervous systems of the smallest spiders fill up almost 80 percent of their total body cavity, including about 25 percent of their legs.”

I am amazed, but this does help to explain the ability of such a tiny bit of life to hunt, build webs, and escape dangers like my broom. I'm trying to imagine these legs, full of brains down to the knees. And brain surrounding the heart and lungs, the digestive system and muscles.

When she lost half a leg, did she lose IQ points?

Until I had time to photograph the spider, I kept her in a plastic container, 1 inch tall by 1 inch diameter. She spent her time building a messy web; when I opened the container, I found her hanging upside-down in the center, hoping to catch some lunch, no doubt.

I moved her, took photos, and released her to go back to work patrolling corners for dust mites and other invisible (to me) beasts.

A while later, I found a carpet beetle near the bedroom window, and dropped it into the same container without thinking. (I may not be as smart as a spider.) When I went to look at it, I found the poor beetle all tangled up in sticky web.

Carpet beetle, cleaned up. He's almost 3 mm. long.

Walking on the bottom of a leaf. Note the hooked claw.

Angry larva

It's been a long, long time since I saw carpet beetles around home. Maybe they were just hiding out; I shampooed the carpets a couple of days ago, and this afternoon, I found a larva heading up the wall. I collected him, of course, and put him in a container with a pill of wool from my sweater for food. He should have been grateful.

He wasn't. He led me a merry dance tonight, when I tried to take his photo. See:

Carpet beetle larva, tail end.

He kept running away, even though I tempted him with a nice dead amphipod to eat. He wouldn't slow down, so I flipped him over with a paintbrush.

Belly up, and squirming.

He was fast; I had time for at the most one shot only each time I flipped him. Then he was up and running again.

I noticed something I'd never seen before; the larva was getting annoyed. Every time I put the paintbrush in front of his nose, he lifted up a bunch of tufts on his tail for a second or two, as a threat gesture. So I annoyed him even more, trying to get a photo of that. The best I could do was very blurred.

Angry larva, still running.

Now he's sulking in his jar; won't even touch his wool and yummy amphipod. Ungrateful wretch! I could have squashed him, couldn't I?

Company for supper

I was on the road most of the day, yesterday*. It was good to come home and find company waiting for me:

White crowned sparrow, looking for supper. His mate was more timid, and waited in the shade of the hedge. 

Carpet beetle, just finished his supper on the cut edge of an African violet leaf.

And today, we're going to the antique fair. We're sure to find something interesting to show you.

*Friday, that is. Even though I haven't gone to bed yet, it is Saturday morning. I wish the days ended a few hours later, after I'm sleepy enough to go to bed, so I could avoid this confusion!

Beetles, please!

Call for submissions: I will be hosting the next "An Inordinate Fondness" carnival here in a few days. Please send me your best beetle posts from the last month before the morning of the 16th.

(I do hope someone out there has seen beetles; it seems that they aren't quite ready to wake up this spring yet. Even Ted, at Beetles in the Bush has gone over a week without one. Here, the only one to turn up so far this year is a singularly uncooperative carpet beetle. He refuses to sit still, has no interest in anything I try to distract him with, and if I cool him down ever so slightly, goes into a sulk.)

Sulking carpet beetle. Slightly more interesting upside-down.

Warming carpet beetle. Running already.

Send your posts to me, at wanderinweeta AT gmail, and that's DOT com.

But, Baby, it's (still) cold outside!

Another welcome sign of promised spring (even if it snows tomorrow): a carpet beetle at my window!

Sipping at a cool drink of sugar water.

As long as they don't lay eggs in my sweaters or carpets, they're welcome to drop in for a snack. As soon as it thaws, though, this guy's going outside to nibble on flowers instead.

Shrimp feathers, crumpled moth, eye of hermit...

I've been experimenting with settings and lens configurations on the baby Sony. I'm still impressed with what a tiny point-and-shoot can do. These are a few samples from tonight's work.

Through the glass of the aquarium:

Eye of hermit. Big Blue, IIRC.

Carapace of smallest shrimp, with one fuzzy eye. The carapace is transparent. I think the pinkish blob is a stomach. But what are those feathery shapes behind it?*

*Gills. Hugh explains in the comments.

Looking down a hermit's throat.

With this arrangement - camera lens zoomed to its maximum, homemade lens attached in front - I have very little leeway. The field is shallow, and the subject has to be less than 1 1/2 inches away. At least, in this camera, the flash works even nose to nose. That helps.

And I keep a couple of long-dead, dry-land critters to practice on:

Crumpled 1/2 inch long moth.

And a faded, dusty carpet beetle. 1 mm. long. I don't seem to find any live ones these days.

The whole moth, taken with all automatic settings and no extra lens.

Next, I'll take apart my lens, clean it, and rebuild it for a tighter fit. And hope I don't ruin it in the process.

A shameful failure at hospitality

Often I go looking for critters; sometimes they come to me. This week, I've had a half-dozen visitors show up at my door or on my wall. Helpful! Saved me grubbing around in the cold and damp.

An Indian Meal moth, Plodia interpunctella. Fed to the Venus fly-trap.

I've had a bit of an infestation of these. I didn't know how they got here until this next one showed up:

Larva of the Indian Meal moth. Found near the bag of Black Oil sunflower seeds I keep for the chickadees. Now in bug jail.

Then there was this fat little carpet beetle larva:

Upside-down and struggling to roll over. The pink is shreds of a wool blanket that provides warmth and food.

Flipped! Now trying for an escape. Didn't make it; he's back keeping an older one company in my carpet beetle house.

This pretty moth was outside the door, slowly freezing to death. I put him in the fridge.

Unidentified moth, possibly a litter moth.

It has a long "snout", up-turned, and ending in two "teeth". It flew away before I could get a better photo. Maybe later.

At least it's warm, finally. It's resting on my ceiling, above the computer.

And the last; just another weevil.

Upside-down, playing dead. Weevils do this; it's very handy for taking photos.

Right-side up, still playing dead.

Poor old weevil is now sharing a bottle with my Venus fly-trap. I feel vaguely guilty.

The sixth, to make up the half-dozen, didn't get photographed. It's a nice little spider, now living under the stove. I'm hoping she will keep her eyes out for more of those tasty meal moths.
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Home remedies

It's been raining off and on for a couple of days, and I'm down with a bit of a cold. Time for comfort food, a good book, and idle playing with the camera's settings. I made my lazy-day stew (leftovers, ground beef, and all the veggies in the fridge), and Richard Dawkins' latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, came in the mail yesterday morning. So that's taken care of.

As for the playing with the camera, I experimented with RAW format, discovered that it doesn't help - much - as long as I'm using Picasa for editing. Besides, it takes forever to save a photo in the camera. Maybe I'll use it in the future; not for now.

Here's a sample of the photos, after Picasa "fixed" them, with a bit of cropping and resizing.

Dried pearly everlasting. Harvested on the Sunshine Coast a month ago.

A dried, rolled leaf off my prayer plant.

The business end of a Venus flytrap, through dewed glass.

A carpet beetle larva. I've had this one in a bottle for several months, with a wisp of wool and a piece of feather. He's doing fine, growing and chomping away. 4 mm.

And now, to take an aspirin and head to bed. Just what the doctor used to order.

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Living with carpet beetles

Over the past year or two, winter and summer, I have been finding the occasional carpet beetle on my walls. Mostly, I have killed the larvae, observed and photographed the adults (and blogged them), killed the survivors. (I check behind the laundry basket for larvae daily.) After all, I don't want larvae in my sweaters and books.

But I had questions; how do the adults get here? How do they survive; what are they living on? How long do they live, and where, when it's freezing outside? How often do they breed? How long do the larvae live in our closets before they pupate; where are those pupae, and what do they look like? How long are they in this stage?

Most of the books and websites I found were focussed on discussions of control methods; how to eradicate carpet beetle larvae from your home and lab. Information about life cycle, especially the adult stage, was scant and brief.

Carpet beetle, in the wild.

When, with the advent of warmer weather, carpet beetle adults started showing up here more regularly, I found a glass container with a good lid (an old butter dish), and started keeping them alive on my desk.

"Pet" carpet beetles, on flower petals.

They live for at least a week with no food available. I give them a drop of water every couple of days. In a couple of websites, I read that they eat flower pollen. One named the flowers: daisies, asters, spirea.

Hmmm. The daisies and asters aren't out yet, and there are no spirea near my place; what have they been eating before they decided to pay me a visit? I've been treating them to the small flowers from my garden. They like maple flowers, dead nettle, apple blossoms; they seem to ignore violets and pansies. And they live longer than before.

They sleep often; sometimes I think one is dead. I have learned to mark its position. Hours later, when I check, it's "dead" somewhere else. They don't try to escape; their walls are glass, and they don't climb them. And their wings are used mostly for helping them flip back on their feet after they take a tumble. They don't try to fly out when I take off the lid to observe them. (Other beetles aren't so cooperative.) Awake, they trundle about, nibbling at the flowers, occasionally stopping to sip at a droplet of water.

Carpet beetle in captivity, on apple blossom stem.

How about breeding? They lay their eggs in sheltered locations; under baseboards, in crevices in the woodwork, and so on. I gave my "pets" an inch-square piece of coloured paper for a hiding place. That should provide the illusion of shelter and the eggs will stand out on the paper.

I can't tell which is male and which female, but once I had four or five live adults in the container, I figured there would be at least one couple. I kept a close watch on them, and caught a pair in the act:

Love in the springtime.

And there are eggs on the underside of the paper! In a couple of weeks they should be hatching. I'm planning the nursery already; a tightly-lidded, double-sealed container made cozy with old wool scraps. Maybe I should give them a stuffed Teddy bear.

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Catching the food is only half the battle.

It's been a while: it was last May when I last saw an adult carpet beetle around here. Today I found two.

This one was in an awkward corner of the kitchen. When I tried to trap it, it dropped, bounced off the paper towel I was holding, and fell onto an antique aluminum thermos that sits beside the stove.


I went after it immediately, but by the time I was on the floor, it was caught in an invisible web, and this spider was on his way.

Carpet beetle, about 2 mm. Spider, even smaller.

Good enough. The object was to put the beetle out of my misery; if it also served as spider food, so much the better. But I brought the thermos up to the table to watch the proceedings.


The spider rolled the beetle over, then left, dragging a line; I could see the beetle move, slightly, in the direction the spider had taken.


Once the line was anchored, spidey came back, crawled all over the beetle, prodding at cracks,


then went off to anchor a line again. I watched while he repeated this sequence several times.

The idea is to immobilize the prey, both with webbing and venom, maybe store it in a protected place, then eat it when it is properly "cooked". But these beetles are difficult; with the legs and antennae securely tucked into their slots, and armored plates over the belly, the spider may not be able to find a vulnerable spot for an injection.

After some time, the spider must have decided that beetle was safely tied up, and he went off to explore his new surroundings. I shooed him back onto the thermos, and moved it back to its place, spider, beetle and all.

But first, I looked back at the beetle (I had been following the spider around). It was moving:

See the two legs waving?

It wasn't going anywhere, though. The webbing was holding it. It would do.

Spider, unidentified, as yet.

I checked on it later this afternoon. There was no sign of spider or beetle. I wonder; did the spider drag the beetle off to his lair? Or did the beetle work its way out of the web? I'll have to be on the lookout for it, just in case.

(And I had no idea my old thermos was so badly scratched up.)
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