Does she or doesn't she?

 Another visitor came to my light.

Field cricket, Gryllus spp., female.

Males have two cerci (my guide says "pointy things") at the back of the abdomen. Females, besides, have an ovipositor, the egg-laying organ.

Head view. Interesting "grabbers" at the mouth.

I tried to capture her to put her outside, but she was too fast for me and hid behind a cabinet. Shortly afterwards, another cricket started to chirp just outside the window and kept it up off and on all night. Males chirp, females don't. I hope she went out to join him.

Do crickets fly? Or did she have to climb up the wall to find her mate? Looking at the photos, I see her tiny wing covers; are there full-sized wings underneath, all folded up?

Some species of field crickets have fully-formed wings and do fly. Others, also among the field crickets, are flightless. Which is she?

I found a photo with those stubby wing covers, but this cricket, Gryllus campestris, was in Czechoslovakia. I couldn't find any near here. E-Fauna, here in BC, has another field cricket, G. pennsylvanicus, but this one has full-sized wings. And a much longer ovipositor.

Maybe I'll see her again. And I'll ask her; "can you fly?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Llegó otra visita atraída por mi lámpara de noche.

Fotos: Un grillo hembra, Gryllus spp.

Los machos tienen dos cercos (apéndices largos en la extremidad del abdomen). Las hembras, además, tienen un ovipositor, un órgano usado para depositar los huevos.

Traté de capturarla para sacarla afuera, pero se escondió rapidamente tras un gabinete. Poco después, un grillo empezó a cantar afuera de la ventana, y siguió esporádicamente toda la noche. Los machos cantan, las hembras no. Ojalá mi visitante se haya ida a acompañar al cantante.

¿Vuelan los grillos? ¿O tuvo que subir la pared en pie para buscar su pareja? Mirando las fotos, vio los cobertores de sus alas, muy pequeñas; ¿tendrá debajo de ellos alas completas todas dobladas?

Algunas de las especies de grillos de campo tienen alas perfectas y si vuelan. Otras, también llamadas grillos de campo, no pueden volar. ¿A cual grupo pertenece esta?

Buscando, buscando, encontré una foto con esos elitros cortos, pero este, Gryllus campestris, estaba en Checoslovakia. No pude encontrar ninguno cerca de aquí. En E-Fauna, hay otro grillo de campo, G. pennsylvanicus, pero este tiene alas grandes. Y un ovipositor mucho más largo.

Puede ser que la vuelva a ver. Y entonces, le preguntaré — ¿Puedes volar?

Beautiful wings

On a crane fly:

Tipula sp.

I looked these up on BugGuide, and found several with the same patterns (this one, for example), but BugGuide only identifies them down to the family, Tipulidae, or Large Crane Flies. It doesn't really matter; other LCF know where she belongs.

She's female; the males' abdomen ends in a club, while the females have this sharp, pointed ovipositor for laying eggs.

On a moth:

What are you thinking, little one?

On BugGuide, I found several different species of cutworm moths, Apamea, all present in the Pacific Northwest, all similar to this one. Apamea cogitata seems to be the best match. And I like the name; it means "Thoughtful Apamea".

And on a cricket:

Gryllus sp., female, as shown by her long ovipositor. She was trapped in my sink and tired of trying to climb the walls, so she sat still for me.

Every evening this summer, boy crickets chirp hopefully out on the lawn, holding those short, leathery hindwings up at an angle and scraping the serrated edges together. The curve of the hindwings against the body makes an echo chamber, amplifying the sound; females may hear the male's song up to 75 metres away!

Crickets are difficult to identify; most species look more or less alike. They are most easily distinguished by their song.

In a given area, it is usually possible to learn the various species through experience, by learning which songs go with which crickets at what time of year.  ... This is a group where it is actually usually easier to identify a specimen by hearing it than by seeing it! (BugGuide)

But the females don't make music; they don't have the equipment. So to identify a female, you have to find her mate, and get him to play you a song. I found a male tonight, hiding behind my favourite chair; tracked him down by ear. But once on stage, he refused to play any more, and scuttled away under the baseboard.

Sleeping with his eyes open

This astonishingly green insect was resting on the underside of a cap board on a wall yesterday. It didn't even twitch an antenna as I clambered up the wall and hung there trying to get close enough for a photo.

Unidentified.

The board is a 4x6, and the critter, from antenna tip to rear toe, stretched across about half of it.

From right up at his level. Risking my neck.

Photo cropped and flipped, to show his eyes and cute feet.

There were no insects like this in my books. Next stop, BugGuide. Where I tentatively identify it as a tree cricket.* I'll send it in to them in the morning.

*I didn't even know there was such a beast!

Update: it's a Drumming katydid, Meconema thallasinum.

Range ... Southern New England and British Columbia. See also BugGuide range map for an indication of the expansion of the range into neighboring states.
...
Remarks ... According to the Singing Insects of North Americs website, the subfamily of Meconematinae is represented in the US by only one species, M. thalassinum, which has been introduced from Europe. (BugGuide)

and ...

The Drumming Katydid or the Oak Bush Cricket, as it is known in Great Britain, is an immigrant to British Columbia. This small green bush cricket lives across the Lower Mainland and in the Victoria region. It inhabits deciduous shrubs and trees and comes out at night to feed on leaves and occasionally on other insects.
...
The name Drumming Katydid comes from the noise the male insects make by tapping their legs on leaf surfaces, creating a drumming sound that can be heard up to three or four metres away.
...
Invasion History
The Drumming Katydid arrived on the east coast of North America around 1957 and has since become established in the northeast United States and in Ontario. It appeared in BC in 1991 near Vancouver, and since then, it has become fully established in the Lower Mainland. (Alien species, Royal BC Museum)

Great Expectations - Interplanetary Rock Flipping Day, 2012

Is there a space rock in our future? Why not? We've flipped rocks everywhere else, haven't we?

This weekend, dozens of intrepid rock flippers have ventured out into the world to discover the wild critters, known and unknown, that inhabit the secret places. So alien to us they are, and yet so like us in many ways; our cousins, actually.

Here's a partial list of who we are and what we found. (Some reports are still to come in; I've heard that I should expect moose. We've got camels and leopards already.)

In no particular order:

• Troy Bartlett (founder - or founding member - of BugGuide; we owe him a debt of gratitude) took some amazing harvestman photos. See them on Nature Closeups. Butt shot! A stare down!
• Alex Wild, posting in   Scientific American, joins us for the first time, with ants and millipedes and an ant cricket from his backyard.
• Roberta flipped river rocks; some of her findings are posted in Growing with Science, the rest in Wild about Ants.
• Lynda at Mainly Mongoose doesn't flip any rocks, but finds toothy Dwarf Mongooses underneath some, anyhow. 

'There are older and fouler things than orcs in the deep places of the world.'

• Margy, at Powell River Books Blog, for the second year running found no crawling or creeping critters. Not for lack of effort; what's going on with the shoreline at Bellingham Bay? At least she got some eelgrass this time.
• Patrick, a student of lunar petrology (Told you we'd gone interplanetary!), blogs at poikiloblastic.    I never knew a rock had defense mechanisms before! And he has a photo of a cute (really!) slug.
• Hugh, at Rock, Paper, Lizard, gifts us with another Interpreter wildlife expert story. "A rubber boa?" I'd never heard of these before. Yes, they do exist. Did they find one? Read the story.
• Clytie, at Random Hearts remembered. Didn't find critters, but there was a pretty heart, so all is well.

Some kind of twirly insect casing ...

• Olivia, at Beasts in a Populous City, learns a modicum of humility.
• Benet, at Walking with Henslow, flipped rocks in Starkweather Creek. Sow bugs with lime green spots!
• Pablo at Roundrock Journal, reports on another of his biodegrading experiments, and finds a cricket and a companion rock flipper; an armadillo.

Some kind of stripy insect casing ...

• Bill, at Fertanish Chatter, checks in with some pretty millipedes, a "nifty" spider, and is this a toad bug? A sight for sharp eyes!
• And then there's a toad, no easier to see than the toad bug. Judy's husband found it; Judy blogged it at LilacGate.

 Then husband said "What is that?" and I finally saw the toad, settled in for the winter.

• Kate St. John, at Outside my Window, flipped a rock, found a leopard. And a pair of camels!
• Rebecca in the Woods; an ant and a beaver. (The beaver was not under the rock.)
• Bug Girl posted an announcement on Skepchick, and a couple of flippers turned up in the comments. Here's Greenstone123's story. Ant kitchens! And scribe999? Don't give up. Not even in Jersey!
• Also in comments, on Rebecca's blog, Madhu in Sri Lanka found a couple of ants.  And Christopher (in Missouri) found ticks, and got too many tick bites to count. It's a wild and dangerous world out there!
• And on to the Flickr group! We have photos from Sara (mamasara4), from Georgia (georgiabkr), Dean (Ontario Wanderer), Benet (benet2006), Upupaepops (Upupa4me), Bug Girl (bug_girl_mi), and Pablo (Paul Lamble). Beetles, crickets, slugs, and so on, including an angry isopod, making threats to Upup...'s fingers.

Not under a rock; all around the rock piles. In blazing sunlight, on my grandson's shirt. Fuzzy, but I like the contrasts.

• And then, there's me. I still haven't written up my post. (That should give comfort to a few others who haven't logged in yet. There's still time!)
• NASA's stone is still unflipped. Of course, they take years, decades even, to get anything done. And there's always that transmission time to take into account.
• Update: Here's my post: Hard-scrabble existence.
• And an e-mail from Gail Bellamy reports, "Jamestown, New York----nothing but a few small ants----then a split large rock with the first layer had 2 black ants, but the bottom had a large fat toad resting comfortably. All are still in place." She doesn't include photos, unfortunately.
• Update # 2: Fred sent in his report from the Muskrat River, Ontario, via e-mail attachment. I've posted it here.
• Update # 3: And Mark, operating on the Celtic calendar, sent in his results today, Sunday the 16th.
• I think that's the lot. Have I missed you?

I'll send an e-mail with the list to all the participants, but feel free to copy this list and paste it on your own blogs. Thanks for Rock Flipping with us!