Pacific Views

Bug Blogging: Calling All Stragglers

This post didn’t quite make it up before I left, but I’m glad now because it’s given me an excuse to go back through my insect pictures from the trip. There are still a few leftovers, like the giant spider, that lose a lot of impact when trimmed down for web consumption. I’ll have to suffer only showing them to my offline friends. Oh well. As fun as it was to take them, it’s more fun to share them. Enjoy.

After walking for around an hour on a hilly road on a humid day with the sun right on top of my head, I got the chance to invade the privacy of another happy butterfly couple. So naturally I dropped what I was carrying at once and took out the camera. Should a person ever be too tired to want to photograph lascivious butterflies? I sincerely hope not. These two were a lot more jumpy than the last pair, but they were caught in the act, just the same.

In this pair, it was the green one that flew off towing the yellow one. The fellow student I’d showed the previous set of pictures to explained that it’s the male that does the mid-air towing acrobatics. The pair might stay together for as many as six hours while the male holds on in a process called mate guarding, ensuring that no rivals get a chance to move in.

These next two are good enough leaf mimics that I probably wouldn’t have noticed them at all if they’d been still. I found them near one of the few remaining stands of primary forest left in this region, on Finca Loma Linda, where I also saw the butterflies in the previous photo.

Even in a very small town, over distances that could be crossed on foot in a few minutes, the insect population could change dramatically from place to place. In the high grass around some of the more open coffee stands on a beautiful, sunny day, you could find yourself walking through veritable clouds of butterflies. Step out onto the road, bare rocks and dirt, and it might often as well have been the moon for all the life you might find. There were different ones closer in to town than in the greener areas and the types of greenery changed the types of insects you'd find from place to place. So there's no telling what sort of variety it might have been possible to see before the forest came down, or what might come back if more of it returned.

This ant, which was a bit over an inch long, crawled up the inside of the front door one fine evening while the family was watching television and I was playing free cell working on a report. I’d never seen a furry ant before and no ants quite so large.

I benefited once again from having an insect scout team always looking out for something interesting to photograph, I would have missed a lot of the nifty critters that passed through the house otherwise. But my family was just super cool like that.

The scorpion however, well this one I found all by myself later that night. A few days before I took this picture, I was visiting a friend’s house and sitting on the back porch. I heard some shouting out front and another friend that I’d walked over with was standing out front in his boxers with his pants on the ground. There’d been a scorpion in his pocket, since who knows when, and when he put his hand in he’d gotten stung. So with this memory fresh in my mind, This little guy comes skittering up the wall right alongside my computer desk when I was still up after everyone had gone to bed listening to my headphones and playing free cell writing for the blog. It froze for no particular reason that I could tell. I took a few pictures during which it didn’t move. Then I got out the shoe. I apologized to Guiselle the next day for the noise, she thought I’d maybe dropped something, but when I showed her the picture she was glad I’d been up to find the thing. My sentiments exactly.

The little green bugs of several types are referred to as a class, locally, as esperanzas, or hopes. It’s supposed to be good luck to find them in the house. Guiselle explained this to me one day when I pointed out a cousin of the one on the left with the little yellow spots. I would have felt a lot more touched and charmed by this revelation if I’d not accidentally stepped on one in my bare feet the day before.

This is the only one of the brilliant blue butterflies I managed to catch a picture of, and only because it seemed to like landing on our black and blue bags. Note if you will the bright green tongue on display in the photo where its wings are raised. It stayed far longer on Julieta’s bag, a lighter and brighter shade of blue than mine, which was just fine with me. It was also the last insect whose photo I got a chance to take and I’m glad of the parting gift. But I won’t close with it.

I’ve never felt this last picture really went with anything and wasn’t really quite enough for a standalone. Also, it was a little disturbing to see in person. Compelling, certainly, but not exactly the sort of photographic subject I really wanted to lovingly dwell on.

It might appear that this pile of caterpillars is climbing over something in particular, but they’re not. They’re climbing over each other, going roughly the same direction and maintaining roughly the same shape of pile. I saw them walking home for dinner one night and took this picture. It was a little over an hour before I headed back towards town along the same road and the pile was a few feet away, moving off in another direction and in a configuration that looked about the same.

Posted by natasha at August 26, 2006 11:21 AM | Costa Rica | Technorati links |