Here are my thoughts so far. My goal is to document biodiversity in a suburban setting. When one thinks about nature suburbia doesn't normally come to mind ... rightly so. We humans have altered the environment to make it suitable for us to live here in a very high density. That means most wildlife has to go. For instance, when we first moved into our subdivision there were signs for deer crossings. They've been taken down because the human population in the area has boomed. There are no more deer nearby. Opossums (Didelphis virginiana) regularly came into our yard. It drove our dog mad. Not anymore. More humans means less opossums.
But that doesn't mean that all wildlife has gone. In fact, there is quite a bit of it left. You just have to know where to look for it. If I am going to make my retirement years useful with this blog I need to document things that aren't well documented elsewhere. After thinking long and hard about it my conclusion was ... insects!
My wife and I both like plants. We have planted to attract hummingbirds and butterflies, but the plants attract other insects as well. I don't know of anyone (although there certainly has to be -- feel free to enlighten me) documenting diversity in a suburban environment. So it is here I think I can make the biggest contribution.
There are two big disadvantages to this idea however. First, I'm not that good with insects. I do well identifying mammals. I do respectable identifying birds. I'm OK with reptiles and amphibians; plants fair. Insects ... I suck.
The second problem, insects are small. Most of them are really small, an 1/8 th of an inch or so. I own a Nikon D60 camera and have a 65 mm and a 105 mm macro lens which allows me to take some pretty good photos:
This is a picture of a Milkweed Assassin Bug (Zelus longipes) eating some unidentifiable insect. It does a good job but I need better if I want to be able to identify things like that unidentifiable insect the assassin bug is eating.
Fortunately, I have an old dissecting microscope and I have bought a digital camera attachment from which I can take pictures. One problem with it is that it takes pictures in .BMP format and blogger lets me only post JPEG, GIF, or PNG files. At this very moment my computer whiz of a son is trying to show me how to convert the file.
Here goes an attempt to show my pictures now:
It seems to have worked. This is a picture of a beetle I pinned about 15 years ago. I have no idea what type of beetle it is (feel free to enlighten me ... please!!). The white thing that it is glued to is a chad cut out from an index card. So it is the thickness of an index card. That will give you an idea of the size of the beetle. I would be able to tell you better except that I misread the specs on the camera I brought. The specs said that it comes with calibration software that can be used with a micrometer slide such that the camera can make the needed measurements on its own. When I read it I thought the micrometer slide was included, but it isn't. I had to order the slide separately and it should be in tomorrow.
But in any case, I think that I have most of the equipment I need to document the insect diversity in the neighborhood, and have until my retirement to learn to identify them. I will probably be posting pictures that I take over the next few weeks. If an entomologist happens to read the blog and would like to leave comments on the identification, I would be grateful.
Thanks, and so the blog begins.
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