My summer as a bee wrangler

I was corresponding with Jessica, who sends me great books on birds from Princeton Press (THE best ornithological publisher), when we strayed into bees. (She sent me this excellent book on North American bumblebees). It later occurred to me that my note to her might interest readers of the blog. I spent a summer not …

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Summer Sound

La cigale ayant chanté Tout l’été … (La Fontaine) Wyoming cicadas photographed in Laramie by Carlos Martinez del Rio.  

Sevilleta! (Part one: Bee Wrangler)

Here begins a new series about the Sevilleta NWR, located a few miles north of Socorro and encompassing both sides of the Rio Grande, stretching from river bosque to high mesas, cliffs, and canyons on both “sides”. It is unusual (among other reason)s because, unlike most National Wildlife Refuges, it is not generally open to …

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Art, Science, Insect Hunting, and Nabokov

John Wilson’s butterfly photos remind me of one of the great neglected stories of 20th century intellectual life; that Vladimir Nabokov was not just a writer and teacher but a great taxonomist, this despite being denigrated as a dilettante in his time. Joseph Conrad is legitimately revered for becoming a great English novelist in his …

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Two old (or old- fashioned) naturalists, and new photo series

Two old farts in the bar courtyard. John Wilson is an old style bug catching (or photographing) “stamp collector” naturalist like me, an Ohioan who retired from an Audubon sanctuary there to a remote homestead in the Mags– somebody I can talk bugs, birds, and taxonomy with! Luckily he likes beer too. I am starting …

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Fabre and Japan

This is not an analysis of the real importance, ignored these days except in Japan, of the pioneering ethologist of insects, the 19th century Provencal autodidact Jean Henri Fabre, who started life as a peasant kid herding sheep in the harsh hills of his home country, and later single- handedly invented the study of insect …

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Cool Bug

A South American treehopper sent to Q by Jonathan Hanson, who writes: “… It was posted by a herpetologist (and virtuoso violinist) friend of ours, Robert Villa, on Facebook. The description offered by a friend of his who has collected them was: ‘It is a treehopper, Cyphonia trifidia ; cicadas lack the pronotal expansions along …

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Carel’s Beetle

About a year ago, before chaos struck (or at least was diagnosed), Libby commissioned Carel Pieter Brest van Kempen to do a watercolor for my birthday. Someone asked if it would be a raptor. I was almost offended- every falconer in the world is inundated with such images. Given Carel’s eclectic tastes, I opted for …

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Almost a review

Libby recently read Jeff Lockwood’s Locust. Her letter to him is as good as a short review, and the last line could be a blurb: “I thoroughly enjoyed Locust. My favorite period of US history is the opening of the west during the 1800’s. When I was a kid we took many family trips to …

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