Early bird entomology specimens

It all started with January when I found an insect in the Genus Largus by the TCC South campus library. Well in that same day I found some kind of small worm that was a caterpillar of some kind. The jury is still out on the ID so I still don't know what they heck it is, but that is okay I will just let time pass until it gets an ID. Well anyway then a few day after that while I was sleeping my family found a Spring Cankerworm Moth on our kitchen ceiling. We have had a few warm days but it seems to me that this is the earliest I have seen insects come out. Then at Lake Arlington I keep finding droves of young Wolf spiders. As far back as I can remember it was Crane Flies that I would normally start to see. However after becoming a self proclaimed naturalist I have noticed many other species of insect early birds. This is really cool to see some of the early bird insects come out from their hibernation. I have seen about two Largus species or so, and I even found a Bumblebee I think it may have been an American Bumblebee. Anyway I heard from Sambiology that Cloverworm Moths were active now but so far I haven't seen any of those. However I did a little digging a couple of days ago when I was logging the ever growing string of backtrack photos from as early as 2015- 2016. I took a break to show my mom what a cankerworm looked like. I like to share my photos with my mom and tell her about my sightings and observations and tell her what I know about the subjects. I was showing her the cankerworms and found out that they like cold weather. That is what kind of threw me because insects are cold blooded so before that point I thought that they were not active but now I am singing a different tune about insects and spiders. I need to really do more research on these insects. I have been trying to look up stuff from my observations and I think I am going to do a mass study session this summer when I have more time and learn about my observations. Some of the stuff I have needs a little more digging into so that way if I ever encounter another one of those creatures I can tell the groups about them more in detail. Just so that way I don't have to blank if it is one I really want to talk about on a hike. I am new at this and kind of green but I am a fast learner when it comes to these sort of things. I may not be a fast learner at math but natural science and English and history are more my speed. I guess I need to do a little bit more digging into the insect list and see what else comes out this time of year. The winter is almost over and spring is almost here so it is going to be a very interesting season. for now I will be looking for more early birds but it will soon be spring and my camera is at my ready. So I guess that is all for this post until next time I am going to study up on more early comers.

Posted on February 8, 2017 07:43 PM by galactic_bug_man