Bug Hunting: June 2022

it's been far too long since I went on a bug hunt in my own yard. Even though we moved in here to the Crooked House in late spring, Texas time, I was too busy to find my camera (it has been located) or even to do what I did this morning and go out with the cell phone on macro setting. 

Perhaps it's a sign, then, that I had an uncontrollable urge to spend my morning break hunting for the little things. I did learn one thing. Finding bugs in Texas is going to be a different affair. Nothing was moving, even though it was still a relatively cool 84F. It was very dry, however, and that will limit insect activity. But there was nothing on the few flowers I had within my range. 

Which, really, was not a lot. I went out into the backyard, and was never more than 30 feet from my door. Limits me to my tiny container garden, weeds, and concrete. Soon, I'll plan for finding wildflowers... but that's likely a weekend trip. I've also located my butterfly nets, and although I maintain that isn't a valid way to conduct an insect census, they may very well be useful to at least begin on the task of naming everything in my yard. 

In the meantime, I found one, and one found me. 

A red ant - not a fire ant, this one is larger than those little fiends. I know it's hard without scale. There are a lot of ant species in Texas.

Pogonomyrmex barbatus, the Red Harvester Ant, with it's distinctively blocky head.

A tiny new leaf. This sapling will have to go, it's in a flowerbed. I can date when the garden here was left to rack and ruin by the young trees: three years. I'll begin the massive chore of clearing them in the fall.

The bug that found me. As dry as it is, we still have scads of these unwelcome visitors.

Thai Basil flowers, I need to cook some stir fry and prune this plant.

Straggler Daisy (Calyptocarpus vialis), a small native ground cover.

And the regular basil blooms are rather different from the Thai.