Monday, August 22, 2011

Bugs in Huntington Beach Central Park

The grass in the park was swarming with bugs. There were hundreds of tiny little green bugs hopping and flying, thousands of gnats, and a seemingly endless stream of wolf spiders following them.


A small brown bug perched on the grass. I had thought it was a grasshoppery type, but a closer look and a post on bugguide.net marks it as, probably, a marsh fly, sepedon.

The wolf spiders would probably be pretty happy to catch a few of these as well. This one is resting on the grass growing in the boggy part of Talbert Lake.




A damselfly happily resting beside one of the streamlets. I was so excited to be able to actually get a picture of it. It's so small and clear that I had a hard time getting the camera to focus on it.

My usual bugguide questioning and looking says it's probably a Pacific Forktail (Ischnura cervula).

You know, the more I work on learning names, the more I realize why people use the Latin names. It's not snobbery; it's because there are so many bugs that share common names. At the same time, it would be so much easier to learn just one name! And don't get me started on the way "they" keep changing their minds about various species! (Right. Rabbit trail. Back to my bugs of the day).


And last but not least, a crane fly, a bug I know as the "mosquito eater," though probably it doesn't eat mosquitoes at all.

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