Just Because: And the Ladybug Came to the Ladybug Picnic

Sue Hubbell, a sort of overview book review and just plain gushing

Sue Hubbell is one of my new favorite authors, that's all there is to it. She's endlessly curious, devoted to invertebrates, good at tracking down experts in various fields, and the kind of writer whose books feel like letters from a good friend who is excited to share her latest discoveries.

I read Shrinking the Cat: Genetic Engineering Before We Knew About Genes some time ago and cannot remember much about it except that it was a discussion of the number of ways we've modified the world, that the chapters on cats and apples were especially fascinating (Do you know apples are related to roses? Some wild apple trees have thorns!), and it left a positive impression--enough so that I can't believe I didn't hunt for more Hubbell books then.

Broadsides from the Other Orders: A Book of Bugs and Waiting for Aphrodite: Journeys into the Time Before Bones are both bug books. Good bug books. Each chapter of the books focuses on a particular creature--butterfly, cricket, or sea urchin, and details Hubbell's fascination with the creature and the process of discovery as she learns more about it. The result is not just that one learns a great deal about the invertebrate in question but that one shares the sense of wonder and discovery that goes into the learning.

A Book of Bees: And How to Keep Them interested me less as I do not keep bees nor live where I can, but it was still fascinating to read about Hubbell's work in learning how to keep them, her relationships with her neighbors, and her neighbors' responses to the bees (Though I should warn you here that I may be crossing A Book of Bees with A Country Year mentally. I read them close together).

Conclusion? I'm going to read more Hubbell. I'm going to wish Hubbell had written more books. Even if/when she does write more, I'm going to want more.

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.

Hungry Bug

Two unexpected sights in one afternoon: A tomato plant sprung up by the side of a water-filled ditch in Huntington Beach Central Park and a large green grasshopper sitting comfortably in the leaves.