Arizona: Beetles, Bugs, Birds and more

Longhorn Beetles (Cerambycidae) spend a great part of their lives as larvae, chewing and feeding on the inside of branches and twigs, under bark and even in the core wood of trees. Some live in the soil, feeding on roots and other plant matter. Even though a thumb-sized larva of the Palo Verde Rootborer at the Arizona Desert Museum that accepted apple slices as surrogate food pupated and metamorphed into a big beetle just fine, most Cerambycids are specialists when it comes to their host plants and foods. Special requirements reach from the stalks of perennials to the living cambium of tree trunks, to freshly dead branches, and even to freshly burned wood for some species. Old dead wood is usually left to other groups like the Powderpost Beetles (Bostrichids).

The feeding behavior within the plant is genetically programmed, and the shape and location of tunnels and holes in the wood, and whether those passage ways are filled with digested wood pulp or not, can tell the specialist a lot about the species and age of the larvae. (I can tell the family. That's something, too)

Cerambycid Larva, ready to chew

Insects that feed and pupate in the trunk of hardwood trees like oaks are well protected. Tunneling within the wood is no problem for the strong mandibles of the larva whose only purpose is to accumulate nutrients and grow. But the adult beetle is much more geared towards mobility, finding a partner, and propagation. After the metamorphosis there are wings, antennae, long legs, the ovipositor if it's a female, but the strong, wood chewing mandibles are gone. So how do the beetles get out of the wood?

Longhorn Beetle Pupa

It's all taken care of by the larva before pupation. It chews out a pupal chamber close to the surface, but under enough wood to protect the vulnerable pupa. The larva also prepares and exit way to the surface, but then carefully closes it with a plug of chewed wood pulp. In some species, like our beautiful three year oak cerambicyd Crioprosopus magnificus there are even two plugs. Thus protected in its chamber, the larva pupates, goes through the metamorphosis and finally ecloses as a finished beetle - and then stays in the puparium and waits. In different ecosystems there are different signals that will trigger the final emergence of the beetles. The signal may be a rise in temperature, or in day length if that can be perceived within the wood, signals coming from the tree, even the smell of a near-by fire that promises food for the next generation. Here in Arizona, most beetles wait for the monsoon rains. The triggering signals will synchronize the emergence of males and females. All the waiting adult beetles become active, push out those plugs and emerge simultaneously, immediately ready to find partners, mate, disperse and reproduce.

Crioprosopus magnificus pair

For Crioprosopus magnificus who develops in small oak trees on rocky slopes in Cochise County, this great event usually happens only every third year. Knowledgeable collectors have told me that the double plugs in the emergence hole probably fine-tune the timing: the beetles respond to an increase in humidity by removing the first plug and push out the second just after the first heavy monsoon down pour. After that, if you are very lucky, you can see them flying over the crowns of the low-growing oaks.

Mallodon dasystomus, Hartwood Stump Borer

In 2010 I was at Steward Campground in the Chiricahuas in early July just after the first rains. My black light, my dog and I were overrun by Hardwood Stump Borers, big guys that my dog did not like very much. A month later I went back and couldn't find any.

Monochamus clamator from Rustler's Park

Last Monday we must have been on Mt Lemmon just in time for another species, Monochamus clamator. This one isn't rare in other western states, but last year Patrick Gorring, a Cerambycid researcher, contacted every collector and entomologist in Arizona for help to find local specimens in our skyislands. I met him on Mt Graham by the end of his trip, and I don't think he got any Monochamus at all. I had only once seen a specimen that a birding friend, Gary Waayers, spotted and netted in flight at Rustler's park in the Chiricahuas.

How many?

So one week after an unseasonably early rain Randy and the dogs were resting in the lush grass along Meadow Trail on Mt Lemmon and I was beating some pine branches without much enthusiasm because we hadn't found much until then. I was quite surprised when the first big male Monochamus plopped into the beating sheet and calmly walked around on it with his long antennae extended in front of him. When a second one landed right afterwards I had a search image and began seeing more of them on pine branches and clinging to grasses. They all looked fresh and perfect, as if newly emerged. Their elegant checkered pattern camouflaged them efficiently. They were mostly in the branches of a live, upright pine, but a freshly dead tree was lying near by. Their larvae are known to bore in sick and dying pine trees, and there are still many fire -damaged trees from the big Mt Lemmon Fire (9 years ago? Time flies) that are succumbing only now.

Monochamus clamator from Mt Lemmon

There is great variety of species in the order Neuroptera, the net-winged insects, but they all have in common thin lacy wings, with forewings and hindwings of similar in size and shape, and biting chewing mouth-parts. Many species show some superficial similarity to Dragonflies, but they rest with their wings folded roof-like over their bodies. Their predacious larvae are terrestrial, except in Sisyridae. It's the larvae that show the most amazing strategies, from ambush in pits to chemical warfare. Neuroptera larvae pupate, often in a silky cocoon, and undergo a complete metamorphosis before hatching as winged adults.

Antlions are known to most people as the devious creatures that dig funnel-shaped pits in loose sand and not only sit in the bottom waiting for an unsuspecting ant that may fall in, but even throwing sand at their victims to make them loose their footing. I found them very difficult to photograph so I'm showing here an old illustration from Brehm's Thierleben (1895). The artist cheated: the larva on the left should be burried so only the pincer-shaped mandibles stick out of the sand. But I like the image because it shows the larva (left), the pupa (right) and the adult, winged antlion in the middle.

In North America only the antlions of the genus Myrmeleon dig those ant trapping pits. The larva in my picture was walking around openly catching insects under our porch light at night.

Vella fallax

An adult antlion Vella fallax was resting close by, but I'm not sure that this over 2 inch long adult was related to the larva.

Glenurus luniger

The diversity of antlion species in the desert around us is very high, they seem to be well adjusted to sandy soil and dry conditions (and lots of ants). But to see the pretty Glenurus luniger I have to take a trip to the mountains. This one is from Peppersauce Canyon in the Catalina Mountains.

Owlfly larvae

In Molino Basin, also part of the Catalinas, I found something that looked at first like a grass with dark seeds but turned out to be a group of first instar larvae of an owlfly. These young ones typically remain in a group with the original egg clutch for several days before dropping to the ground below and going their own predatory ways.

'trophic' eggs (left) and fertile eggs of Ululodes sp. photo by Hannah Nendick-Mason

In the genus Ululodes the female provides her offspring with a series of club-shaped infertile eggs fastened below the regular eggs. These trophic eggs (repagula) serve as the larvae's first meal and may prevent them from eating each other.

Owlfly

Also at Molino, this big owlfly was clinging to its perch so tightly that I could move it to find better light for my photos. Smaller species often appear at the black light, so they all seem to be night-active. Again, I do not know whether this is the same species as the clutch of larvae above.

Larvae of Brown and Green Lacewings

Meanwhile, at home, a strange shape is climbing a dried-up Brittle Bush. From above only a bunch of ant-body parts and exoskeletons is visible. The side view reveals legs and fangs that give away a Brown Lacewing larva. Probably very similar in built to the Green Lacewing Larvae that lived on the Brittle Bush flowers in spring, just smarter with its camouflage.

Green Lacewing

The golden eyed adult Green Lacewings are day-active and common year round. They feed on Aphids and other small insects. Their eggs sway on long stalks.

Lomamyia sp., Berothidae (Beaded Lacewings)

Adult Beaded Lacewings are nocturnal and come to lights around our house in the desert bajada. They lay stalked eggs on wood surfaces near termite nests. The larvae move in with and prey on the termites. They discharge a gas containing an allomone from their anus (Johnson and Hagen, 1981) to immobilize their prey.The gas is potent enough to paralyze several termite larvae and even adults at a time, but reportedly it has no effect on other non-termite 'house guests'.

Climaciella brunnea (Wasp Mantidfly)

When black-lighting for insects in the mountains, I often encounter several species of Mantid Flies.
They look and behave very much like small Praying Mantids. They use their raptorial arms to grab moths and other small insects that are also attracted by the light. In Arizona, the impressive Wasp Mantidfly lives in the canyons of the sky islands. While other morphs of that same species show brown and yellow banding of typical wasp mimicry, ours seems to mimic the coloration of Polistes comanche, the most common paper wasp of those habitats. Their larvae live as parasitoids in spider nests.

At the end of July, National Moth Week is coming up. It's a first for the US and many organizations like for example Bugguide are sponsoring it. While 'Lep' experts in most states offer many special 'mothing' events to the public, Arizona seems to be sadly lagging behind: One event in the Grand Canyon area but nothing in our famously biodivers SE corner of the state. I think I know why we have ignored repeated suggestions to organize and sponsor an event: We are too busy, too busy mothing, that is.

On my camera after black lighting at the garage wall at our house in Picture Rocks Arizona in early June

Iam no Lepidopterist. I was originally much more interested in beetles, but this year I have been following the appearance of moths species at our house, documenting over 80 species since March. By now the species numbers and the amount of individuals are just exploding after the early monsoon rains, and the diversity should increase for at least another month.

Mercury vapor light at Florida Canyon very early, later the density increased tremendously, but were to busy to take photos

At this time of the year, I try to go on bug safaris several times a week. That means coordinating participants arriving from different directions, driving to the canyons through washes and over protruding rocks, dragging around generators, batteries, mercury vapor lights, black lights, stands, sheets, cameras, and collection vials, hiding from thunderstorms and smugglers, chasing off bats and skunks, seeking out day-active species during three digit temps and raising humidity, staying out all night, coming home at dawn, identifying or posting the haul, counting chigger bites, accommodating collected ovipositing females and shipping the eggs to scientists across the continent, ....who wants to actually organize a Moth Watching Week event?

But I'll be leading several public black lighting tours that are sponsored by Southwest Wings in Sierra Vista and by the Audubon Society of Tucson in August and September.

Pasimachus californicus prowling for bugs around the black light

During those events we will be looking for other insects and arachnids as well, but I know that even a big headed Pasimachus crawling onto the ground sheet has a hard time competing with the tumbling arrival of a big beautiful Polyphemus Silk Moth.

Carol swimming in moths

Last Thursday my friend Carol Tepper and I tried out my new MV light, taking advantage of the electricity outlets at the Santa Rita Experimental Ranch in Florida Canyon. Around the cabins and labs are rolling hills of mesquite grassland with ocotillos, yuccas, agaves, opuntias, and acacias, and Mexican Blue Oaks, some sycamores and stands of hack-berries are lining the creek. Wild Cotton is now leafed out and as tall as I. Seep Willow emits its pungent swamp smell.
We left the black lights close to the creek and exercised our legs and lungs while carrying the MV stuff to the top of the hill, hoping that light would draw in an ocotillo specialist from the opposite slope (it didn't).

Still, at both lights we were surrounded by insects, mostly moths, and they also covered the walls around several porch-lights that Mark, the station manager, kindly left on for us. I was noticed some distinct differences to my black light collection a week earlier at Madera Canyon (upper parking lot, juniper-oak habitat.

Chrysina beyeri, Jewel Chafers

Antheraea oculea

Chrysina beyeri was the dominant beetle species at Madera Canyon, and of the great moths, the big polyphemus silkmoth Antheraea oculea was most impressive and numerous.

Hyalophora columbia gloveri

In Florida Canyon we didn't see any C. beyeri and only one cercopid Silkmoth moth, Hyalophora columbia gloveri. We waited in vain for its ocotillo-feeding relative, the dark Eupackardia calleta.

Eacles oslari, above and below

Instead, many specimens of Eacles oslari in a wide variety of color combinations came mostly to the MV light.

Caterpillar of Citheronia splendens on Wild Cotton

Last year we found this huge bizarre caterpillar on its host, a wild cotton plant in Florida Canyon. This year I finally got to see the big, plump adult moths Citheronia splendens sinaloensis.

While the big Silk Moths are most impressive, I also like the colorful Tiger Moths. I remember meeting a scientist in Portal who was collecting the pretty Bertholdia to study its ability 'to talk back to the bats'. This moth not only perceives the sonar of an approaching bat like many other insects who simply try to drop out of earshot, but it actually emits sounds of its own to throw off the bats echo beam.

Arachnis aulaea, Apocrisias thaumasta and Bertholdia trigona

Three Tiger Moths that were flying at Madera Canyon when I black lighted there a week ago..

Hypercompe suffusa and the delicate looking Halysidota davisii

Two representatives of the same subfamily at Florida Canyon. (When the taxonomy of this group of moths was revised lately, the Tigermoths became part of the family Erebidae).

Neoalbertia constans, Tetraclonia dyari (Madera) and Acoloithus novaricus (Florida)

Moths don't have to be huge or prettily patterned to be interesting. Here are some small Leaf Skeletonizers that are mainly day-fliers but also come to light traps. At Madera, there were two red Lycus (Net-Winged Beetle) mimics. Fittingly, the beetles danced their mating flight around the oaks before sunset. At Florida only the little dark one on the right came to the light at night in numbers. This species is supposed to be mostly distributed in the eastern US.

Madera and Florida are geographically close to each other. They are two parallel canyons of the western Santa Rita Mountains, similar in orientation and both containing a stream that flowed only intermittently over the last drought years. Although oaks grow along most of both canyons, Madera is shadier and home mostly to Silverleaf Oaks while Florida is famous for its beautiful old Mexican Blue Oaks. The moth populations, though with many overlaps, also clearly express the differences between the canyons.

"I have lapped filthy water from a hoof print and was glad to have it."
"If I ever meet one of you Texas waddies who says he had never drank water out of a horse track I think I'll shake his hand, give him a Daniel Webster cigar."
In Charles Portis' True Grit the Texas Ranger LaBoeuf tries (and fails) to impress U.S. marshall Rooster Cogburn.

Couch's Spadefoot, Scaphiopus couchii

In the real West in Arizona, the filthy water of a hoof print could well be your amniotic fluid, cradle, bathwater, and hunting ground -- if you are a young Couch's Spadefoot.

Land-under in the bajada of the Tucson Mountains (our backyard)

On July 29th a huge thunderstorm rolled over our land and brought nearly three inches of rain in one hour. It poured down so hard that most of the water just raced down hill, carving out old arroyos, piling up new sand dunes, and slicing through flat areas to form new washes. For a couple of hours the sound of rushing water swallowed everything else.

Calling male Couch's Spadefoot by Seth Patterson

As soon as that din calmed down, a faint bleating like from a herd of sheep lost in the dark could be heard. The mating concert of Couch's Spadefoots.

Mating spadefoots by Manuel Nevarez

Spadefoots are also called toad-like frogs (Pelobatidae). While their shape is toad-like (short-legged, squat, with a bluntly rounded snout) their skin is smooth like a frogs and they lack the obvious paratoid glands of the Bufonids (most of our toads). But their vertical pupils and the spade-like tubercle on the underside of each hind foot set them apart from both frogs and toads. If you set a spadefoot on loose substrate you can watch how quickly he disappears backwards by shuffling those hind feet. These amphibians hold endurance records: they can stay under ground for years during droughts, nearly dried up and motionless in a little chamber plastered with their own skin excretions.

Spadefoot tadpoles Photo by Jeff Mitton

Drumming raindrops of a substantial monsoon storm get the Spadefoots up and ready to find temporary rain pools to mate and lay their eggs. Tadpoles can be found a day later, feeding on organic debris and quickly developing algae.

The surface of the desert soil is reshaped by the heavy hoofs of horses.

Today, on the 8th of August, all rain pools have disappeared. But every morning, depressions in the soil are still visibly moist.

A tiny youngster in a hoof print

Walking our dogs around sunrise, we found tiny spadefoots emerging from those muddy spots, scrambling for cover under freshly green Triangular-leaf Burr Sage bushes. Most of the deeper mud spots were the hoof prints of our neighbors' rodeo horses.

The little amphibians are still smaller than grasshoppers, not much more than a quarter inch. They are able to absorb moisture through their skin, but they have to leave the exposed muddy tracks before the morning sun reaches them.

Some will try to risk the heat of the day in the cracks that open up as the mud in the hoof impression dries. I hope they make it!

Young Red-spotted Toad (Bufo punctatus)?

When I went through this morning's photos, I realized that some of the larger anuran kids seemed to have horizontal pupils and looked rather toad-like. These are young Red-spotted Toads.

Adult Red-spotted Toad (Bufo punctatus)

They supposedly need more permanent creeks and pools for breeding, but the adults are around, and those rainwater pools are all our desert here has to offer. I may have even heard their monotonously trilling mating call and mistaken it for the purring of some of the local Night Hawks.

Since the beginning of August I have been quite busy. After those heavy monsoon rains there were a lot of insects to photograph and collect and in addition I had gave an insect themed power point presentation at South West Wings in Sierra Vista, combined with a black-lighting field trip to Ramsey Canyon.

Dysschema howardi (Northern Giant Flag Moth - Hodges#8040)

Last Thursday I was leading an Audubon field trip to Peppersauce Canyon on the north side of the Catalina Mountains. We had a nice list of sign-ups through Audubon, Flickr and facebook. The local newspaper, the Arizona Star, surprisingly sent a photographer, and local author and moth expert Mike Wilson joined us in the canyon where he and Doug Mullins were collecting caterpillars.

Fellow BugGuide Member Patrick Coin from Durham, NC, was staying in Tucson and took the opportunity to see more of the local fauna. Muriel Béchu, a young German Scientist at the U of A College of Optics came to see the structural prismatic colors of moths in real life. She stayed to the very end at around 11 pm and actually discovered the prize of the night, the beautiful Northern Giant Flag Moth (She posed with Glover's Silk Moth)

Chrysina gloriosa

The beauty of Chrysina gloriosa, the Glorious Jewel Scarab made up for the lack of variety of beetle species. Either the drought of the last years is taking its toll or the Mercury Vapor light that I am using now is more appealing to moths than to beetles.

Males of the tribe Dynastini

We got scores of Rhinoceros Beetles walking all around us, two Dynastes grantii and one Strategus aloeus. The last three were females, I'm showing the males above.

Amblycheila baroni (Montane Giant Tiger Beetle) and Leptinotarsa rubiginosa (Reddish Potato Beetle)

Very special to me were the Giant Tigerbeetle and the Tomato-red Potato Beetle. We also had smaller tigerbeetles, fungus and darkling beetles, and several scarabs. Please refer to my flickr gallery for picture of those species.

After a couple of hours, our two sheets were so covered in moths, that it took a lot of enthusiasm to get close to them.

Kerrah Cutter was especially undeterred: decorated with moths all over she took a great series of photos to post on her facebook page. I'm sure we will meet again in the field to have some more interesting adventures with bugs and herps. My friends Collins Cochran, Doug Mullins and Carol Tepper saved the night by keeping my new generator running and helping with set-up and take-down. Hanging the sheets from an easy-up tent frame and using three lights driven by a generator is too involved an undertaking do manage by myself, especially in a hurry with lots of people around who expect to hear me say something interesting while waiting for the slowly arriving bugs just after sunset.

I hope everybody enjoyed the trip and saw something interesting and new. I haven't had time to do a species count, but Patrick, who is a founding member of BugGuide and has a lot of experience from other parts of the world, was very impressed with the diversity of insects.

We were speculating why Arizona is ranked so very highly among all US states, and bordering Sonora, Mexico is even one of the locations with the highest species diversity world wide. There are many reasons:

1.The geological history here has been quite dramatic, so we are living on a mosaic of many different soil types, and hence among a patchwork of vegetation types, providing hosts for many different insect species.
2.Our sky islands rise from the surrounding desert high enough to provide along their slopes everything from lowland sandy desert to pine forest and tundra like bare mountain tops at over 10,000 feet.
3.Our two rainy seasons and high temperatures give us growing conditions for different organisms all year round.
4. We are at the border between temperate zones and the tropics.
5. We are experiencing a phase of climate changes that cause the spread of Mexican species into Arizona and may lead to the extinction of some long-term residents. The species distribution along the elevation levels of the mountains is most likely going to shift with rising temperatures and prolonged droughts.

I have collected images of most species that we saw last Thursday in Peppersauce Canyon in a flickr file. I will add additional identifications over the next week.

The Arizona Daily Star sent a photographer to join our first Audubon insect field trip. He stayed for hours, interviewing and photographing. The images that were published today in the Northwest section of the paper capture very well what one participant called a magical night.

The citizens of the little town of Patagonia in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, maintain a beautiful butterfly garden and a lush community garden with vegetables. We never fail to visit there on our insect field trips.

These gardens seem to be kept under a strictly organic regimen. While this keeps the produce healthy and delicious, it comes of course with some trade-offs for the gardeners and bonus points for the entomologists.

Melanoplus differentialis nymph

One gardener philosophically watched his cobs of sweet corn disappear into the stomachs of countless juvenile Differential Grasshoppers. Smartly, he had planted his plots in three time intervals, and only one set of corn coincidet with the hungry hoppers, so next year he will just skip that planting date.

Black Swallowtail caterpillar - Papilio polyxenes

The Dill plants sported beautiful and undisturbed Black Swallowtails caterpillars of all ages. These guys aren't shy. They flaunt their warning colors in front of all the hungry birds on those nearly bare branches - the must taste really awful.

Zygogramma exclamtionis, the Sunflower Leaf Beetle.

The leafs of the annual sunflowers were eaten to shreds by the larvae of Zygogramma exclamtionis, the Sunflower Leaf Beetle.

Disonycha politula

Pigweed, maybe grown for use in salads at a younger age, was hopping with Amaranthus-feeding Flee Beetles. Some folk with 'Careless Weed' allergies may even like to see these guys at work.

Deloyala lecontei

Morning Glory leaves were punctured by the iridescent tortois beetles Deloyala lecontei. They were hatching from pupae and mating right away.

Lema daturaphila (Three-lined Potato Beetle)

Tomatillo plants had all but disappeared under the onslaught of Lema daturaphila. The beetles seemed to be much more restrained on their name-giving host, the Sacred Datura.

Leptinotarsa haldeman

Bell Peppers were attacked by the blue relative of the Potato Beetle, Leptinotarsa haldemani, here shown on a wild Nightshade.

Gratiana pallidula: larva, pupa, adult. Here on Silverleaf Nightshade

For a keen observer, the full life-cycle of a the tortoise beetle Gratiana pallidula was displayed on the leaves of Egg Plants. All stages were very cryptic.

Epilachna varivestis (Mexican Bean Beetle)

Bean leafs were skeletonized by bright yellow, spiny larvae which I first mistook for those of another tortois beetle. But because I hadn't seen this particular one before I collected some. They pupated, and out came - yellow Ladybugs. I know. They are supposed to be the gardener's little helpers and devour aphids and other pests. Not this species. The Mexican Bean Beetle is a Cocinnellid, but also a vegetarian and can become a pest of its own when he gets into big commercial bean growing areas. In the US, there is one more vegetarian Ladybug, also genus Epilachna, that feeds on the leaves of cucumbers, squash and related plants.

I met Fred an Mary Heath who were doing an annual butterfly species count and ecitedly noted that they had 90 species total in the Patagonia area, and 60 of those just in the gardens. There are no butterflies without caterpillars, and they need to feed on plants!

Visiting the Patagonia Community Garden reminded me of the difficulties and joys (if you come from the angle of a bug-lover or of an insectivorous bird) of organic gardening.
Yearly crop changes or under-plowing of left-over plant material could probably prevent a part of the infestations. But organic gardening faces more challenges in Arizona than for example in Germany. One reason is the lack of really cold winters that annually kill scores of insects in more northern climates.
But there is another factor that cannot be overlooked: The Americas are the original home of many cultivated crops. Potato, tomato, tobacco, corn (mais), sunflower, squash, many species of beans, all were first cultivated here thousands of years ago. The wild ancestors or relatives of those species are still all around us, and so are many of the insects that evolved with these plants as their hosts. Those were the ones that I found at work in the Patagonia garden.

In the sequel of this blog, I will discuss the advantages of gardening with locally derived plants as opposed to cultivating imported species.

Until then, here's a great article by one of my BugGuide Friends: http://nativeplantwildlifegarden.com/a-healthy-garden-is-a-buggy-garden/

Dynastes granti, male

Early this summer two little boys from New York were all set to hunt for charismatic, big beetles in the forests of Japan. But due to a terrible political decision, radioactive material from the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster had been spread to the area of the beetle camp that they were planning to attend, and they had to cancel their trip. So their mother contacted me through Eric Eaton, and I got to organize a 'Dynastes granti Quest' in Arizona for them.

Last Sunday, I picked up the two boys and their mother at the Arizona Desert Museum where they had attended the Rattlesnake and Gila Monster presentation. The whole little group was delightful. So full of enthusiasm and energy!

Dynastes beetles occur in the mountains around Tucson, but they are not very common. Since I had to be sure to find at least a couple for each boy, we headed north to the Colorado Plateau. A long drive that showed off some of Arizona's best landscape types.

Still close to Tucson, we crossed some beautiful desert, studded with chollas and saguaros, but I noticed that this wasn't quite the typical desert the kids had expected: It was much too lush and green.

Driving north on Highway 77 we were soon gained elevation, passing an old copper mine, then following the San Pedro River to its confluence with the Gila River - all great habitat for Dynastes with lots of ash, cottonwood, sycamore and oak, but rather inaccessible.

So we went further north through Globe and crossed the dramatic Salt River Canyon, where everyone who wasn't too deeply asleep got to stare down into the gorge. Storm clouds were piling up and it had began to drizzle. I was getting little worried...

Salt River Canyon

North of Salt River Canyon reddish rocks beautifully set off the abundance of road-side sunflowers and the fresh green of trees and bushes along creeks spilling down from the mountains. In good monsoon years like this one, we really get a second spring in August. No photo ops now, we were pressing on to our destination, a prosaic little gas station in the middle of nowhere. But that's the point: the gas station lights are the only ones as far as the eye can see and they attract the beetles without any competition from street lights or houses. Also, the station is private property and the owners are friendly enough with us weird bug lovers to allow us to collect. The customers, all Apaches, some of them tribal policemen, were amused, but interested. There were friendly greetings from everyone and lots of tips where else we could find the big, grey-green beetles.

In a meadow across the street, under an illuminated casino sign, the kids found grasshoppers and lots of beetle wings and heads. I noticed Javelina scat full of exoskeleton pieces. Two Apache ladies stopped to tell us that a mountain lion had been seen there for several nights.

Javelina and Mountain Lion. Included for my New York visitors who didn't get to see either

I figured the food chain like this: huge beetles and moths dropping down from the lights of the sign, javelinas coming to feast on them, and a mountain lion stalking the javelinas. Ok, kids, stay close!

Soon Mom found the first big female Dynastes granti hiding in the ashtray of the gas station. Did I call our hunting ground prosaic? Two boys plus one beetle equals a fight.

Luckily lots of Rhinoceros Beetles started to literally fall out of the sky right around sunset. The bigger Dynastes took their time, but eventually we got them too, plus a few Chrysina gloriosa and a White-lined June Beetle who kept hissing at us. When the gas station closed at 10 pm, we had 10 females Dynastes and a nice major male. We got another female at the little church in Carizzo.

Some of our beetles are well received at the Arizona Desert Museum by keeper Catherine Bartlett

At home I had another very frisky Dynastes male in reserve, provided by Catherine Bartlett from the Arizona Desert Museum, just in case we wouldn't find any. In return, she got 6 of the females we collected for the ASDM breeding program. Thanks for helping out Cathy!

But back to our trip: After sleeping a few hours in a hotel in Globe, Mom got tied up in a conference-call with her office in New York, and the rest of us spent the morning relaxing in a friendly little park in the historic down town. It's nice and cool in Globe! The boys turned at least one local kid into a bug-lover.

Another long drive took us back to my house in Picture Rocks (NW Tucson) where our beetles were transferred from the camping cooler to the safer refrigerator.
After that, we were on the road again. This may seem like an awful lot of driving and we did get to hear the proverbial 'Are we there yet' a couple of times, but with temps hovering above 100 F airconditioned cars are a real haven. Also, we were all turning as night-active as the beetles by now.

Our next destination: the cute, if overly decorated, KuBo B and B in Madera Canyon. It turned out that we were actually staying in an older cabins accross the street. We really enjoyed it there: the little patio directly overlooks Madera Creek which was running.

What a great place for New York kids to explore! The boys, 5 and 7 years old, impressed me with their sure-footedness and athleticism. The kids' mother was absolutely great with her perfect mixture of letting them go (jump the creek, climb the steep banks, throw huge rocks), and still always being right there to the rescue if necessary. The hours at the creek were definitely a high point of the trip.

At night we had my mercury vapor / black light set-up right in front of the cabin. Just before we arrived, two big storms had cooled the air in Madera Canyon so much that for hours not many moths or beetles appeared. So we spent time in the cabin, snacked on the provided bananas and apples, and studied Eric Eaton's 'Field Guide to Insects of North America '...

Watching a huge at-faced Orb Weaver Spider

Chrysina gloriosa

Chrysina beyeri photo by Laurent Lecerf

Around 10pm the temperature began to rise again and we finally got to see several of the charming big Chrysina beyeri that kids always love. In the end I was the only one a little disappointed with the black lighting results. Everyone else seemed impressed and delighted. I wished they could have seen the black lights on a warmer night in July.

Tuesday morning after packing we hit the gift shop of the Santa Rita Lodge. Lots of nature books went home with the kids. We learned that all summer long a bear had used a well at 'our cabin' as a place to find water before the creek started running a couple of weeks ago (that's very late, because we are still in a drought, even after our latest monsoon storms).

In the grassland of lower Madera Canyon, we found Horse Lubbers, Giant Mesquite Bugs, Big Long-horn Beetles on Baccharis, mating buprestids, Flannel Moth caterpillars on Mimosas, and hundreds of puddeling butterflies. Even though the 5 year old was nearly falling asleep on his feet, we had a hard time tearing ourselves away for the ride home. Well, home for me, for my new friends just another stop on the way to the airport and the flight back to New York.

Safely in New York enjoying Japanese beetle food

I shipped the beetles over night by fedex, as the airline did not allow to bring them on board. All the bugs got to New York alive and immediately took to the specially imported Japanese Beetle Jelly. The White-lined June Bug began to lay eggs an hour and a half after she landed on the NY doorstep and hopefully the Dynastes beetles will soon follow suit.

Here's one of the emails I received on Thursday:

Margarethe, thank you so much your kindness.

Kids said"Arizona trip was a best in the world!!!!"

It was a great experience for us.

They won't forget it forever!
They already ask me to stay longer in Arizona next year.

Beetles are very well and seems very happy.

Sycamore Canyon in the Atascosa Highlands of southern Arizona is one of my favorite places in late summer. And because it's so beautiful and interesting it wasn't very difficult to get Richard Hoyer, naturalist par excellence and Senior Leader for WINGS, Inc. to join me on this expedition. As usual, we had a hard time reaching our final destination, because Sycamore Canyon lies at the end of the beautiful and extremely critter-rich Ruby Road and we had to stop every half mile or so.

Leaf Beetles: Leptinotarsa haldemani, Leptinotarsa rubiginosa, Chelymorpha phytophagica, Zygogramma continua

Metallic Wood-boring Beetles: Lampetis drummondi, Acmaeodera gibbula, Hippomelas sphenicus

Phidippus carneus feeding on Border Patch (Chlosyne lacinia), Peucetia viridans (Green Lynx Spider) feeding on Ammophila wasp, Perillus splendidus feeding on Zygogramma opifera

From below Pena Blanca Lake all the way to the higher elevations of Sycamore Canyon the road sides were alive with butterflies, grasshoppers, leaf beetles, buprestids and all the predators that these vegetarians attract.

Along Ruby Road, Photo Rich Hoyer

We kept stopping for interesting flowers in side canyons and on sun exposed slopes of the dirt road part of Ruby Road. At one point, a Golden Eagle circled low.

Picking Datana caterpillars from Manzanita

I had a request from Dave Wagner to collect Datana caterpillars that feed on Manzanita. Rich knew exactly where to look so we found several clutches of the brightly colored guys. They seem to stay together in protective groups. Their defensive pose reminds strongly of that of very poisonous sawfly larvae.

Prolimacodes trigona (Western Skiff Moth - Hodges#4670)Photo David Wagner

As I am writing this, the caterpillars already arrived at the University of Connecticut. It turned out that I had inadvertently included another interesting species, a slug caterpillar. You can easily see why we missed it.

Rich Hoyer just stirred up hundreds of butterflies, Dogfaces, Sulfurs, Mexican and Tailed Yellows from a puddle

We found Sycamore Canyon quite changed by heavy floods. Those early monsoon storms sent enough water through the narrows to pile up big cottonwood trunks and rip deep-routed willows from the banks. Now it was green and lush, smelled of decay, and was extremely muggy.

Taeniopoda eques (Horse Lubber)

Horse Lubbers were everywhere, many of them with very light markings and nearly yellow heads. The constant buzz of mosquitoes reminded me that chiggers were probably lurking, too. I rarely use insect repellent in Arizona, but this summer I'm going through a can rather quickly.

Looking down into Sycamore Canyon

Shortly after we arrived, dark clouds pushed over the mountains and thunder grumbled. We convinced ourselves that the storm was moving around us and that we were uphill from any rainfall. Still, we soon climbed out of the canyon.

Lichen Grasshopper, Photo Bob Behrstock

Most rocks were lichen covered and the ideal habitat for the cryptic Lichen Grasshopper. We found countless grasshoppers of many other species instead. Maybe the lichen hopper is an early summer species. For the first time I saw a Cactus Longhorn Beetle on a cactus that isn't part of the Opuntia/Cylindropuntia Group, on a Rainbow Hedgehog. But no chew-marks yet.

Cactus Longhorn Moneilema appressum

Eventually the storm did come at us - we just barely made it back to the truck when it began to pour. The curvy dirt road was wet, but not slick and the washes were running but not yet deep when we rushed to get down the mountain.
The heavy rainfall was rather local, so down at Pena Blanca Canyon it was still dry and warm enough to set up the black lights. Before it got dark, Rich imitated the call of a Whiskered Screech Owl. I had witnessed that spectacle before: all kinds of small birds mobbing him and eventually even an owl coming to meet him. But the numbers and the variety of birds at Pena Blanca was still amazing. There were Summer Tanagers, Bridled Titmice, Anna's Hummers, several Flycatcher spp., White-breasted Nuthatches, several spp. of Warblers, painted Redstarts, Black-headed Grosbeaks, a very pretty Varied Bunting, Lesser Goldfinches, Gnat Catchers -- all of them close enough to make me wish I had traded in my trusted old Leitz binoculars for a modern pair with closer focus.

Conchylodes ovulalis, Choristostigma roseopennalis, Pero flavisaria


Palpita quadristigmalis, Grotella tricolor, Hypercompe suffusa, Dichordophora phoenix, Terastia meticulosalis, Cirrhophanus dyari, Theroa zethus

I am still new enough to moth-watching that every black-lighting event brings me something new and exciting, even though the big impressive moths seem to be gone now. I also found a couple of new Cerambycids.

Rich had brought a UV flashlight to look for scorpions. Scorpions reflect uv-light radiantly in purple or green. He wasn't disappointed and he also found another Arachnid, a spider surrounded by bright luminescence that was coming from the egg sack that she was guarding.

Chiricahua Leopard Frog, Rana chiricahuensis, and Great Plains Narrow-mouthed Toad, Gastrophryne olivacea

Juvenile amphibians were slipping through the grass everywhere. A nice green frog turned out to be the rare, endangered Chiricahua Leopard Frog. We also found an adult Narrow-mouth Plains Toad. I have seen that species only once before, also at Pena Blanca. It may not be as rare as the Leopard Frog, but its life style is much more secretive.

Giant Desert Centipede, Scolopendra heros

I hope the amphibians didn't meet this guy - he's able to catch prey as big as a mouse. His bite is also very painful to humans and he's very quick. Some don't believe that, as Rich is demonstrating.

So I was planning to prepare fresh asparagus, new potatoes and chicken in a wine sauce with yogurt, champignons and herbes de provence.

When I was breaking off the bottom parts of the asparagus spears, Randy called me into the laundry room because he heard a noise from behind the washer. We got one of the cats to guard the mouse. Hopefully.

When the onions were sautéing (is that a word?) the dogs began barking outside. Rhythmical staccato. Now doubt, a rattle snake. This one turned out quite aggressive, avoiding the snake stick and striking at me instead. It took both of us to maneuver flash lights and sticks to get the snake into a bin til morning.

Frodo seemed quite subdued: the snake had ripped his ear. Snake bite number 7 for our coyote dog, the second one this summer. He'll never learn. To comfort him, he got the chicken carcass minus the weight-bearing bones. He finished it without hesitation. He'll survive. The onions were browned instead of caramelized. Oh well.

When I took the asparagus pan out of the wall cupboard, I saw a speck in it, not much larger than a big mosquito. But it turned out to be a baby scorpion instead. Not sure which species, the pattern is unusual, but judging from his hiding spot, he should be a bark scorpion, the others don't climb that well. At any rate, I took photos before releasing him.

We had dinner a little later than planned, but it was very good! We ignored telemarketers on the phone and Great Horned Owls on the roof.

Last Saturday evening, Pima County Natural Resources and the Santa Rita Research Station of the University of Arizona hosted their annual insect event for the public, just one week after the spectacularly successful Arizona Insect Festival on Campus.

Carl Olson, Curator of the U of A Insect Collection for over 30 years, brought his vast experience plus a few Horse Lubbers left over from the festival.

In addition, we were attracting and catching our own insects with the help of two black light stations on the grounds of the Experimental Range.

Florida Canyon lived up to its reputation and we got examples of many different orders of insects and several interesting spiders. I combined my photos in a set on flickr that you can access by clicking here. Click on 'detail' to see larger images with species identifications.

Mark Heitlinger, our gracious host, took most of the 'people photos' and also found a small tarantula that posed for many shots

Two impressive members of the order Orthoptera are usually present at Florida: the carnivorous katydid Capnobotes fuliginosus (Sooty Longwing) and the cute looking Jerusalem Cricket that can also bite quite fiercely (that round baby face is packed with muscles)

Rhonda Sidner was responsible for the 'bat' part of the evening. She added several specimens to the over thirty thousand that she has caught during her carrier and demonstrated gentle handling, not being bitten, identification, scientific processing, and finally releasing the little insectivores. I was surprised to learn that the order Chiroptera with 1240 species worldwide is one of the species-richest groups of the mammalian class. Rodents would have been my first guess, and indeed, they have over 2000 species. Oh, well, compare that to about 6000 known species of just beetles in Arizona alone!

Next Saturday, September 29, 10 am, also at the Experimental Range at Florida Canyon,
you are invited to the

Discovery Saturday talk: It's a dry heat for insects too! How do hawk moths survive the desert of southern Arizona? by

Goggy Davidowitz, Entomology, University of Arizona

Brown Canyon is part of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge (of Arizona, not Argentina) It is close to Baboquivari, the sacred mountain of the Tohono O'odham. Access is limited to small guided tours. As a volunteer guide for the Tucson Audubon Society, I offered a Brown Canyon tour to witness the last peak of Arizona insect populations for the year 2012.

The recent rains had washed ruts into the road, so we had to use high clearance vehicles. Just a week before the overgrown catclaws and wait-a-minute bushes had been cleared off the paths by the fire department. It was so much greener than during my last visit in April! The creek was running and there were a few standing pools.

Filigree Skimmer • Pseudoleon superbus

We had hoped for many Dragonflies but only a few Filligree and Flame Skimmers were cruizing along the creek. I did get my first Filigree shot where the wing and eye pattern actually show up in front of the background.

Puddle party, photo by Ned Harris

The diversity and abundance of butterflies made up for that lack of dragons. Puddle parties like this one form when males land in the mud to collect minerals that they need to be fit for sex. If a few are sitting others will join as experiments with dummies showed. We found mostly species of pieridae in those groups (Tailed and Sleepy Orange, Mexican Yellow, Sulphur sp.).

Arizona Powdered Skipper Systasea zampa andArizona Metalmark Calephelis arizonensis Photos Ned Harris

Empress Leilia and Hackberry Emperor (Asterocampa leilia and celtis), Variegated and Gulf Fritillary (Euptoieta claudia, Agraulis vanillae) 1 and 4 by Ned Harris

As usual, territorial Empress Leilia were defending little stretches of the path, but surprisingly there were also Hackberry Emperors basking on the rocky ground. Both their caterpillars feed on different species of Hackberry bushes.
Immaculate fresh Gulf Fritillaries and Variegated Fritillaries indicated that their food plant, probably Passion Vine, was aso close by.

Euptoieta claudia caterpillar

We found a Variegated Fritillary Caterpillar on Cucumber (Marah gilensis). Does it actually feed on it? It was fully grown, probably ready to pupate, a state when caterpillars may wander off their host plants.

Tiny Checkerspot (Dymasia dymas) and two views of the rare Elf (Microtia elva) Photos 1 and 3 by Ned Harris

Tiny Checkerspots danced around in abundance, also several of the similarly sized Elfs that I had never seen before, but that are reported from all over SE Arizona this year. The foodplant is unknown and my Kaufman field guide doesn't even show a distribution map. Another Mexican alien!

Bordered Patch and caterpillars (Chlosyne lacinia)

A couple of weeks ago Bordered Patches made up the majority of butterflies in many SE Arizona locations. This time we didn't see many adults, but clumps of their caterpillars on asteracean leaves.

Larvae and fresh adults of the leaf beetle Zygogramma arizonica shared the same plants. (Stick Seed?). Every species of Asteracea seems to have its own distinct Zygogramma species, that appears only during a specific window of the plants annual life cycle, usually just before flower buds are formed. By now I can go through my files and very reliably predict where and when to find the more common Arizona species.

Chihuahuan Toad, Horse and Plains Lubber, Photos by Ned Harris

The place was hopping with Orthoptera. We found all three Lubbers that could be expected, several species of Spurthroats, several band-winged and several species of slant-faced grasshoppers.

Arphia pseudonietana

Red-winged Arphia stood out visually and acoustically - I wished I could record their flashing, noisy display flights. But on the ground, and in photos, they are just drab black-brown. I saw an interesting color variant with a cream colored pronotum but it escaped under a cat-claw acacia.

Chauliognathus misellus, C. profundus and C. levisi

Many Soldier Beetles were visiting composit flowers. I watched at least 5 species feeding on pollen and finding mating partners.

Green female Stagmomantis limbata, Ground Mantis (Litaneutria minor), Yersin's Ground Mantis (Yersiniops sophronicum)

With so many bugs, predators are never far behind: there were three kinds of Mantids: Big pregnant female Stagmomantis limbata whose brown oothekas will hang in the branches of trees and bushes until hundreds of youngsters emerge next spring. Nearly invisible ground mantids slipping around among the grasses, and higher up on flowers the equally small Yersin's Ground Mantis with its diabolical face. This one was a first for me!

Brightly colored big Jumping Spiders, a Green Lynx with egg sack, a still unidentified Orbweaver and well-camouflaged crab spiders were competing with the mantids. A Tarantula stalked elegantly over grasses and around human feet (click to see the video).

Desert Cotton, Gossypium thuberi with: Boll Weevil Anthonomus grandis thurberiae, Shield Bug Sphyrocoris obliquus, Dark Flower Scarabs Euphoria sepulcralis rufina, Flee Beetle Disonycha glabrata, Longhorn Tragidion densiventre

Rich insect-life surprised me on Wild Cotton plants. The bugs were chewing through the skin of fresh green bolls and licking the sweet juices. This was the same community that I usually expect on the sap-leaking branches of Deser Broom: Wasps, Scarabs, the fulgorid Poblicia, Long-horned beetles, Flee Beetles, Leaf-footed and Shield Bugs....

Wasp Mantidfly Climaciella brunnea and Paper Wasp Polistes comanchus navajoe

The most common paper wasps had a bold imitator: a wasp-mantisfly, a stingless predator in the netwing family (Neuroptera). The larvae are parasitoids of spiders.

Anthonomus grandis thurberiae and Toposcopus wrightii

Some beetles were mating on the cotton plant: our native boll-weevil Anthonomus grandis thurberiae whose larvae will develop in cotton bolls, but only in those of the wild species, and Wedge-shaped Beetles Toposcopus wrightii whose larvae will probably grow up as brood parasites of hymenoptera.

Green Rat Snake (Senticolis triaspis) ans Sonoran Whipsnake (Masticophis bilineatus) Images from Amphibians and Reptilians in Arizona, TC Brennan, AT Holycross, Arizona Game and Fish Department 2009 (publisher)

Reptiles were still active as well. Many juvenile lizards were working on their fat reserves for the winter. Close to the creek I watched a Sonoran Whip Snake disappear too quickly to alert the group. Doug Evans was the only one lucky (or quiet) enough to get to see a Green Ratsnake.

Ours was the best group I could have hoped for for this special adventure. Everyone who signed up was a naturalist and photographer with a lot of expertise. Fred Heath, Doug Mullins, and Brian McKnight are butterfly experts, Doris and Doug Evans and Inda Gregonis are longtime ASDM docents and birders, Ned Harris leads Catalina Mts. trips for the Sabino Canyon Naturalists during the summer and is the best raptor photographer I know. Jean Thomas, the volunteer guide of the Buenos Aires Preserve and keeper of the access code was our gracious and understanding chaperone. Thanks everyone!

I just finished a watercolor commission of the Catalina Mountains. My clients spend the winters in SaddleBrook and summers in Germany, isn't that a perfect arrangement? But one of them grew up in Tucson looking up at the ever-changing south side of the Catalinas, where morning glow is chased by cloud shadows or by color bleaching southern glare until the evening light models the relief again in strong warm contrasts. I know the view well, I lived for 7 years in the foothills at River Road. So I was going to capture some of that on a full sheet of watercolor paper, that's 21 in by 30 in.

Since I had all summer, I waited for a monsoon afternoon with dramatic clouds. One late August afternoon the sky looked perfect and I raced from my home on the west side of Interstate 10 to Campbell Ave. north of Sunrise. The clouds weren't so great there, but their shadows still brought the mountains alive and gave good contrast to Finger Rock - and I knew that that formation was important to my clients.

I took a series of photos and painted a quick plein air sketch on dry paper (10 by 14 in). There is no detail in it, but it captures colors and atmosphere that I wanted to reproduce on the big studio piece. Luckily, as a painter I can just ignore any houses and developments that have sprung up in the foothills since my client was a child there.
I usually compose my landscape paintings with detailed foreground vegetation and some optical path leading the eye into the depth. But this time I had been asked to emphasize the mountain shape. Even the format of the painting was originally planned to be much more horizontal than my 'golden cut' shaped piece of paper. With this in mind I decided to just stick to the horizontal band of foothill vegetation, mostly saguaros, that I had actually seen while sketching.

I like to combine wet in wet with wet on dry techniques in my watercolors. So after penciling in very loose outlines I took a garden hose to my sheet of paper and soaked it, then slid it on a smooth wet board (no stretching). As soon as the wet sheen had disappeared I began flooding in blues for the sky. The sky is lightest closest to the horizon, so I had the board tilted slightly towards the top to make the pigment flow towards the zenith. As the drying progressed I laid down a warm pink orange wash for the mountain. This would give them warm glow of the afternoon light, and it would also tone down any distant green areas. It's tempting to use earth pigments for a landscape painting. But they lack the transparency that I need when I add several layers of paint and they tend to create mud. So I use only highly transparent, staining Thalos and Quinacridones. The disadvantage of these pigments: once on the paper they will stay put. Lifting and scrubbing is hardly possible.
At this point the drying paper had to be taped down with masking tape. It would still warp slightly, but that is the nature of an original watercolor.

As I was going to define the characteristic skyline of the Catalinas next, I had to let the painting dry thoroughly first. Anyway, layering can only be done over a dry under-painting. The trick is then to not disturb the dry layers while still smoothly blending the new ones.
I tend to work all over the painting, establishing some darks while preserving my lightest lights. It helps me to get the midtones right without going back too often.
This painting would be dominated by cool colors, greens and blues. The warm colors of some bare, sun-exposed rock needed to serve as a counterbalance. Also, I fondly remember my first visit to Tucson, when my host was driving me north on Campbell in the afternoon and I asked him whether there was red rock like in Sedona up there...he said no, just Alpine glow on granit...but the impression staid with me.

I had followed pretty much the shadow pattern that I saw in my reference photos, but at one point I realized that the shadows were giving a concave appearance to the mesa on the left that weakened the impression of massiveness that I wanted to achieve. It's a myth that watercolors cannot be changed at all. The shadows were painted mostly in non-staining cobalt blue, so the could be partly lifted with the help of a toothbrush. Simultaneously a disruptive hard edge became a lost one (soft).

My clients liked their painting. They found that the careful layering of transparent colors produces a stained glass effect that is hard to show in these photographs, nearly an iridescence that changes the colors depending on the viewpoint. They also like the high contrast that makes Finger Rock the slightly unusual center of intrest. I all my other paintings I soften the mountain edge to make the mountains recede. But the effect of the high contrast is not unrealistic. When the Souther Pacific railway hired painters to introduce tourists to western landscapes, their paintings were rejected by eastern art critiques for their lack of atmospheric perspective. The reason for this lack is of course Arizona's low humidity. It's a dry heat, even during the monsoon months.

I'll take part in an outdoor art show at St. Phillip's Plaza on October 20 and 21. Please come and visit!
Find more of my winter shows by clicking here

This blog is about a watercolor that will be a belated birthday present. It's late because first the painting had to be painted and now it's delayed again by Hurricane Sandy because the recipient lives in Brooklyn.

It was commissioned by a friend of the little family whom I took on a beetle excursion this summer. The watercolor is meant as a lasting memento of that trip. The idea was an Arizona landscape with the mom and the two boys. As the people would be small, they would be recognizable more by their shape and body language than by their exactly portraied features. So the mom would be lovingly protective, the older boy growing more independent and adventerous at 7 and the younger, 5, still a little more clinging to mom (in fact, that only happened after we tired him out for three days plus jet lag).
There was a problem: The friend hadn't been part of the Arizona tour. To him Arizona is full of desert vistas with great saguaros. Somewhere in this wide landscape, he wanted the mother and the two kids depicted as they were searching for the elousive Dynastes granti.
Dynastes, however, does not like the desert heat, nor does this beetle live anywhere close to saguaros. I'm sure that the two bright kids are very awear of those ecological preferences and would not have accepted any artistic licence in that regard.
The brightly lit gas station on the Apache Reservation where we actually collected most of our beetles (on private property where we were allowed to hunt for bugs) was anything but picturesque.

A prettier place that the kids really enjoyed was the creek behind the KuBo cabin in Madera Canyon, and Dynastes beetles can actually be found there. I took some nice reference photos, and I photoshopped the people into position. But while the jumble of rocks and bone-white sycamore trunks could have made a great, nearly abstract painting, it just seemed too monochrome and stark as a backdrop for a happy little scene with children. I may still develop it into a painting one day.

Where the canyon opens into the grassland, the light is friendlier and there is more color. I did a loose scetch to explore that option. But just at that time I recieved another email from my client, saying how much he liked one of my landscape paintings that featured saguaros and agaves backed by a rocky slope with lots of maroon and purple ...I realized then that my creek scene really didn' t have anything 'typically Arizonan' for him.

I had a few photos of our little group posing on an overlook over the majestic beauty of Salt River Canyon. But it had been rainig there, the kids were tired, and we never climbed down to a more intimate setting within the canyon (a new bridge makes access much more difficult than it used to be).

From Salt River Crossing the road zigzags up to the Colorado River Plateau. Here it is bordered by fields of wild sunflowers, and creeks and rivers cut deeply into red and pink sandstone. These riparian areas are the real home of the Dynastes beetles. Scars in the bark of young ash trees tell of adult beetles who visit the trees for their juice. Dynastes grubbs spend years of feeding and growing in the mulch under oaks and sycamores along the creeks. Since we didn't stop to take any photos there, I dug through my reference files of photos and plein air paintings that I've done over the years in that area. The one above is from 1994 from a horseback trip with an Apache rancher.

For the final version of this commission I now combined mom, kids, beetle, red rocks, cacti, ash trees and the mountain ranges of the Salt River Canyon to compose a painting that has much more of a narrative than my current work usually does. Can you find the beetle? I hope my clients are going to like it!

Around Halloween, spider webs are not just artificial decorations around human homes but a very obvious part of the natural world. Many big spiders seem to mature at a time when most insects are close to the end of their lives. In autumn the spiders can easily harvest weakened bees, beetles and grasshoppers that might have been able to put up too much of a struggle in their prime. This abundance of prey provides spiders with resources to survive the lean winter months. The term survival doesn't refer to the individual here. Many spiders mature and produce eggs in autumn, and it is often only the offspring that winters, be it in form of eggs or as freshly hatched spiderlings. But it certainly pays to send these off very well nourished.

Not all spider weavings are hunting implements. Lynx spiders do not trap their prey in webs. They get their name from their hunting methods that include stalking, jumping, and sometimes lengthy pursuits of the prey and reminded observers of those of a big cat. Lynx Spiders are well equipped for this kind of hunting with strong legs and streamlined bodies.

Their translucent green color may also be cryptic enough to hide them from their prey when they lay in ambush on green foliage. But when they stalk their prey on flowers as they very often do, they seem very obvious at least to the human eye and far less camouflaged than the yellow and white crab spiders that are also hunting for flower visitors.

By late October the female lynx spiders reach maturity and are quite big, three fourth of an inch. They produce a ball of webbing that is about the size of a quarter and suspended from tall grasses or twigs of a mesquite or acacia.

The ball is the egg sac of the spider that she guards carefully. It contains hundreds of eggs Interestingly, in this case there was also silk-wrapped prey, namely a honey bee, in this nesting area. I wonder whether the female, duty-bound to the nest as she is, is now routinely trapping insects for food, or whether she just opportunistically collects when something gets caught. I think I have to research what is known about the phylogenesis of spider webs as traps. Maybe they did all evolve from nesting webs which are not uncommon common among arthropods.

Thisspider is guarding her freshly hatched spiderlings in the mesquite grassland around Molino Basin. By then her egg sack is loosing its tightly woven coherence.

Hundreds of young spiders will soon be pouring out of this one egg sack. It looks as if they go through one molt before they move on, as many exuviae are still hanging in the nest.

By mid November the kids have grown and the female has lost a lot of weight.

To find food and survive, the hatchlings will have to disperse. Their tiny legs are not a great means of locomotion, even though each has eight of them.

Instead, like dandelion seeds, many young spiders use aerial navigation: Each spider climbs the top of a grass or a twig. Here the spider lifts up its abdomen and spins out a thread, long enough to buoy up the spider. A mild upward air current of a still autumn day would be ideal to carry the silk and the attached little spider far enough to begin her live on her own.

Gossamer Sunset (photo by DavidMXGreen@gmail.com)

Threads of millions of little spider floating in the wind can form showers of silvery gossamer. If they all get caught in the same area they can form veils that cover soil and vegetation in magically sparkling layers. In Germany this time of the year is called Altweibersommer, 'old wives' summer for its flying silvery threads.

In the summer of 2007 I witnessed mass migrations of caterpillars everywhere in Saguaro National Park West and Tucson Mountain Park. These cats were obviously sphingid larvae, complete with the characteristic horn on the hind end. But they came in many color variations and even the pattern varied between individuals. The reason behind the mass movement across paths and roads seemed to simply be that they had just devoured all herbaceous plants on their side of the road. I couldn't see any dominant direction. At the visitor center of SNPW I was shown a folder with images of local Moths that identified them as the larvae of the White-lined Sphinx.

Caterpillar and adult White-lined Sphinx

At the time I was a very active member of the Arizona Star gallery for local photographers. For the next couple of years I noticed probably more submissions of images of the adult White-lined Sphinx than of any other butterfly or moth. When our friend Ingrid Schmidt from Germany spent a couple of weeks photographing our Tucson backyard fauna, we realized that we both knew the species from warm, sunny areas at the Mediterranean and even from southern Germany.

Der Kosmos Insektenfuehrer, by J.Zahradnik

In fact, Hyles lineata (synonym Celerio lineata) ranges from Central America north through Mexico and the West Indies to most of the United States and southern Canada and also occurs in Eurasia and Africa. I think genetic studies may have to reveal whether all those populations are really in genetic exchange or whether separate species are forming.
Breeding twice annually between February and November Hyles lineata populations seem to go through cycles of population buildups and some sources assume that those trigger emigration and colonization of more northern areas.
As caterpillars they consume a very wide variety of food plants from willow weed (Epilobium), four o'clock (Mirabilis), apple (Malus), evening primrose (Oenothera), elm (Ulmus), grape (Vitis), tomato (Lycopersicon), purslane (Portulaca), and Fuschia, also Rumex and Galium in Europe.

Hyles lineata nectaring on Cardinal Flower in Sycamore Canyon

As adults they can be seen nectaring day and night on all kinds of deep-throated flowers. So they are able to adapt to many different habitats.

A dark caterpillar in Prescott

While I witnessed the fist population explosion in the lower Sonoran Desert in 2007, I ran into another one in the mile-high town of Prescott (September of 2008) where they seemed to concentrate in riparian ares and the adults were so frequently seen on Saponaria that some of my art show clients took me to see and identify them.

In some years, H. lineata is not very common, but a few appear most nights. Peppersauce Canyon, Catalina Mts

In August of 2009 Fred Skillman and I black-lighted north of Silver City New Mexico close to some meadows covered in Spotted Horsemint (Monarda punctata), and our black-lighting sheets were weight down by the on-slough of White-lined Sphinxes.

Light colored caterpillar with pronounced back stripe, lower Sonoran Desert, Tucson

But here in the desert around Tucson, the moths had become much rarer after several years of severe drought. I never see them anymore during the day on our Barrio Petunias that they used to love. But after somewhat better monsoon rains I did see more caterpillars on desert herbs.

These were all together in a patch of Mexican Prim Roses in Green Valley

Last week, Lois O'Brien called me to Green Valley to photograph caterpillars on her Mexican Prim Roses. She had a good number in her front yard and was fascinated by the extreme differences in their appearance. They ranged from bright juicy greens to nearly black, some had light median back stripes, others didn't, and there didn't seem to be any correlation between their size (age, instar) and those colors. From the distribution of the caterpillars among the plants, we couldn't help but speculate that all these caterpillars came from a clutch of eggs from a single female.

Hyles lineata caterpillars at Saguaro National Park August 2007

When I came home, I went through my files and pulled out even more color variants. I came upon bright yellow ones with red markings from Tucson Mountain Park and dark and even blue and purple ones from Prescott. So is that a hint? Light colors on the sandy desert and darker ones in moister or colder environments? Thermoregulation? There seem to be some studies that support this theory.

In Lois' garden we noticed how difficult it was to find the big caterpillars in the flower beds. The dark colors were certainly very cryptic between the branches of the lush green plants while the bright green blended in with leaves in the sun. The great differences in appearance made it quite difficult to form a search image. Did you notice the smaller lime green caterpillar in the photo with the big yellow one? I should mention here that the colors do not seem to be aposematic. I had a young Jackdaw at home in Germany who seemed to like the caterpillars on his menu, and here in Tucson I watched even the notoriously seed-eating Northern Cardinal devouring every bit of a very fat one, which took several minutes and a couple of location changes to get away from Desert Museum visitors. I also remember a side-blotched lizard grabbing several small ones. So they are tasty.

A bad photo, but a great color variant from Prescott

Considering the wide range of different habitats and the tendency of the adults to wander, isn't it possible that all the different patterns and colors occur randomly in the population or even a clutch (and I have no idea about the possible genetic base for this), and just a few will always get lucky and find camouflage and protection? The reason that I found more yellow ones in desert grasses and more dark ones in lusher, shadier places could just be the result of higher predation of the other colors. In this scenario there would be selection, but no evolution in any direction, because the next generation may be growing up in a completely different habitat. During mass occurrences, the lack of a unified search image may make it more difficult for predators 'to get them all'. I for example keep overlooking some color morphs in my own photos.

White-sided Jackrabbit (Lepus callotis) photo from wickimedia commons. Note the black on the inside of the ears.

A couple of years ago Charlie O'Brien and I were traveling through the San Rafael Valley close to the tiny town Lochiel at the Mexican border when suddenly two hares came racing across the undulating grassy hills. They were chasing each other the way courting hares do, flinging themselves high into the air and thus overtaking each other in the vertical rather than the horizontal plane. Even from a distance of several hundred feet we could see that they each had a large white area on their flanks. A year later I was returning with Eric Eaton from a bug-party in Sierra Vista, so it must have been in late August. We took the long way home, around the Chiricahua Mountains and, at dusk, were just turning north again in the Canelo Hills. Landscape-wise the area is the northern extension of the San Rafael Grasslands. We may have even been talking about my earlier observation. At any rate, we saw another Jackrabbit with white flanks. Eric got out of the truck and followed it for a while to get some photos. I had only my 50mm macro lense, so I didn't even try. I never saw the result of this pursuit, but I think it was already too dark to shoot a moving target.

I was reasonably sure then that the hares we saw on both occasions were white-sided jackrabbits (Lepus callotis) also known as the Mexican hares. Literature gives Northern to Central Mexico and Hidalgo County in SW New Mexico as the distribution range of this threatened species. But occurance in Arizona is assumed possible but has not been clearly recorded. So did we actually see L.callotis?

The two other possible species are Black-tailed and Antelope Jackrabbit, and both are widespread and common in Arizona.

Watercolor of Black-tail Jackrabbit under Creosote bush with dry Cheat Grass. by Margarethe Brummermann

On our property in Picture Rocks, Arizona, we regularly see the Black-tailed Jackrabbits (Lepus californicus). Especially the youngsters that congregate to drink at our bird bath are literally 'all ears'. They can use these huge appendices for heat dissipation, and when it's hot, a bright pink glow from expanded blood vessels makes the ears look even more impressive. They feed on anything here. They clipp creosote branches, graze on cheat grass, love cactus fruit whose seeds they distribute undigested in their pellets. When a barrel cactus falls over and exposes its thornless underside, a Black-tailed Jackrabbit can hollow it out in a single night. Only a huge pile of pellets will stay behind.

Like the White-sided Jackrabbits, they have black areas on the tips of the ears, but on the outside, and black tails. But their flanks are tan colored like the rest of the upper side of the body. This JR has a wide distribution range, including all of the Southwestern US, east to Missouri, north to Nebraska and Washington and south into Mexico.

Antelope Jackrabbit (Lepus alleni) Photo by Eirini Pajak

The other Arizona species is the Antelope Jackrabbit (Lepus alleni). I can't say that I have actually consciously seen them - I only became aware of their field marks while preparing this article. The antelope jackrabbit is one of the largest hares in North America, weighing 9 to 10 pounds (4.5 kg). This jackrabbit’s huge ears are edged in white. The large eyes are placed high and towards the back of its slightly flattened head, allowing it to see nearly 360 degrees as it watches for predators. The antelope jackrabbit is so named because it has a patch of white fur on its flanks that it can flash on one side or the other as it zigs and zags, running from a predator, much as the pronghorn antelope does. (Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum-http://www.desertmuseum.org/books/nhsd_rabbits.php)

Antelope Jackrabbit photo by Rick Wright

According to literature, its prefered habitat is even dryer than that of the Black-tailed JR, which seems nearly impossible considering that we have Black-tails on our creosote flats. But its main distribution is more southern (Sonoran Desert in AZ and the western states of Mexico) and it can reportedly deal better with extreme heat (Best and Henry, 1993). It also prefers lower elevations than the Black-tailed, and grassland to brush.

Antelope Jackrabbit flashing its white side. photo by A. Schmierer

So which jackrabbit flashed its white flanks? During my internet search for an image of the White-sided, I repeatedly found a misidentified Antelope JR, with white flanks, but clearly lacking the black on the inside of the ear tips. The San Rafael Valley is still rich in endigenous grasses that L. callotis likes, but the Canelo Hills location may be to high in elevation for the species. The photo by A. Schmierer, above, cleraly shows an Antelope JR, and it was taken in the Patagonia area which isn't far from the Canelo Hills. The White-sided JR is crepuscular to night-active. We saw the pair during the bright afternoon (but mating activity may disturb the pattern?) and the single one at dusk. We did see the flashing white flanks, but I paid no attention to the ears. So if Eric doesn't find his photos and they clearly show black ear tips, I think we will never know whether those were Antelope or White-sided Jackrabbits, but I now assume they were the former.

Old Jack. watercolor M.Brummermann

Anyway, I think they are all amazing desert creatures, adapted to some of the most inhospitable habitats and chased and hunted by everyone from Golden Eagles and other raptors to felines, canines and humans, but still jumping, cavorting and playing.

All Ears. watercolor M. Brummermann

(Best and Henry, 1993; David S. Hinds, 1977; Mearns, 1890; Vorhies and Taylor, 1933)

When not able to find shelter, Lepus alleni can tolerate heat stress at high levels better and for a longer time than Lepus californicus. (Best and Henry, 1993; David S. Hinds, 1977; Mearns, 1890; Vorhies and Taylor, 1933)

Today my birding trip to the Pinal Airpark Pecan Grove took an unexpected turn. I found the fields of Avra Valley very dry and bare - just some left-over cotton and alfalfa and none of the bird-attracting Sorghum that grew here before. Agricultural subsidies must have been changed since last year.

A very entertaining Road Runner volunteered for a little video. Northern Harriers were cruising, a Say's Phoebe perched on a fence and a Western Phoebe on the Santa Cruz River bank. A hole conspiracy of ravens was riding a thermal updraft...

Driving slowly up a dirt road off Trico Rd, I heard a faint cry. I couldn't tell whether it was a bird call or a frog or even a baby? After a while, it came again, weaker, but clearly close by. There was nothing but a wash with a desert broom bush behind the barbed wire fence of some posted Tucson City property. The fence had those nasty vertical wires that make it difficult to slip through...When I came to the bush, I saw a little animal turn twice and then bed down, the way foals and fawns do.

A tiny newborn lamb. Although the area is flat and open, there were no ewes or any other sheep in sight anywhere. The little guy showed no fear. When I touched him his eyes opened, but barely. His chest was so thin and narrow, his breastbone felt like a knife. Completely dehydrated and nearly starved. The umbilical cord still attached. Hardly reacting when I picked him up. But as weak as he seemed, he stood like a little wooden horse when I had to set him down to crawl through the fence again and he even turned to kep me in sight. In the car he collapsed in his fetal position again. Luckily our vet has his clinic on Luckett Rd, only a few miles from where I found the lamb. There the prognosis was better than I had expected - they took him in and hoped he would fully recover. Did I want to get him back? No, not really...but I hope he'll do well and can join the other animals that seem to have a very nice life on the land around the clinic.

Finally the seemingly permanent high-pressure system over Arizona weakened and a storm from the Pacific swept in. Over two days we received not quite an inch of rain. What a relief!

With falling temps, Hummingbirds, Verdins and Gila Woodpeckers constantly replenished their energy reserves at the feeders.

It didn't get very cold down here, but in the morning the Catalina Mountains sported a nice snow cover and of course Catalina Highway has been closed for the last three days.

Our backyard smells fresh and acrid, the cacti are dust-free and pretty and the sky still holds a very small promise of more rain...

Droplets sparkle on all Creosote Bushes, the best winter decoration I can think of in the desert.

Some droplets even have upside-down dogs in them (Frodo)!

Other dogs (Cody) prefer to stay right-side up in the sunshine, which has returned and is quite warm. The caged pepper plant behind his head is blooming and fruiting.

In the Creosote Bushes, scores of Lesser Goldfinches are preening and snacking on those silvery, fluffy fruits. The funny thing is that Randy and I were already secretly tired of grey clouds, fog and heavy jackets and we are now happily basking in the sun, just like the birds.

After they were just hanging on during the hot summer months, my cherry tomatoes have finally been blooming all through October and November. Right now they are full of promising fruit, with the diameter of a quarter and just showing a slight blush. I will harvest just before we go on our holiday trip to California.

But I am not the only one to harvest. First I saw some wilting leaves, then a lot of dry ones and frass...and even a hole in a tomato.

I found green caterpillars rolled up in the wilted leaves. I've been in caterpillar and moth mode this summer since I met Dave Wagner who recruited my help to get specimens for his next book, a field guide to the caterpillars of the Southwest. So I brought a leaf with a fat green worm inside to photograph it. Later there was just the shriveled leaf in the white porcelain bowl that serves as my photography stage, and I thought I had lost the caterpillar. It happens.

Yesterday I noticed that a little slip of brown chitin protruding from the dry plant material. I carefully unfolded the leaf and found an empty pupa. Too bad I didn't keep it in a closed container! But I hadn't expected a December emergence and I had no patience or room to have yet another over-winter-diapause-pupa-container sitting on my desk till spring.

This morning I discovered a very strangely posed insect under the bedroom ceiling. It took me a moment to even recognize it as a moth. So I got a step ladder, took some photos, posted them to Bugguide, and

Eggplant Leafroller, Lineodes integra

Voila! Not even an hour later Maury Heiman and Charles Melton had identified it as Lineodes integra (Eggplant Leafroller - Hodges#5107).
Eggplants and tomatoes, both in the Nightshade family (solanaceae), are closely related and share a lot of parasites. So the moth definitely is my escapee from the tomato leaf. I think it's rather pretty, don't you?

Bell pepper plant that volunteered from seeds thrown into the compost bin

I'll let the caterpillars have the tomato leaves but I am glad that they haven't found (or don't like) my bell pepper plants that are producing very nicely and my little chiltepin seedlings that are just a couple of inches tall.

Longhorn Season

Net-winged Insects and the Strategies of their Predatory Offspring

National Moth Week - not much going on in AZ, or is it?

I have lapped filthy water from a hoof print

Black Lights to draw Moths and the Public

Our Peppersauce Field Trip Made the News

I love organic gardens!

Dynastes Quest

Pena Blanca and Sycamore Canyon

Dinner à laTucson

Bat and Bug Night at the Santa Rita Experimental Range

Audubon Trip to Brown Canyon, Baboquivari Mountains

The south side of the Santa Catalinas

Dynastes Quest revisited in Watercolor

Egg Sacks and Gossamer Showers

Color variations of the caterpillar of the White-lined Sphinx, Hyles lineata

Which Jackrabbit?

Git along little dogie?

The first rain since early October

Who eats my Tomatoes?