Insect identification (warning: there are pictures of spiders!)

While packing up pitfall and fogging equipment I wouldn't need again till next field season I peeked into the freezer that is in the cage (wildlife storage area) and looked at the multitude of insects some of my fellow grad students have collected for their field season. Their collection jars are about 4x the size of mine, do not contain alcohol, and are just about slap full. Since I have no where near as many insects as they do, I figured it might save everyone time if I just identified my own insects/arthropods. My defense: 1. Two grad students still have 5 boxes of insects to be identified, 2. undergrads are working on insect identification for the two grad students who currently have insects to be identified, 3. another grad student is also collecting insects for his project, 4. I have way less insects than they do (mostly because I did not collect mine with an attractant (like a light source for night flying insects)), 5. I only have to identify them to order or family, and 6. how awesome would it be to say, "Yeah, I identified all of my insects."

Little did I know how difficult it is for an insect lay person, such as myself, to even begin to start identify these little guys! For example, I didn't know the best way to identify spiders to their family is by eye arrangement. I do now! P.S. I do not like spiders one bit and staring at them through a microscope in order to see how their eyes are situated on their head has made for an interesting time to say the least. After the first two days I kept feeling like something was crawling on me. Today was my third day and I'm little over half way done with one of my boxes! Luckily I only have 3 boxes and one of those has hardly any insects in them. Although by the end of the day I'm tired of staring at bugs and inhaling smelly rubbing alcohol (I'm sure it'll be like formaldehyde soon enough where I just don't smell it anymore), I'm starting to see insects in a whole different light (figuratively and literally).

Yes, looking for a spiders eyes through a microscope can be horrifying. Especially when you see their fangs!

But, the coloration on some of them is just amazing, dare I say almost beautiful. It's also amazing how some of them are designed. Just a slight variation in the wings on a fly like insect can mean different species, families, or even orders of insect. 80% of all the animals on Earth are insects! Crazy!



This weekend I was reading the blog of a professor from another university who has his grad students do blog posts from time to time. According to what I read, I will not have as much time to myself as I thought I would. I guess I need to get it in as much as possible while I can. Though it also has me wondering, is my project just too simple? Should I add something to it? Should I be doing more? And I really have no idea.... I guess that's something I'll have to think on.

Here are some pictures I took today while enjoying some of my "outside" break time. Enjoy and blessed be!

summer tanager

brown thrasher in the sun

singing brown thrasher in the sun

Re-settling in

It's been 12 days since I finished my first field season. All of my data is entered and ready to be analyzed and I've uploaded an extra 60 journal articles to read in more detail later. I found out Friday that I will now have a proper office area! Woohoo!! I get to start on that Monday. I would have got on it Friday after I found out, but I was so sore from the workout that morning that I just didn't want to leave the apartment.

Buddy and I made a deal before I came back home for good from field season. If he would walk with me and Luna I would go to the gym with him. This past week I walked Luna for a mile or more everyday up to the day we were going to go to the gym. We are using the tiny gym at our apartment complex's sister complex and can't go in till after the office opens at 830 unless we want to pay $10 extra a month on our rent for a key. Yea right! I'll just go when you're open, thank you very much. So, since we couldn't go until around 830 and Luna and I had been walking at around 630-7ish every morning, I thought it was a good idea to just go ahead and walk her that morning before lifting weights at the gym. I'm a newb, so I figured it could kinda be like my warm up.

Luna and I head out and I'm feeling really good about this walk. So good in fact I decide we should keep going and make it a 2 mile walk through the hiking trails. The trails here are nice and well labeled, but none of the beginner (read "easy") trails circle back around to the main walking paths in the garden area. In order to actually make a circuit you have to take a more difficult trail or just turn around on the path you're on and walk it back. I had walked some of the trail called Labyrinth before and it wasn't as bad as the last intermediate trail I tried. What I mean when calling it bad is super freaking hilly. And not just steep hills, nah. I mean steep goat hill down, enough room to place your feet flat, and then steep goat hill up. I'm not in good enough shape to keep that up for very long and besides I did enough hill lunges during field season, so I'll stick to the non-goat hill trails thank you very much. (That's the second time I said that....just an observation)

Anywho, we walked our two miles. I was sweaty and exhausted. Luna was panting and exhausted. Then I went to the gym. At first I was ok. I tried out some machines, Buddy told me what I was doing wrong, I lifted some more weights, and then I got sore. It's been forever and a day since I tried to do anything other than walking some hiking trails in order to get myself in better shape. The burn was ok and I can get used to it. The soreness is going to take even more getting used to. I guess my body was mad at me for doing too much in too short of a time frame cause the back of my knee did not like it when I moved today, so I didn't walk. But tomorrow I'm going back to the gardens and walking the paths for at least a mile on top of doing house work. I know, I lead an exciting life.

So that's been my week and a half since field work. Catching up on inputting data, finding more sources for my paper, getting back into some what of a routine around the apartment, walking Luna every morning, and now (starting this week) going to the gym three times a week.

I've also been doing a lot of back yard birding. I rarely go out to the patio with out taking my camera. There is a cherry tree of some type that has fruited and was driving the woodpeckers bonkers. We would have three different species of woodpeckers in that tree at once sometimes. I also heard a yellow-billed cuckoo out there today, but I didn't see it. Now I'm on cuckoo alert! I will have a picture of it! Enjoy what pictures I do have from this week. Blessed be!

Above: red-headed woodpecker

Right and Below: summer tanager

 Right: brown thrasher. Such a secretive little bird

Below: pileated woodpecker. They are pretty large and loud, but just splendid to watch.

This guy on the left is a red-bellied woodpecker. They have a stripe of red on the back of their head and nape of their neck which sometimes can confuse the beginner birder. But I was lucky enough to be able to catch part of the red patch on this fella's belly for which he is named.

 This guy on the right is a great crested flycatcher. They have a very distinctive coloration where the top part of their body is grey, their neck is whiteish, their belly is yellow, and the underside of their tails are orangeish brown or a roufus color.

 

 To the right are a red-headed and red-bellied woodpecker foraging off the same cherry tree.

 This red-bellied woodpecker was quite the acrobat.

More pileated woodpeckers. I'm not sure how their family system works, but right before I shot this picture, the bird highest in the picture was feeding the lower one. Perhaps it was a male feeding a female since there is only slight variations in plumage (feather) coloration? 

This guy to the left is a red-eyed vireo; thus named due to it's red eyes. I had heard it nearby and played back it's song through a birding app on my phone. He was not happy and came swooping in the patio trying to find the other male vireo. He then flew to this branch probably confused since he couldn't find the other male in his territory even though he had clearly heard him calling, then flew away.

And that's a wrap!

We finished our last three stands this morning! It couldn't have come at a better time. Brittany's drivers licence expires next week so she had to go back this weekend and on top of that the rain chances for today and tomorrow have been increasing with each passing day. This was my commute home:

This is what it looks like right now:

And the rest of the week:

This rain would have set us back at least two days and we may not have been able to finish by Saturday so Brittany could get back home as planned. So, needless to say, I'm ok with my decision even though it came with the price of working everyday since last Monday, getting up at 3am every morning save one, and driving almost 5 hours each day. 

The funny thing about today is I ended up dehydrated enough to be sick. Both Brittany and I did so well hydrating while out in the field. We would remind each other to drink and even take extra stops to hydrate if we were especially hot. Though today in all of our excitement we didn't do so well. I didn't even finish half my powerade. It didn't occur to me that was what was wrong until Buddy mentioned it a little while ago. Oops. Glad it was today of all days though! 

So, what's next? Tomorrow Buddy and I are going to have a date day, Wednesday I'm going to clean the apartment and unpack my things away in an organized fashion, and sometime after (read:Thursday) I'm going to start back on data entry. I'm registered for three hours of thesis writing for the summer II semester, so I'll start on my proposal soon after data entry. Sounds fun right? Ha! Unfortunately, this is the major portion of my field...writing.

I probably won't get excited until I start data analysis, which is still kinda boring and goes over most peoples heads. But, I'm going to do my best to throw it in here so even the layest of laymen can understand. What's  the point of science if it's so damn difficult no one wants to understand it, right? Then no one would get how nifty science is. For now I'm going back to relaxing on the couch with the hubby, drinking powerade, and loving on my furbabies. 

Good morning from stand (13) 26. Although this picture was taken Thursday or Friday this was our final stand of the season! 

Brittany's last meal in Nacogdoches at Butcher boys. Her favorite was the sour cream, cheddar, bacon burger. The sad face is because she couldn't finish it. 

Good morning from the road beside stand (08)17. It's the stand to the left and one of my favorite tall pine stands we worked in. 

Bunny friend! This little guy wasn't near as shy as some of it's brothers and sisters. He stayed on the road watching us walk up on him for a long time. 

The dark green path is our trail in as our boots and jeans soaked up all the dew. This is stand (13)2. 

My favorite sight after crossing the Sabine River...both signs. 

One week left!!

As of today we have twelve, TWELVE, that's 1-2, 10+2, 6+6,....you get the point ... Surveys left!!!! That means if we do 2 surveys a day we will be done Wednesday. AND if we do more than 2 a day, like today, we will be done before Wednesday. There is rain projected for Tuesday and Wednesday of next week (of course) so, just in case we are going to try for 3. 

Today we also had my major professor shadowing me. Of course this would also be the day I fell twice. Nice going Libby. So why were we being shadowed? This way he will better understand what we have been doing. Granted it is late in the season, but better late than never right?

The last few days have consisted of early mornings (315 AM wake up), 5+ hours of commuting (back and forth total), and super early bed times (8 PM). I'm pretty ready for this craziness to be over with. 

In other news, I am officially a graduate student at Stephen F. Austin State University. Yes, I have been working on my graduate project and yes, I moved three states away three months ago; however in the chaos that was moving, I missed a crucial step in the application process and had to frantically catch up. Now that I've caught up I'm one step closer to a maste's degree!! 

My tired brain is at a loss of any other new developments to tell, so please enjoy what few pictures I have from the last update and blessed be. 

The porch of a biologist. Nasty, stinky wet clothes and boots...check. Bird feeders...check. Plants...check. 

Three cute calves in one of our young pine stands. 

Turtle shell (carapace) 

Two tufted titmice and an incoming Carolina chickadee at my new feeder. 

Sunscreen is ALWAYS your friend. 

Hogzilla print.