First Days In The Field

Our first day in the field capturing bugs was a very beautiful day. We traveled down to the lake; the weather was very nice, the sun was shining, and the experience was overall very enjoyable. We found more insects than I honestly inspected to encounter. The first larvae we captured were found in the plants called cattails. These cattails were very messy, and as we were looking through them to find larvae their leaves (I suppose that is what they were) were scattered everywhere. Of course I was located downwind from everyone and all of the cattail mess landed on my black pants and fuzzy purple jacket. This part of the experience was not the best part, but was bearable in order to see 

the larvae that were seeking warmth inside. Other people found cocoons to use for their insect collection. I believe cricket cocoons and moth cocoons were retrieved and are going to be usable for the project. Overall we found some life and spent a nice day outside in the good weather.

The second day we traveled to the forest

of the Ecoscape on campus. The weather was not as good as the previous day, but it was not the 9 degree weather that we experienced a few days prior. More life was found in this area in comparison to the lake. Beetles, earwigs, beetle larvae and other larvae were found fairly commonly. One find that was rather disturbing to me was the spider nest that was found. You could see the little spiders crawling around and all that I could imagine was these things crawling all over me (yes I know spiders are not insects...). We also found a centipede and a millipede and we discussed why in fact these were not acceptable to use in our collections. After these encounters I found myself staring more at the trees and their beauty rather than actually looking for insects (some people may not know this but I have this weird obsession with trees, not really their names or types or certain traits about them, but generally staring at them and acknowledging their beauty). All in all our two visits have been very interesting and have led me to learn more about insects and where they stay during the winter.