Category: #insects
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What’s the beetle doing to its companion?
This brief video (about 7 seconds long) captures a pair of beetles, apparently “Darkling Beetles” (family Tenebrionidae). It shows one beetle touching the other with its antennae. The video was shot September 5 on Fatman’s Loop trail (Mt. Elden area of Flagstaff, Arizona). I removed the sound track and edited out most of the effects…
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A summer of learning: Butterfly upperwings and underwings
My first “wow” butterfly moment in the summer of 2015, described in Butterflies Part I, was really about butterflies and moths, and their antennae. The second moment of amazement is this realization: One butterfly, and in fact each individual wing of that one butterfly, can be very different when seen from above or below. Their…
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A summer of learning: How to tell butterflies from moths
It has been a summer of wonder and amazement, based on apparently chance encounters of this insect or that. But of course what we see— if we are watching—reflects what is here for now, in this season (or sub-sub-season). And so, it seems that one week, quite suddenly, our Cheshire neighborhood (Flagstaff, AZ) was home…

