Bugs in the news: Giant Stick Insects.

This morning, I read a cool story about some giant stick insects that became extinct from a tiny island, only to be re-discovered decades later on a nearby, even tinier island (really nothing more than a rocky remnant of a volcano that juts out of the sea, off the coast of Australia.) The story is here, and it's written by Robert Krulwich, who is one of my favorite PBS/NPR science guys, so if you like him too, you can imagine his voice when you read the story. There's a video at the end, too, of a giant stick insect hatching in captivity at the Melbourne Zoo. I have shared it below, in case you don't want to click over to read the whole story but you really should.

Lord Howe Island Stick Insect hatching from Zoos Victoria on Vimeo.

Not-a-bug #2

When is a caterpillar not a caterpillar?
  When it's actually a long fuzzy flower that fell out of a tree.
  See? I don't even know what kind of tree it was. It was along one of our local nature trails. But I got a kick out of the faux-pillars.
  Here's a bunch of them congregating around the base of the tree.

Not-a-bug #1

But of course, anyone who likes bugs would probably not turn their nose up at one of these: This salamander was coiled up under a trash can lid in my back yard. I love that we have salamanders. We only see them during the winter.

Yellow spider

This sweet little yellow spider was resting on the chain link fence in my back yard.

A little bug stopped by

My house is a mess from this remodel, although we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I haven't really felt like blogging much, or even looking for bugs, but a few of the bugs have found me anyway. I was admiring the rows of freshly sealed saltillo tiles in the late afternoon sun, when I saw a tiny aphid that had landed on a tile. The tile was already dry, and the aphid flew away after his photo shoot.

Super bowl commercial with bugs