fave cool bugs i saw this summer, a mental health post
grounding by going to ground
I’m obsessed with firebugs.
A flash of red, everywhere under my feet, as I walk down to the shore.
Just as thrilling to me as seeing a butterfly or a ladybird, maybe even more so because apparently these lil’ guys are recent immigrants to England. They’re not supposed to be here, but because it’s getting warmer, well…
When I say recent I think it’s been about 15 years according to Bugs Britannica, 2010. And Welsh Wildlife says that the only known UK colony used to be on Ore Stone island, off the coast of Devon.
Not anymore!
The red is the most satisfying deep pigmented red. The black details are sharp and highly designed. They’re beautiful and harmless — my favourite kind of insect!
Speaking of warm weather and the bugs it brings (you’re not allowed to mention mosquitoes!) was anyone else lucky enough to see a hummingbird hawk moth in England this sweltering summer?
The fuzzy orange/grey spot in my photo below does a great job of showing you why the word “hummingbird” deserves a place in its name, but not such a good job of showing the details. Or the booming buzz that it makes when swooping overhead!
I talked about this sighting for DAYS, much to the summertime sadness of JR who missed it. I read that once a hummingbird hawk moth finds a good place to feed, it comes back at the same time every day, but I must have seen mine on the last humid day of summer because I set an alarm (nerd!), but it never did return.
OH MY GOSH I FORGOT TO MENTION THIS GUY:
When I was a kid, I remember my grandma picking a tiny grasshopper out of her garden and pulling one of its legs off to show us– show us what exactly, I’m not sure?! I think another adult in the room at the time said not to worry, its legs will grow back.
Some years later I learned that grasshoppers’ legs don’t in fact grow back, they just heal up where they were torn from the body. So that’s nice, grandma.
Anyway, look at the size of this one — what a specimen! I walked very, very slowly around it, because grasshoppers can jump about 10 times higher than their body length and about 20 times further, and I don’t really like to think about that.
Honourable mention: The little green bug that hung out on my laptop as I wrote this. Not sure what it is — I think a shield bug? If you know for sure, I want to know.
This blog post first appeared on whatgoesinmustcomeout.substack.com under the much shorter title, “bugs”.
