Closed for June III – Bugs! Love ‘em or – love ‘em

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Howdy, BugFans,

Here’s a pot pourri of articles about insects for your enjoyment.

Bug Love: the BugLady is aware that some BugFans read Bug o’the Week selectively, skipping episodes like the one about the Cockroach (you know who you are). Why? Because, among other reasons, certain bugs give us the heebie-jeebies.

Crowded skies: we know that birds and bats and some charismatic insect megafauna like Monarch butterflies and Common Green Darner dragonflies migrate. So do some of the little guys, and in Biblical numbers.

How long have people been enthralled by insects? Probably since they started slapping them and scratching the bites and discovering that they occupied the same caves. For fellow History Geeks, a timeline of entomology – (be sure to click on the picture by van Kessel).

This week, June 19th to 25th is National Pollinator Week. Bumble bees are the main pollinators of red clover (an important livestock food) because the nectar prize is deep in the floral tubes, and some species of long-tongued bumble bees have tongues long enough to reach it. Here’s a guide to native pollinators.

The BugLady

About the BugLady

The BugLady (aka Kate Redmond) is an Environmental Educator who has been having “close encounters” with insects all her life. She has worked and/or volunteered at Lac Lawrann Conservancy in West Bend, the Mequon Nature Preserve, and Riveredge Nature Center near Newburg and spoken at other area Nature Centers. At Riveredge, she has had the wonderful assignment of being the “sturgeon paparazza” at their annual sturgeon release. She leads field trips in the Cedarburg Bog, is a founding member of the Friends of the Cedarburg Bog, and is a current Board member of the Lake Michigan Bird Observatory. When she’s not appreciating insects, she’s enjoying prairies and wetlands.

Her 40 year addiction to photography is (almost) her only vice. She's gone through a number of cameras in the last 40 years, and now she packs a Pentax K-70 with a 70 mm macro lens.

The BugLady is a Wisconsin native, presently living in Sheboygan County. Most of the photos in Bug of the Week were taken in southeastern Wisconsin. Her Mission Statement is “Less stepping on bugs.”