Spiny Leaf Insect Eating Molted Skin

'Twas two nights before Christmas, and rather than posting wishes for Peace on Earth and the Joy of the Season, she was posting videos of her spiny leaf insect eating her molted skin....

I was fascinated to find my spiny leaf bug this morning, hanging precariously from her molted skin.  I had missed the actual molt, but soon realized that she was eating her skin (no wonder I never find any in the cage, as I do with the stick bugs).  The whole process of chewing it, as she hung from it, took probably an hour.  I took two video clips, which I would like to share.  I promise to be more seasonal in upcoming posts.

Spiny Leaf Insects Eggs !!

I had a nice surprise tonight.  My oldest spiny leaf insect, who was born in April (see post), so is just shy of 8 months old, started laying eggs tonight!  My son helped me spot 5 eggs, which I have removed to another container on a layer of moist paper towels, to await the long 9 months until they will hatch.  Here they are in my hand (aren't they pretty?) :

By the time we looked back at the mom, she had an egg showing at the end of her tail (sorry for the blurry photo) :

My son and I waited until it dropped.  Pretty exciting.  I read that she could lay as many as 100 eggs.

This is pretty good timing, since it is a bittersweet time for me and my girls.  A long time ago, I posted an ad that I would be willing to sell up to 2 of my 5 girls, and recently I've been contacted by a lady who is so excited to buy them that she will have a friend bring them by airplane for her.  He is supposed to come this weekend to pick them up, and I've had such mixed feelings about parting with any of my girls, but I know they will be going to a good home where they will be appreciated.  Now I am also glad that I will have eggs to provide hope of a new generation once my dear bugs are gone.  If I have any sense, I won't keep all the eggs, and certainly not all the offspring! 

Here are some recent photos of all my girls.  This is #1, my big 8 month old girl (now a mom!) with the regenerating front leg.  She has a wonderful weight to her, when she is held, and little spines on her belly can be felt against my skin :

This is #2, she is a bit more green than my first one :

 This is # 3 :

This is # 4 :

This is # 5, who is 3 1/2 months old now :

I am thinking to keep #1, 2 & 5, and part with #3 & #4.

Stick Bug Jealousy

In the three years which I have been keeping walking stick insects, I have not noticed any displays of emotion.  In fact, they hardly seem to move - or eat, for that matter.  They don't seem to seek out or mind the attention of other stick bugs.  If one walks on top of another, neither one seems to pay any attention.  With the exception of the adult males, who do manage to seek out and mate with the females.

Last week my daughter brought her small cage of stick bugs to display to the whole school, so the night before, I cleaned out the cage for her, and set up fresh blackberry leaves.  We were a bit concerned to see a male and female joined together, since this sort of thing would raise unnecessary questions from the younger kids.  As I removed the lid which they were clinging to, a second male approached from behind and climbed onto the first (successful) male's back.  I figured it was just because I had disturbed them, and expected them to soon settle.  Instead, I saw something I didn't expect.  The second male appeared to bite the first male on the leg.  The first male recoiled slightly, which confirmed to me that it was actually a bite which I had witnessed.  Then he bit again.

Normally, I would have gone for my Blackberry, to be ready to record in case it happened again.  But it was late at night (which always seems to be the case when I am cleaning their cages), and I wanted to get done before I got too tired.  So I never did see whether the biting continued.  But when I returned the lid a few minutes later, it appeared that the first male was still in position with the female, and the second male was still waiting nearby, perhaps jealously.

Spiny Leaf Insects Munching Leaves

If you're not already tired of my photos of the spiny leaf insects, here is a video I recorded on my Blackberry this evening:



If I were clever, I would figure out how to add music to the clip, but it's too late at night for such a challenge.

Spiny Leaf Bug Regrowing Her Leg

I am still enjoying my spiny leaf insects, my oldest being now almost 5 months old.  Recently she lost a front leg while molting, and I have been hoping that she will regrow it.  Spiny leaf bugs, like stick bugs, have the ability to regenerate missing limbs.  Pretty cool.

Anyhow, after arriving home from a one week vacation, I was very pleased to see that she is regrowing the leg.  See it in the photo below, it is still much smaller than the other legs, but through successive molts, it should get longer.  Way cool.  You go girl!

I was also pleased to find that I now have a new hatchling too, my 5th leaf bug now.  I am getting quite a collection.

For any of you who follow my blog for my garden, I apologize that I have not shared much of my garden lately. Happily, I have been able to spend quite a bit of time there, and have made significant progress re-working sections of it, but have not been taking my camera with me often enough, and often it is too dark by the time I remember.  I'll try to take it with me and share photos in the upcoming weeks.

There are signs of fall already, with changes in leaf colours starting a few weeks ago. I am doing lots of clean up already. I even got my act together this year, and harvested much of my lavender. Tonight I cut down many of my globe thistle flowers, and will dry and hope to use them for a dried flower arrangement. They look like something out of a Dr. Seuss story.

Another Spiny Leaf Bug

I apologize to those who follow my blog for photos of my garden.  Tonight I noticed another spiny leaf bug had hatched.  I now have 2 spiny leaf insects.  The oldest is 9 weeks old now, and is looking more like a curled up leaf every day:

I tried to be clever and get a photo with them both on my hand, which I did:

But the newly hatched bug moves very quickly, and after this photo, it promptly disappeared up my sleeve.  At which point I put the older bug back in her cage, and ended up taking off my shirt to search for the little one.  Fortunately, I found her without squishing her.

On the stick bug side, I still have way too many, and keep telling myself I will try to find a home for many of them.  I managed to give away 4 to good homes last weekend.  Good thing I have a plentiful supply of blackberry leaves in the neighbourhood.

Spiny Leaf Bug at 2 Weeks

Okay I'm a freak for bugs, but I am really enjoying my spiny leaf insect which hatched 2 weeks ago. When I open the door to her cage, she seems to sense it, and finds her way out. She is so interesting to handle, since she runs very quickly, her tail tightly curled, and then when she calms down, she slows down, and lets her tail unroll. The stick bugs move when provoked, but rarely do much walking, and when they do, it is much slower.  Here are a few photos of my spiny leaf girl (they will all be girls) from today (click any photo for a slightly larger image):

The red colour in her head is gone, but isn't she still freaky looking?  I am really fascinated by her.

We had a second one hatch a few days later, but it had a gimpy front leg, and has not done well.  I don't think it will last until tomorrow.  Earlier today I found it lying on its face on the bottom of the cage, its body quite shrunken flat.  So I pulled it out, and gave it some water in my hand.  It seemed to drink, and revived and filled out a bit.  I also finally removed the leg, since it was stumbling on it, and having difficulty moving forward at all.  Later today I found it looking almost dead again, and gave it some sugar-water in my hand.  Again, it seemed to drink, and its body filled out a bit, but it didn't revive very much.  Instead of its tail curling up, it hangs down onto the ground.  Poor little thing.  I hope more eggs will hatch soon.

Birthday Season and Stick Bugs

Today was my son's birthday party with his friends from school, and the end of "birthday season" in our house.  I have discovered the joy of making cakes instead of buying them, so today I had fun decorating his, except that I couldn't find my icing decorating set, so instead ended up improvising with a plastic bug cut on the end, and holding one of the icing tips I did find against it, but it was a real messy job, with icing spilling out on all sides onto my hands.  You wouldn't know it, though, by looking at the cake.  I think it turned out pretty good, don't you?:

My only mistake was that I indicated that we would be done by 7:30 or 8pm, and some parents arrived at 7:30pm, and we were not done.  My husband only arrived about 7:15pm from dropping off my daughter at the church, and I had waited for him to return before opening gifts and serving cake, since I wanted his help with a few photos.  So it was a bit of a rush finishing up, with parents arriving.

In the midst of the chaos, Gary from Cinemazoo arrived (from another birthday party he was entertaining at) to buy a few of my stick bugs for his collection of bugs and creatures which he shares with kids of all ages for educational and entertainment purposes.  I was very impressed with him.  Gary is a true nature enthusiast, and a very patient and kind person.  He graciously gave me some eggs of a leaf insect, which I will be thrilled to add to my stick bug "collection".  He also took the trouble to go back to his van and bring in some huge hissing cockroaches, which I enjoyed holding (the birthday kids all backed away and couldn't be convinced), and this giant stick bug which he preserved (wow, I would have liked to hold it while it was still alive!):

I think it would be a really cool birthday feature, to have Cinemazoo bring in their weird and wonderful creatures, and share them with the kids.   Tonight, one of the little sisters of one of the boys shrieked when she first saw my stick bugs, but after explaining to her that it was a "nice" gentle bug, I convinced her to hold one, and within a few minutes, she had convinced her mom that she wanted to take one home with her, which she did.  I was thrilled to see her transformed from her initial terror, to proudly clutching the little box with her new bug "pet".  What a night!

Creatures in the Garden : Centipedes, Cats, Rats

My son is becoming a great naturalist and garden buddy.  On the weekend, he found a really cool centipede (it turns out it is a millipede - see comments section) in the garden.  I don't remember ever seeing this one before:

The day after he spotted it, I was weeding in the upper corner of my yard among the monarda patch, and was surprised to discover the same type of centipede - perhaps even the same one.  This evening, I was again out weeding, this time in my new garden path area, and found that centipede again.  I called down to David, who was in the lower yard, and he said he also had one down there, and proudly carried it on his shovel to show it to me.  So there are at least two of this gorgeous creature in my yard.  I hope to see more of them!

Then after letting the centipede go, he proceeded to pick out the grasses and weeds growing between the concrete blocks of our outdoor chess board. Later he took the hose on "jet" setting, and blasted more weeds out of the cracks.  What a fine garden helper he is growing to be.

My daughter April is less inclined to anything in the garden. But she came out and visited me for a while, with her pet rat, Sam. I like this photo of them, sitting in the new garden path area.  April is excited to have "flip flops" this year (I previously frowned on such "dangerous" footwear but she's now old enough to handle them), so she changes into them at every opportunity.

Speaking of the new garden area, there is much weeding (when we cleared the area, the horsetails invaded with ferocity!), but I just love looking at it, weeding it, sitting on our new granite bench, and generally admiring that area. It will be even more magical when we get the path lighting connected up. I'm waiting for my landscaper to come and help with that. He's already picked up the transformer, and just needs to come and connect up the low-voltage lights which I already plunked out along the path months ago.

We had a cat in our garden earlier this evening. I caught a photo of it before my son opened the sliding door, and it darted away. When we first built our house (almost 6 years ago now) we regularly had cats prowling through our yard, presumably hunting, even after we fenced it in. I'm glad to still see the occasional cat.

The rain today helped thin our small peach tree, as evidenced by the few fuzzy balls below the tree this evening. Thankfully, the two largest fuzz-balls are still holding on. I'm excited at the prospect of tasting a peach this year - if the rain or squirrels don't remove them all first.

I took some photos of the bumblebees buzzing around in the wild roses which are blooming in the upper yard. One particular sequence of photos turned out pretty well, I think. But at midnight, I'm a bit too tired to create a slideshow. I'll try to create and post it another night.

Stained Glass Swallowtail and Coneflower

The other day Kate of High Altitude Gardening made a comment about looking for a new winter hobby. One of the first things that came to my mind was to fiddle around with Photoshop and create "stained glass" images from the summer's garden photos. It is something I've been thinking of trying for a long time now, and I think her photo of a monarch butterfly on a zinnia hit me as one which could make a great stained glass image.

This evening I had a bit of quiet time to myself (I think the flu is trying to reclaim me, so I convinced the family to leave me at home, and I crawled back into bed for some 5 hours this afternoon). So I decided I'll try with one of my butterfly images. Here is the final product, which I'm pretty pleased with:

I've done a fair amount of work with Photoshop before, so was able to create this image in just over an hour. I'm happy to share my steps, and hope to inspire someone else out there to try it out, and if you do, please post me your link in the comments section, so we can all enjoy it. I am using Photoshop Elements 2.0, so the specifics may vary in a different version, but the concepts should be the same. I'd love to hear any improvements on the technique anyone discovers.

Step 1: Choose a photo. I chose this one, because there is "lots happening" in it, and several basic colours : yellow, black, green, pink/purple.

Step 2 : Crop it. I cropped to just one flower with the butterfly, and then did a "resize canvas" to add a bit more space along the bottom, so my flower petals would not be cut off.

Step 3 : Check settings. You want the "RGB" colour setting (Image > Mode > select "RGB Color"). Otherwise bad things happen to your colour.

Step 4 : Add another layer, and start drawing the outline. I chose the colour black (RGB = 0,0,0), pixel size 25, opacity 100%. There is a "Layers" tab in which you can make the background visible or invisible (click the eyeball icon), and that helps to be able to check your work as you go, especially on the dark areas. I drew it in segments, so that I could Ctrl-Z (undo) any segment that didn't look good. Note that I added in my own flower bud behind. When improvising, it is useful to turn the background off.

After I had the image, I segmented the background, also in the same layer (originally I started another layer, but then later had to merge them together, otherwise the fill function wouldn't work properly).

Step 5 : Fill the colour. At this point I had the black outline on top of the original image. So I could use the "eyedropper" to select a colour from the background image, adjust it as necessary, and then use the "fill" bucket to drop colour into the appropriate sections. This went fairly quickly, and was quite rewarding. At this point, any further adjustments can be made. Such as drawing in the antenna, which I originally couldn't figure out how to represent, and only when I saw the final product I realized how I could draw them.

Step 6 : Save the image. To JPG or whatever. Save your Photoshop *.PSD file also, in case you want to come back and adjust anything, and "reprint" the image.

The other alternative is to just "play" with all the built-in filters which Photoshop provides, and see if anything turns out really neat. I explored many of them, and found some potential with these ones...

"Glowing edges" is pretty funky:

"Cutout" looks like a silk-screen image (does anyone use that technique anymore? Most everything has gone digital, even much of the professional printing):

"Watercolour" had a pleasant effect:

Okay, your turn. Be sure to send me links to your images, and any tips or techniques you can share with the rest of us.

Bug Animation Videos

Thanks to Does Everything Grow Better in My Neighbor's Yard?, for introducing me to the "Minuscule" bug animation series on YouTube by "bentekr". They have been perfect for killing time at midnight while waiting for my husband to come home, wondering now why I didn't go to bed hours ago....

Some of my favourites are these:



And finally, for Christmas...

Stick Bugs for Adoption

It was one year ago that my sister gave me the lovely gift of a male and female stick bug. No I am not being sarcastic, I had really wanted some ever since I saw the ones she had some years before. But no pet stores carried them, and my occasional Craigslist inquiries for them had gone unanswered.

Here is my original pair from last October (the male is darker, at the top) - click any photo for a slightly larger image:


The male is still alive, one year later.

The female started dropping eggs (to the bottom of the cage) 5 months after I got her, an egg or so every couple of days. She dropped 25 eggs total, and then died (of exhaustion?). I kept the eggs moist (by lining the bottom of the cage with paper towels, which I poured water on). The eggs started hatching about 2 months after they were dropped. Some 18 or 19 of those eggs hatched. Here is a newly hatched stick:

Some of the babies are now the size of the stick bugs I received last October. In fact, I have a hard time now telling which male is the father, and which ones are the babies.

I will keep a few stick bugs to continue the cycle, but I intend to adopt out the remaining ones. My sister happily took 2 females and 1 male. As of my count today, while cleaning the cage, I have 12 females and 5 males, which is too many to keep, once the females start laying eggs.

As I understand it, the females can reproduce without any males. In this case, all offspring will be daughters, and identical to their moms. But with a male, the offspring will be mixed males and females (as in my case), and with some genetic variation. For example, some of my females have a bit of green colouration on their legs, and others are brown throughout.

They are very easy to care for, their diet (and they don't eat very much) consisting of either oak leaves or blackberry leaves. Their maintenance consists of bringing in fresh blackberry leaves. I keep mine in small jars of water, so they only need to be changed every week or two, and I have no shortage of blackberry vines invading my yard from two sides. I always manage to poke myself as I try to change over the blackberries and move the stick bugs over from the old branch to new. But not seriously, yet.

I keep my sticks in a reptile cage, which has a mesh top, and doors which swing open and close with a small latch. It is a 18" cube. A smaller cage would do, since the sticks really don't move much, and don't eat much either. But this one provides great viewing of them.

When there are no eggs, the cage just needs to be cleaned occasionally, since the sticks drop little dry poops all over. I line it with paper towels, so I can remove them easily, and replace them. When there are eggs, they need to be kept moist. I use a few layers of paper towels, and pour a bit of water on them every day or two.

Apparently if one doesn't want the eggs to hatch, they should be frozen first (to sterilize them), before being discarded. I didn't need to do that, at least on this first cycle.

The stick bugs don't bite. They are gentle. They tickle. I think they make a great "pet" for children. Except that kids eventually get bored of them. Mine did. Now they're just my pets again.

If anyone from the Vancouver, BC area is interested in adopting some stick bugs, let me know.

30Oct09 Update : Happily, I have found some good homes for my sticks, and am down to a more reasonable number now:

1 male and 2 females to my sister
1 female to Susanna, mother of two boys in our school
1 male and 1 female to Beth, mother of a girl (good friend of my daughter) and boy in our school
1 male and 1 female to a school teacher in my sister's school, who is apparently "into" lots of different types of creatures, which she keeps in the classroom - cool!

Bald-Faced Hornet (Dolichovespula maculata)

It's neat when you stumble across an ID of a creature which you were not specifically looking for, but had buzzing (in this case) around in the back of your mind. Like this so-called "bald-faced hornet" or "white-faced hornet" (Dolichovespula maculata) which is not a true hornet but a wasp in the yellowjacket family:


(Photo borrowed from this Animal Photo Album page, without explicit permission, since the author is unknown.)

This is the unknown "large black wasp" which seemed to be the main pollinator for my late crop of golden raspberries. Sure enough, I now read that the Dolichovespula maculata is a "minor pollinator", especially in late summer, when it drinks nectar to provide quick energy for hunting, and where it finds potential victims who were also attracted to the flowers.

Thanks to WiseAcre Gardens for ID'ing this interesting wasp for me in this post.

Back in the Garden Again

I am very happy to be gardening again. Or at least I was yesterday, after about 6 frustrating weeks of being unable to enjoy the therapy of digging and yanking and chopping in my garden. During this down time, I have come to appreciate a number of great gardening and nature blogs which I am now eagerly "following". These have been a comfort and entertainment to me while I've been pretty "hands off" lately.

It's a long story, but I'll tell it anyhow, hoping that it may one day provide direction to someone else who needs this procedure... About 6 weeks ago, I injured my foot, which led me to hurt my neck (pulling myself around the house while hobbling on the one good foot). Since I spend waaay to much time on the computer and also am a fairly focussed sort of person (I've been told I don't blink enough when I'm on the computer, and the house could burn down around me and I may not even notice), I have found that I need regular (about every 6 week) massages to keep my neck and shoulders pain-free. So naturally that was my first idea, but the massage instead led to more pain, a very intense pain from the right side of my neck into my right shoulder, and all the way down my arm. When I sat up straight (eating, driving, etc), I also had tingling in my right hand.

I tried the obvious medications : anti-inflammatory, muscle relaxant. Nope, no help at all. Pretty much 24 x 7 pain, day and night. Good thing my good friend Andrea recommended to me her upper cervical chiropractor, Dr. John Davis of Burnaby, BC, or I don't know what I would have tried next. For more info on this fascinating specialization, and the MANY ailments and conditions it can alleviate, see this site or this one.

After 4 weeks of non-stop and fairly intense pain, I saw Dr. Davis. The x-rays showed some "degenerative" (i.e. I'm falling apart!) condition between the C5 & C6 verterbrae (which is likely the source of the arm pain), and the C1 (where the skull is attached to the spine) was misaligned. So he gently (this is really weird, but it was so gentle I didn't feel it, so I'm not really sure when it happened) re-aligned the C1. On the first try, he brought it back so it is now 1 unit (not sure what, degrees?) out, instead of 4. The hips which were previously measurably out of alignment corrected immediately, and the shoulders also corrected to only 1 unit (instead of 3). But I still felt the same pain in the arm. Disappointed, I went home, and tried resting, as I was advised.

I was stiff and sore in the neck and back for a number of days afterward, but after 2 days, I suddenly realized I was having moments when I didn't feel the pain in my arm. Within the week, I was totally pain-free. All I had left was the tingling in my hand when I sat forward. I am hoping this will be corrected by another alignment attempt, but I've been told to let my spinal and nervous system heal a bit more before we try that.

Encouraged by my positive check up with Dr. Davis yesterday, I went into the garden, telling myself that I would start gently. Which I did. But a couple of hours and three clear bags of cuttings and weeds later, I realized that I might have overdone it. So I felt a bit of burning in the right side of my neck occasionally today. So tonight after work, I just walked about the yard, and made sure I carried only the camera, not clippers or gloves. Good thing, I needed my hands free to carry back a small load of italian plums which are ripe and amazingly sweet and delicious!

Here are some photos from my walk today.

More signs of fall, this one in the leaves of an epimedium:

The Japanese anemone's (Anemone hupehensis) cheery blooms seem to float above the garden this time of year, and the bright spots of colour are much appreciated.

Unlike my plum and apple trees which thrived this year, my poor Bartlett pear has dropped all but one of his fruit:

The pear tree has suffered every year from some sort of disease or infestation, which results in these grisly patches on its leaves (Does anyone recognize this? Any suggestions? I think next year I should find a treatment for it. I am not much for chemicals, bu it can't possibly be good for the tree to be covered in this awful stuff year after year):

I will call this one "Shall we dance?"

I found these spiders just under the eaves of our shed. The (smaller) male spider repeatedly tried to approach from a strand (which he presumably spun) leading into the female's web. He seemed to be plucking it rhythmically (perhaps musically!) which attracted the female's interest. She would approach the edge of her web, he would slowly advance toward it also, and a little closer, and yet closer again, until finally they touched (so it seemed), and he would suddenly fall, she would retreat to the center of the web, and then he would climb back up, and start plucking the strand again, starting the cycle again.

I watched about 5 rounds of this, hoping for an even better photo of the encounter, but didn't have the patience to continue. By then, my son was calling me from the raspberry patch, and the ripe plums were calling out to be picked. Besides, maybe I'll have more opportunity another time, now that I'm back in the garden again.

Chehalis River and Stanley Park in Vancouver

Due to a (hopefully temporary) medical ailment recently, I have been careful not to spend much time in my garden. Not even much walking through it, since I can't just walk through it without starting to pull weeds, and next thing I know, I'm tackling blackberry vines (relentlessly invading over the fence!) and such.

Thankfully, I have been able to continue with just about everything else, including activities with the family. Last weekend we enjoyed a hike along the Chehalis River, and have a few photos to capture the moments (click any for a *slightly* larger view, since I reduce my photos to reduce loading time).

I love these "spooky" moss-drenched trees we get out here on the west coast. I am dreaming of attempting a painting of such a scene one day (or maybe I should finish my first painting project before I start a second one - ha ha):
I love the textures on this mossy rock, found near the river:
This neat bug (somewhat purple in the iridescence of its wings) appeared to be some sort of wasp:
This tree looked curious, perched precariously above the river, as if the ground has been swept away below it:
It made a great spot to sit for a photo:
The other side presented a similar opportunity, with the kids crawling underneath its roots:
Me, I wasn't as adventurous for my photo:
Early that week, we took the kids out for their first rollerblading adventure, on the seawall at Stanley Park:
It was sunset:

Kind of magical, don't you think? We live in a beautiful part of the world, for sure.