Dune Bugs
CLICK IMAGES FOR LARGER VIEW
Distance from Beatty: 33 miles
Yesterday, I had a bad case of cabin fever, so I left poor Ryan slaving over this year's ta*es and drove down to the Stovepipe Dunes for a short hike.
I was hoping to find something cool to photograph but didn't have high expectations since countless gazillions of people have been taking pics in the dunes for as long as there have been cameras, so at this point it's pretty hard to come up with Something Different, if you know what I mean. Then, damn if I hadn't been in the dunes five minutes before I came across the rock of the day! Absolutely. There it was just sitting in the sand looking gorgeous, not another rock anywhere in sight, just as if someone had put it there for the specific purpose of having its picture taken. Click click.
After that, I wandered around for a couple of hours but didn't see anything remarkable. Then on the way back to the car, not far from the rock du jour, I spotted some critter tracks in the sand and decided to follow them. I twisted and turned my way across the dunes for ten or fifteen yards until the tracks stopped abruptly at a tiny piece of sun-bleached twig lying in the sand.
I glanced around to see where whatever-it-was might have gone, but I wasn't searching very intently because I didn't really expect to see anything. Then, the more I thought about it the more it didn't make sense that the trail had just stopped. So, I looked back at the tracks to see if I could tell which direction the critter might have gone, and that's when I realized that what I'd taken for a sun-bleached bit of twig sitting at the trail's terminus wasn't a twig at all, but a bug. The tracks were bug tracks, and there sat the actual bug!
It wasn't until I'd hauled out my camera and set everything up to take its picture that I looked more closely and saw that there were two bugs!
Springtime in DV. : - )
Now the big question is what kind of bugs are they? If anyone reading this knows the answer, I'd love it if you'd leave a comment or EMAIL ME about it.
As cool as the bugs are what may be even cooler (if you're me and therefore somewhat strange about things like this) is the sand around the bugs. It's just common dune sand, but magnified like that it looks more like beautiful, multicolored gravel!
*MORE BUG PICS*
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All photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.
Distance from Beatty: 33 milesYesterday, I had a bad case of cabin fever, so I left poor Ryan slaving over this year's ta*es and drove down to the Stovepipe Dunes for a short hike.
I was hoping to find something cool to photograph but didn't have high expectations since countless gazillions of people have been taking pics in the dunes for as long as there have been cameras, so at this point it's pretty hard to come up with Something Different, if you know what I mean. Then, damn if I hadn't been in the dunes five minutes before I came across the rock of the day! Absolutely. There it was just sitting in the sand looking gorgeous, not another rock anywhere in sight, just as if someone had put it there for the specific purpose of having its picture taken. Click click.
After that, I wandered around for a couple of hours but didn't see anything remarkable. Then on the way back to the car, not far from the rock du jour, I spotted some critter tracks in the sand and decided to follow them. I twisted and turned my way across the dunes for ten or fifteen yards until the tracks stopped abruptly at a tiny piece of sun-bleached twig lying in the sand.
I glanced around to see where whatever-it-was might have gone, but I wasn't searching very intently because I didn't really expect to see anything. Then, the more I thought about it the more it didn't make sense that the trail had just stopped. So, I looked back at the tracks to see if I could tell which direction the critter might have gone, and that's when I realized that what I'd taken for a sun-bleached bit of twig sitting at the trail's terminus wasn't a twig at all, but a bug. The tracks were bug tracks, and there sat the actual bug!
It wasn't until I'd hauled out my camera and set everything up to take its picture that I looked more closely and saw that there were two bugs!
Springtime in DV. : - )
Now the big question is what kind of bugs are they? If anyone reading this knows the answer, I'd love it if you'd leave a comment or EMAIL ME about it.
As cool as the bugs are what may be even cooler (if you're me and therefore somewhat strange about things like this) is the sand around the bugs. It's just common dune sand, but magnified like that it looks more like beautiful, multicolored gravel!
*MORE BUG PICS*
---
All photographs on this blog are my own, taken by me, copyright owned by me.
posted by K Hubert at 4:56 PM
4 Comments:
Fabulous pictures, as usual. I can't resist a bug ID request. I googled all over the place for these guys, and couldn't find an exact match, but I came close. It's a beetle, a weevil, actually. Family: Curculionidae, Species: Ophryastes, but there are lots of different Ophryastes species, very few of which I could find pictures of. Common names include sand weevil, dune weevil, snout beetle, but there are a number of weevils with these common names. Here's a link to a similar looking bug
Cindy, I knew you'd be on it like a duck on a june bug LOL!!
Thanks for the link. I, too, googled around looking for what it might be, but I never saw that link.
The closest thing I found was this Doyen's dune weevil, aka Trigonoscuta.
Here are lots of pics of the Trigonoscuta, but none of the ones I looked at look exactly like "Bill and Big Rita." The ones in the pics are hairy, and Bill and Big Rita aren't hairy except for a few hairs on their legs.
I admit I didn't click on each of the 78 thumbnails, though, only a few that looked promising.
Another thing -- and I apologize in advance for my incorrect terminology cuz I'm not a bug person, but the weevil you linked to, as well as all the ones I've looked at, seem to have those things sticking out of the side of their face, like antennae or something. Bill and Big Rita don't appear to have those. I wonder what's up with that...
"Bill and Big Rita" That's cute.
I looked at those Trigonoscuta species, including Doyen's, but they seemed too small and fuzzy. Your guys are smooth aren't they?
They may well be a species endemic to DV.
Yes, those are antennas you were noticing, and Bill and Big Rita have them too. They are sort of folded down, something beetles do sometimes when they are in repose. If you look carefully in your side view shot of them, you can see the antennas tucked under their snouts.
OK, I can see the antennae now. Cool.
Yeah, Bill and Big Rita are smooth, and all the other Trigonoscuta pics I've seen are fuzzy.
Trigonoscuta deathvalleyi !
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