A Black Scavenger Fly Blows Bubbles

Jody's bubbling masked bee photo

I re-downloaded iMovie to my iPad the other day for nature videos. I had purchased it years ago but never used it. I had found a black scavenger fly. They are very, very small. They have heads like ants but eyes like flies. They also seem to dance on leaves because they continuously open and close their wings. When I got my shots into the iPad (which I now do with my new, streamlined Lightroom-free workflow), I found the fly had been blowing bubbles. Why?

Jody had found a solitary masked bee blowing bubbles that week, also. We learned that solitary bees, being more primitive than social bees, cannot digest pollen as the social bees do. So they make the pollen more digestible with bubbling. But not flies.

Nobody agrees why flies blow bubbles. It isn't just scavenger flies that do it: just about all species of flies bubble. At least that is what I gather from my reading.

There are three explanations for fly bubbles:

• to disperse pheromones
• to dehydrate dilute food
• to cool down

I expect research will settle on one explanation sooner or later.

I decided to make a video of this one individual fly blowing bubbles. And I decided to make a "real" movie with iMovie. It took hours to re-learn the software, pick the appropriate music and make title boards. I was so immersed in the project that I lost sight of the nature of the beast. Literally. This was to be a nature video and I now feel that I made it ridiculously frilly. However, I'm too busy dealing with flash flood issues and my so-called normal activities and I don't feel like re-doing it. So here is my frilly bubbly fly video.  By the way, I never truly finished the video to what I wanted it to be. 😳

00:01:04

Resources:

• "BEE-havior: The “Bubble” Bee—Hylaeus"
• "Flies blowing bubbles"
• "Structural Differences in the Digestive Tract Between Females and Males Could Modulate Regurgitation Behavior in Anastrepha ludens (Diptera: Tephritidae)"
• "A bubble-blowing fly"
• "Backyard curiosities 1: Bubble-blowing flies"
• "Flies as pollinators and bubble-blowers"

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July 18 Bugsit Video

I have decided to free myself from restrictions and simply make  videos without rules. Commenters have freed me. I thank you. Today is another iPhone memory video I made of today's finds. 

00:01:14

• Margined Calligrapher (Toxomerus marginatus): a flower fly
• Butterfly: Dun Skipper (Euphyes vestris)
• Yellow fly: Hystricia abrupta, a tachinid (bristle) fly. The larvae of these flies parasitize other insects and arthropods. Many of the adults feed on nectar. I am not a fan.
• Tiny crab spider (Tribe Misumenini)
• One of the indistinguishable Looper moths (Genus Caenurgina)
• Leaf beetle (Genus Plagiodera)
• One-striped Deer Fly (Chrysops univittatus)
• Macquart's Deer Fly (Chrysops macquarti)

We are finally having normal, awesome weather today. I have great plans for Sunday with Jody. 

If you like birds, please look at the new addition of bird song on the sidebar. I got the Merlin Bird ID phone app, made by Cornell University. It is free and it changed my life. Now all my family and friends are using it. I just stick my arm out (so that the phone does not hear me breath) and record bird song. 

Have a great weekend! 

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Dogwood Spittlebugs Video

Maybe making slideshow videos of one species at a time is the way for me to go forward. 🤷

00:00:46

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After the Flash Flood Day 4

Bug sits are helping me cope with the damage. More on that later, when I am able to deal with it. Please view full screen for the best viewing.

00:01:35

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July 10 Photos

Dogwood Spittlebug (Clastoptera proteus)

We were expecting the remnant of a hurricane today so Lucy and I needed to get outside for bugs a bit earlier than usual. As it was, it began raining only 30 minutes into our time outside, but we managed to find some nifty bugs. 

Above, is the cutest ever dogwood spittlebug. It's almost invisible. You may see a black or yellow pencil dot moving on a leaf (not necessarily on a dogwood leaf, either). This was only my second sighting of one and it was quite larger than the first. I can't find out whether the broad yellow strokes on it are developing wings or just the way they are decorated. I hope you click on the photo to see it larger. It is worth the time to completely read all sections of  "Spittlebugs and Froghoppers." 

Globetail fly (Genus Sphaerophoria)

Above is a globetail flower fly (also called hoverflies or syrphids) . They are very important for pollination, as are nearly all of the flies. These flies are much bigger (although still very small) than the Toxomerus species of flower flies, one of which is below. 

Margined Calligrapher (Toxomerus marginatus)

This margined calligrapher flower fly was in the rugosa rose bush pollinating away. Hopefully, you are able to discern how small they are. When they fly, they are just wisps in the breeze. There haven't been too many so far this season. Their activity seems to be strongly affected by the time of day and the air temperature. 

A native Goldenrod Crab Spider (Misumena vatia) pursuing an invasive Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica) on invasive Common soapwort (Saponaria officinalis) 

I try to photograph as many Japanese beetles as possible to see if they are carrying a winsome fly egg . . . but viewing the photo in the iPad, I found this small crab spider instead! It was a great find. If the spider caught that beetle, it would be food enough for many days.

It has been a long, long time that I seriously posted. Many things have stood in my way: school work, disabilities, Covid (but it was uneventful for me), the flu, and myself. I get in the way of myself all the time. 

I am in the middle of learning and planning an entire year of science classes (K-12) that meet the NGSS standards. In November of 2023, I was given all the science classes of the school because the science teacher quit. I had two weeks to formulate plans to last us until the end of the year. I did it but was never that happy with the results. I have told the school's director that I will happily continue in science. That means they need a new math teacher, but we have made changes to the math curriculum, legally and beneficially, that takes most of the pressure off of filling that position. It's fun teaching science. Not so much math, though. After 30+ years of teaching math, it is now too rote for me.

There are no math teachers to be found, anyhow. The entire state is looking for them. There seem to be no teachers anymore. I have no idea why. But every Vermont school is short, drastically short of teachers. 

I have changed my workflow for photos. I use my big iPad and the Apple photo app and find that they are as good, and sometimes better, than my big desktop with Adobe Lightroom. I still use my Canon camera but use wifi to transfer photos to the iPad. I can then geo tag and upload the shots to iNaturalist easily. And then I also make a memory video slideshow of the best of the day (that doesn't mean the best photos, just the best shots of the day). And that video I send off to family, who probably roll their eyes at them. I'm having fun seeing what limits I have on creating my own video memory videos on my devices. This is today's: 

July 10, 2024 (00:00:50)

Thank you for reading.

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Review: Lilith

Lilith by Eric Rickstad
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Eric Rickstad missed the boat with this book. Elisabeth Ross, the main character, acts as a man may have acted in this totally illogical plot. Her solution to political inaction on gun control is the solution of a male mindset, not the creation of a new female paradigm that I had desired. I was very disappointed. Rickstad tries hard to think like a woman but doesn't seem to realize that we don't want to act within the same norms that the world has dictated forever. We don't need to be men in order to be respected as equals. We can create new and world-changing standards for tackling problems and for living our lives that are feminine and successful—and success is what we decide to define it. To watch Ross simply act violently without much thought (except justified grievance) was sad to read.

Rickstad has written two of my favorite novels: The Silent Girls and Reap. By far, Reap is the best. Both are set in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, where I live. Reap perfectly captures the isolation and poverty of the area. It is lyrical. These two books are another reason why Lilith is disappointing to me. Rickstad probably cannot forever set his books in the Kingdom and have them relevant to other readers in the country (which may be what a publisher thinks but is not true). However, he has lost his voice in Lilith and I barely recognized his writing.

View all my reviews

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