Friday, September 11, 2015

Leaving Something Behind

One of the Junior Ranger programs that has been a big hit is our "Bring a Bug" program where we ask the kids to catch an insect (or several) and bring them to be identified.

The park has a small "Butterflies of the World" display that has a few mounted butterflies, but nothing from the local area. So Teri and I set out this summer to collect and mount some insects from here in the park so that we'd have a "proper" insect collection to show folks.
Insect Collection
We started a little too late to get some of the bigger butterflies, but ended up with a nice selection of different insects.
Dragonfly
We found a dragonfly nymph casing floating in the lake, and are pleased to be able to show folks what they look like for the first part of their life!

Beetles
Beetles are common here and we collected several representatives.

About the time that I thought we wouldn't be able to collect a good butterfly, Teri found this one on the grill of the truck. It was still (slightly) alive, so it hadn't been there for long!!

The park is planning a Discovery Room for folks to be able to use during the weekdays when there are no interpretive programs, and we hope that our insect collection will be displayed there.

Mark

2 comments:

  1. Nice collection! If I'd done that at Aroostook NWR I'd probably have the largest collection of mosquitoes, black flies and deer flies ever displayed... would have made any self-respecting tree swallow jealous. Really, though, I love your idea and would like to do that at Aroostook sometime.

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    1. It would be tough to get a pin through those little suckers. Though I recall the deer flies are pretty big!!

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