Chironomid

[vaneramos]

One of the earliest spring insects, this chironomid was only about 5 mm long. I cropped the photo somewhat, but the resolution is still decent, and I'm thrilled to be able to take this photo at all. Larger insects will easily fill the lens. This bodes well for fun summer photography.

Chironomids are common members of Order Diptera, the flies, closely related to and resembling mosquitoes, but lacking mouth parts that bite. Adults eat pollen, if anything (as do male mosquitoes). Also like mosquitoes, they undergo the larval stage in still water. The feathery antennae indicate this one is male.

A larger species, about 1 cm long, appeared in vast numbers in late spring where I grew up at Poplar Bluff, on the Lake Erie shore. We called them sturgeonflies, but I believe that common name is also applied to an unrelated insect. Sometimes they were so abundant that their dead bodies raised a fishy smell.

This was taken at dusk on Heffernan Street footbridge. A few minutes later I saw an early little bat fluttering over old stone houses on Arthur Street. It appeared sluggish and sleepy after a long hibernation, but evidently chironomids were on its breakfast menu.

Comments

[capitalcor.livejournal.com]

ewwwwwwwwwwwww

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Haha, yeah I expected that kind of reaction, too. Don't worry, I won't turn this into an insect blog. At least not every day. ;-)

[mattcallow.livejournal.com]

Cool!

My friend Mark is an entomologist (dragonflies are his thing) and a photographer. He's got a few pics online here: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mfobrien/page1.html

[mattcallow.livejournal.com]

And here: http://flickr.com/photos/mfobrien/sets/741587/

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Cool! Thanks for pointing out his work. This thing just sat there when I poked the lens right up to it. Dragonflies are harder to photograph because they have good vision and move quickly. On the other hand they're a lot bigger, so I managed to take a few shots with the old camera. But there will be far more potential with the Canon.

[missprune.livejournal.com]

these critters must get so annoyed about being mistaken for mosquitoes all the time!

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Probably not just annoyed -- I would imagine that some of them get dead on that basis.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Yes, I wouldn't want to be mistaken for a mosquito.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Fortunately they don't make a sound like mosquitoes, although a large cloud of them hums. They can be annoying in their own right, sometimes abundant enough that their droppings cause property damage. Their larvae are important members of freshwater ecosystems.

[progbear.livejournal.com]

Of course, here you can tell spring has truly sprung by the abundance of tipulids (crane flies, daddy-longlegs, erroneously known locally as “mosquito eaters”), which look like giant, mutant mosquitos with no mouth-parts. Why, only this past week you could hear me repeatedly swearing up a blue streak every time I accidentally let one in, as I’d stomp off to the garage to get the fly-swatter. They are completely harmless, but also creepy and annoying.

Speaking of creepy, our cat Quincy is inordinately fond of attacking and eating them. Yuck! He seems to like it, though.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

We call those mosquito hawks. They do have a habit of hanging around doors and getting in the way. Too bad they don't live up to their name and make themselves useful.