Beetle – a curious nature

Shifts in Nature

August Littles ….. 2025

September 8, 2025

Ohhhhhh, what a sweet month …… August. It almost got away from me without sharing a small collection of Littles¹ that reflect the inevitable shifts in nature that occur during the month. It’s always hard to imagine summer winding down; where did the time go? But as surely as butter melts on freshly baked bread, undeniably, August forms a reliable bridge between summer and autumn. It’s a time of change and transition; abundance and harvest; transformation and a period of letting go.

So before I “let go” and before the snow flies (and it will), here’s a handful of little discoveries during the month of August:

-A female Wheel Bug gone slightly astray while searching for a protected place to overwinter the eggs she’s about to lay.

-A female Soldier Beetle doing her best to attract a mate by sending out pheromones while munching late season pollen from the disk flowers of a brilliant yellow Showy Goldeneye.

-An acorn that made it to maturity, ready to drop beneath a still green-leaved Gambel Oak soon to be decked out in radiant fall colors.

-Some hot red trumpet-shaped Scarlet Gilia flowers, still irresistible to hummingbirds until migration, will all be pollinated in time for seed set and mature.

-The snowy white fruit dangling from the draping branches of Roundleaf Snowberry shrubs are ripe and ready for plucking by hungry birds flying south for the winter.

-And plump purple-black Chokecherry berries that will become a juicy dietary supplement for black bears needing to bulk up for hibernation.

Enjoy!

And as always, thanks for dropping by!

¹“Littles” is part of a blog series I began posting several years ago, beginning in January 2023. The concept was inspired by Fay (thanks again Fay!) who came up with the idea for her blog madebyfay.wordpress.com

If you’d like to read more of an explanation, check out my January 2023 post, Winter Birding on Sedillo Hill

On the Cusp ….. Fall Equinox in the East Mountains

October 28, 2024

September 22nd was a morning full of new-to-me discoveries in nature. That was more than a month ago; a time when temperatures were still in the upper 80’s and flowers in full bloom.

But plenty of hints of what was to come ….. the inevitable change in seasons ….. existed. There were seeds of spring and summer bloomers blowing in the wind; squirrels stockpiling pine nuts from recently shed cones; darkling beetles mating and laying eggs in the ground to hatch next year’s population; caterpillars feasting on energy-packed flower petals needed to spin their cocoons; the chortling chatter of sandhill cranes high overhead migrating to Bosque del Apache for the winter.

Still it is hard to believe that today, a little more than a month later, everything has turned brown, and our first hard frost is forecasted for tomorrow morning!

In an effort to cling to a not-so-long ago summer, this small selection of the botanical and entomological happenings on the cusp of Fall, is now a part of my nature journal. Enjoy!

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Travel Alert! Rhinos on the Loose …… in New Mexico!???

July 29, 2024

One of our early morning landscaping projects has been keeping us busy shoveling our way through 14 tons of pea gravel, one wheelbarrow load at a time. As each backbreaking load is hauled into our back yard and dumped on miles of weed barrier fabric, we keep reminding ourselves how nice it will be when Luna no longer returns home with muddy paws.

What began as a daunting pile of millions and millions of tiny little stones, by morning #3 the pile still looked impossibly huge, while the only thing diminishing was our enthusiasm. So it wasn’t a big surprise when, after only 15 minutes of scooping, a very large and shiny black beetle was welcome excuse for a break! After all, she was charging across our travel path, and without rescuing would’ve surely been squished flat under a careless wheelbarrow tire!

And we paused …… for nearly 45 minutes ….. as we ooohed and aaaahed over such a magnificent beetle, wondering what she could be. Well over an inch long, we noticed her blue-black head, thorax (pronotum) and hard wing covers (elytra) as shiny as freshly polished paten leather shoes, were ringed by a dense fringe of rusty orange hairs. When she went belly-up, we could see those hairs all over the ventral (lower) side of her head and thorax.

Not enjoying exposing her undersides to the world, those six flailing, long and powerful, many-segmented claw-tipped legs flipped her body over and she quickly resumed charging across the ground. Roy kept her in sight while I ran for the camera, determined to take lots of photos to get an ID. About a dozen poses later, and with the help of iNaturalist, I learned that our visitor appeared to be a female Western Rhinoceros Beetle (WRB)!

Yes, apparently there are Rhinos in New Mexico! How cool it would be to find a male or two, and watch how they use their horns (which are as tall or taller than their steeply pitched and somewhat concave pronotums) in battle to win a hornless female.

Wonderings! Why was our female WRB in such a hurry? Was she running from a male? Two battling males? Had she mated already and was in search of a Velvet Ash Tree (a NM native species and likely her preferred food source) where she could lay her more than 100 eggs in the soil beneath the tree? How does she find these ash trees, because I’ve never seen one on our 2 acres or along any of our neighborhood hiking trails?

So many unanswered questions! But you can bet I’ll be on the lookout for the next WRB to trek on by. Maybe I’ll drop everything I’m doing (like scooping pea gravel) and follow her or him just to answer a few questions! Do you think Roy will mind being left behind holding the shovel?

As always, thanks for stopping by!