“In 200 ft., make a right onto Campus Way. Make a right onto Campus Way. Proceed to the route.”
After ignoring Apple Maps insistent directions to make a right onto Campus Way, which is not a real street because it’s blocked by pylons, a fountain, and students hurrying to class, I headed south out of Corvallis towards Finley Wildlife Refuge. The plan was to spend some time at the refuge collecting insects, then head west to Alsea Falls and Lobster Valley Road. In the afternoon I would travel back along the Alsea Highway (one of my favorite drives in Oregon) towards campus to unload the scores of stink bugs I would undoubtedly capture at the many scenic stops throughout the day. After a bright morning drive past old farmhouses, young christmas trees, and fun gravel shortcut, I arrived at Finley.
I consider myself a professional, so I made a brief visit into the front office to let the staff know that I was going to be doing some important insect collecting on the refuge this morning. The friendly and helpful ODFW staff led me to an office in the back of the building, where I was promptly told that I would not be doing any insect collecting on the refuge this morning. As part of a state government organization (from the same state as Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife), I’d naively assumed that they’d let me do whatever I needed to do. I have an ID badge and a hat, after all. I was told that I would have to send a proposal outlining what I was looking for and apply for a special-use permit. (Update, May 11 2014: Finley is run by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, not ODFW. Thanks to Mellissa Newman for pointed out the error.)
It seems perfectly reasonable that the people that run a refuge for wildlife would want to know why someone is planning to remove some of the wildlife that is refuging. I collected the necessary contact information to apply for the permit, said my good-byes, and drove on.
A few minutes south of the refuge on Bellfountain Road is a town of the same name. I hadn’t done a tremendous amount of planning for my route, so at the single intersection in town, I followed the signs that directed me towards Alsea and made a right, past Country Boys Gas (closed, due to “Gone Fishin'”). Itchy to get out the car and get collecting, I stopped at the first possible opportunity, Bellfountain County Park. Parks are good sites for collecting for professional and amateur entomologists alike, for the simple reason that they are public. It may seem that there is ample opportunity to collect anywhere you could swing a sweep net. After all, insects are everywhere, on every plant you see nearly all the time. Unfortunately, not everyone wants students, researchers, or government employees wandering onto their land and shaking their trees for critters. If there is good reason, we may ask landowners, nurseries owners, or building managers if they would mind if we collect, and usually they are very accomodating. However, public parks are often full of a variety of plant life, contain trails for easy access, and you can just show up without having to explain yourself. While I (obviously) enjoy telling people about my work, usually I just want to sample for insects and move on without a ton of chit-chat.
Bellfountain County Park in Benton County is a century-old shady day-use area, set back from the road in a thick stand of old Douglas firs and big leaf maples. Upon arriving, one is directed to drive their car around a paved loop past what appear to be campsites, which seemed strange for a day-use park. The road passes a covered picnic area with only handicapped parking, a restroom, a generous three-car parking lot, and a softball field. Then you are at the entrance again. I re-entered the park, confirmed that the only clear parking spots were designated for handicapped drivers, and parked in the small clearing near the outfield. It was around 11 am and the park was devoid of other visitors, noticeably quiet, and despite being a sunny morning, chilly due to all the shade from the dense Doug fir canopy. I jumped out of the car to start whapping on some branches and see what I could see.
Emblazoning themselves with no apparent shame atop a maple leaf, two fiery red Dictyoptera hamatus (Coleptera: Lycidae) were busy delighting in the opportunity the quiet park offered. This was the first time that I had seen this species of beetle. They are related to fireflies (Family Lampyridae), and share the same large pronotal “hood” that is characteristic to that family. Dictyoptera means “net winged”, which is the common name for beetles in the family Lycidae and may come from the pattern on their elytra. The video at the end of the post shows some clips of them walking around while mating (which I likely prompted with my snooping).
Nearby the beetles was another ornately winged creature, a tingid. Tingids (Hemiptera: Tingidae) are commonly called lace-bugs due to their impressively decorated wings and head covering. To clarify what you are looking at, the insect here is facing downward in the photo. The part that looks like it’s sort of a pointed head is just a covering, and its head is underneath (you can see the antennae coming out from under the covering.) Tingids are hemipterans, and as such, they feed by piercing plant tissue and sucking out the liquids. In high numbers, they can be an ornamental pest; That is to say, they can be a pest on ornamental plants, while they themselves might also be described as ornamental. Tingids are generally small (this one is around 2mm). I don’t know why they are patterned the way they are. It may help them to blend in with pubescence that can be found on their host plants, as they are often found feeding on the undersides of leaves. They are also pale and non-reflective and therefore hard to spot, even when you are looking for them. The two black areas on the ends of the forewings, coupled with the fact that I was searching for a very small species of stink bug, gave them away on my beat sheet. Otherwise I would have missed them entirely.
Snakeflies (Order Raphidipotera) are fairly common in Oregon but are not well known. This is an adult female, which you can tell by the very long ovipositor protruding from the posterior. Both the larvae and the adults are voracious predators. This great picture by Joyce Gross on bugguide.net shows how effective they can be at destroying potential pests. Although they look fairly large and intimidating (some are about 3 cm long), they can be handled safely. In the field, I find them often on my beat sheet and my person and if they try to bite, it’s not effective and sort of adorable. If you collect insects in a jar or vial, make sure that your snakeflies aren’t kept with other insects – many students get back to the lab to find that the what was once a crowded collection now jar contains only a single, fat and happy snakefly.
The hiking path that I had embarked upon quickly led me back to where I had parked my car. Although I was stopping to sample for insects every few feet, the trail was very short. You could say to another park visitor “Hold this. I’ll be back in a moment. I am going to complete the hiking loop” with the expectation that the coffee you asked them to hold onto would still be hot upon your return. You need not pack a lunch for your expedition, and a water fountain is available upon your safe return.
I think that it’s important to mention the water fountain and it’s proximity to Bellfountain’s softball field. There is a beautiful pine and chain-link backstop for the ballfield that’s more square than most, but its aesthetic perfectly fits the conifers that surround it. A set of bleachers sit so close to the first base line that they could also serve as the dugout for one of the teams, and probably do. The crew that constructed the bleachers were not overly optomistic about the spectator crowds that the games might draw, as the capacity is about 20 bodies. However, I’d encourage anyone that was going to the park not only to take the opportunity to get off the bench and play America’s Greatest Pastime on such a charming field, but to bring a blanket or camping chair to watch the game more comfortably. As lovely as the field is, I was struck by the drinking fountain, which is located a mere eight feet from home plate. “Have some water before you knock one up the middle!” it whispers to the on-deck batter. Or “It’s ok. Relax. Have a drink. I’ll be right here waiting for you after you inevitably strike out.” If you risk getting a drink while someone is batting, grab a batting helmet before you do, because a foul ball atop the dome at that proximity will likely kill you.
Many fir trees circle the ballfield, and within them I found many insects, including a single Cosmopepla intergressa, a stink bug which made me squeal like a child because I haven’t seen any this year despite multiple attempts and I love them. There seems to be no pattern to their host plants, as I found another later in some tall grass using a sweep net. I can’t tell you much about the beetle pictured here other than there were a lot of them, and that it was iridescent green. I didn’t hang onto it to try to key it out, and to be perfectly honest, I dislike keying out beetles. I am sure that some other entomologists will say “It’s so obviously a _____! Count the tarsi!” and I hope they get some joy out of ridiculing my inability to remember tricks to identifying beetles. It’s why I will never be a coleopterist, and I am fine with that. It’s a pretty beetle though – sparkly!
I left the park after sampling the conifers to death looking for a second specimen of C. intergressa (which I never found). I was lost more than once (a closed road redirected me to a logging road through a saw mill, where I was convinced that I had driven into an off-limits production area) but eventually ended up sampling along Dawson Road just a few miles east of the park. It was productive sampling for anything except stink bugs. Nearly every sweep in the grass yielded a couple of these damselflies (Odonata: Coenagrionidae). The damselflies were cold and easily handled. I’ll admit I cheated and put this fella on the branch I photographed him on. I also found another C. intergressa, which was exciting but also confusing. I have found them thimbleberry, grass, and conifers. My coworker Nik has found them on wild current. What the heck, guys? Pick a plant and let me find you on it consistently.
It was a fun Tuesday of collecting, but ultimately unproductive as I only found a couple of specimens that I needed for our research. In total, I only headed back with around 10 or 11 stink bugs, which will be used to update our demonstration collection. Since the last post featured a picture of a nut weevil that was very popular, I’ll leave you with another one that I took at Fern Ridge Dam near Eugene. The oaks there seemed to be full of them (as well as full of biting ants, which I found out the hard way.)
The video below shows the amorous beetles, as well as a parasitoid wasp laying eggs in a caterpillar (which is somewhat unclear in the video but seemed like people might want to see. In the 21st century, everything is easy enough to upload anyway.)
(Top panorama: Christmas Tree farm adjacent Bellfountain Park. )
Oregon Beat Sheet 