Butterflies fluttered in, spiders jumped or crawled in, and "Doc" Bohart, holding "Beau," strolled in. That was the scene at the Bohart Museum Society's annual Halloween party, held at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, UC Davis.
Got legs? Got eight legs? No, not eight unless you're a spider (arachnid). If you're human, you can seek out the Bohart Museum of Entomology's "Got Legs?" T-shirt of a trapdoor spider.
It's been several months since I've seen a Western yellowjacket, Vespula pensylvanica. But there it was, dead. It had drowned in an outdoor water bowl. Easy pickings, you say? Easy photography! It's a beautiful insect with its black and yellow coloration.
If you stand perfectly still and don't make any jerky movements, you can usually get a close-up image of a black syrphid fly, a Mexican cactus fly, Copestylum mexicanum. It's Friday Fly Day and this one was nectaring on a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifolia.
