Yesterday, Herb and I took three cameras to the area of the Bear Tree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QibeFBF3tI&feature=youtu.be
Today I returned to the area because I had the feeling
that possibly one or more of the cameras had been left without a memory card. I
was right; I found that I had forgotten to put a memory card into one of the
cameras. I had with me a fourth camera which I placed at the shore of a
woodland pond, a site always attractive to wildlife.
On the trail in to that area, I came upon a black beetle. I recognized it as Meloe augusticollis, the
Short-winged Blister Beetle, a beetle that I had encountered once before and
submitted to the atlas E-Fauna for identification. See:
Blister beetles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meloe
exude liquid from their joints when they are disturbed,
which includes a substance called cantharidin, that can cause blisters on the
skin of people. I did not touch this specimen. Because it was busily
eating fresh green grass, it was difficult to get an opening for a photograph.
Whenever it moved across an open area, it moved very quickly. Out of 20 or 30
photographs taken, I saved only one. While I was following and photographing
the first beetle, a second one appeared, a slightly larger specimen.
Blister beetles are classified as Parasitoids, animals
that live off others but end up totally destroying their hosts. See:
The hosts of the larvae of each blister beetle of the
genus Meloe are a single species of bee.
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