After attempting a couple of other techniques that weren’t working so well, I finally broke down and did it: I made myself a pooter.
If you are not familiar with entomology, you may have a variety of responses to this statement, including, “Congratulations – Al is a big boy now!” and, “Isn’t that a slang term for female genitalia?” But no, that’s cooter… actually, it probably could be either, since it seems anything can be a slang term for female genitalia if you say it right. Doesn’t matter, because that’s not what I’m talking about, and anyway, I wouldn’t make one. That’s… just…
A pooter, at times also called an aspirator if you want to be boring while being just as vague, is a simple bug collecting device, that works pretty much like a shop vac. Two tubes, one jar (let it go.) One tube goes into your mouth, with the other end feeding into the jar. The other tube comes out of the jar and is aimed at the arthropod you wish to collect. Bring that tube close to the subject, give a quick inhalation, and zip! The bug ends up in the jar.
The crucial bit of this is the bit of gauze or thin fabric over the opposite end of the mouth tube, the end within the jar – this acts as a filter so you don’t suck any bugs into your mouth. It may also slow down something nasty produced by the bug when it gets annoyed at being abducted, but don’t count on this – stink bugs and bombardier beetles should probably be avoided.
It works amazingly well, and takes very little inhalation to snag the target. I had used a larger mouth tube to be able to draw an insect all the way up the capture tube easily, but this really doesn’t seem necessary. I would recommend, however, ensuring that it’s easy to distinguish which tube is which, lest you put the wrong one in your mouth and a) mash your target bug against the gauze filter and think that you missed it, and/or b) end up inhaling a previous capture. Also, per the advice of someone else, the jar should be clear but not glass, just for safety’s sake.
There is no ‘valve’ on the capture tube to prevent insects from heading back up it, and none really necessary. Provided that the tube extends down into the jar a few centimeters, any flying insect that gets captured will almost never find the exit; they tend to stick to the sides, especially where they can see daylight, and not investigate something poking down from the ‘roof.’ The same design is used for various fly traps and it works quite well.
I even made a smaller version, nothing but a polyethylene pipette with the end of the bulb cut off and a bit of gauze inserted in the middle of the tube, kind of a glorified straw – this is for capturing flying specimens inside the big jar and transferring them to something else. Very gentle inhalation is used and maintained, which keeps the arthropod held against the gauze trap, and once the end in inserted into the new holding facility (say, a small terrarium for photography,) a slight exhalation expels the insect back out of the tube.
For bigger specimens, I just scoop them into a film can, and if I find something that won’t fit in a film can, those are collected at gunpoint.
Now, I made the pooter for a specific reason, and as I was working on the post, it paid off. So another is coming very soon, as soon as I get all the bits together. For now, something that doesn’t suck, in whatever sense of the word: at least one mantis, and possibly two, has moved back into the Japanese maple tree, and this one at least is showing signs of an impending egg sac, so I’m checking for progress periodically. We’ll see what happens.
Perhaps not everyone’s idea of cheerful color, and it was a grab shot as I was pursuing other subjects, but it’s vivid – ya gotta give it that.
The frame above, by the way, is tightly cropped, and slightly less than full resolution. This one, the same image, shows exactly how big the moon appears in the frame at 453mm focal length, just so you know what kind of magnification it takes for moon photos. For exposure details, 1/100 second at f11, ISO 100 – the typical exposure for full moon shots, provided that it’s not faintly dimmed by haze (basically, at f11, shutter speed should be 1/ISO, what’s often called, “Moony 11”.) A stop or so brighter would have been better, given the glow easily visible around it when observed.
The mantis from the previous post stayed trapped by the rain for several days, finally leaving its position early this afternoon – naturally while I wasn’t watching. While I was wandering around the backyard, hoping to find where she’d gotten off to, I spotted something else, which I won’t identify and simply let you look at the image to the left to try and find on your own. It gives a pretty good idea of what I saw at first, and the kind of things I pay attention to because they often enough lead to new critters to photograph.
I am going to identify this as a Cope’s grey treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis,) with reservations – they cannot be distinguished from the common grey treefrog visually, but so far, the Cope’s is the only species that I’ve confirmed we have around here, solely by 
Remember, look at your thumb – the distance between the tip and the crease of the joint is how long this little bugger is (unless your hands are way different in size from mine.) But this gives a good view of those little blobby pads at the tips of the toes, which help treefrogs cling to such surfaces, and the brilliant yellow lining of the hind legs which often remain hidden from sight. Don’t ask me the purpose of that coloration, because I could only speculate, and poorly at that.
First off we have the most recent images from just a few days ago, an unidentified Hemipteran nymph, quite a small one. I am inclined to call it an assassin bug, but so far I have found no species that matches this coloration (the black legs in particular.) Oddly enough, it was spotted on the kitchen counter, with no good guesses as to how it arrived there, though it might have hitchhiked in on a tomato or basil leaf. It measured just 6mm in body length, and appreciated the water provided by the misting bottle, so it may have been indoors for a while.
We’ll stick with the frogs for a moment longer before changing the subject, as I show off a photo that I haven’t actually had a good use for yet. This was taken at the 
Somehow, I missed putting this one up with the others when I 
I had originally identified this flower as a winter aconite, Eranthis hyemalis, but now I’m pretty sure that’s wrong – the leaves aren’t like that, and no image I can find shows this green translucent ‘berry’ springing from the middle. So if you know what this is, feel free to enlighten me. All I can say right now is that these are tiny flowers perhaps a centimeter across, that appear very early in the spring – last year they got 
While coaxing it around for a better view, it scrambled onto my hand without a qualm, and I juggled the camera around one-handed for a quick scale shot. Then, as I tried to convince it to get back onto the maple tree, it resisted playfully and trotted up my arm all the way to the short sleeve cuff, before I could brush it back onto the tree. It would seem I now have a reputation for making mantids famous. Either that or my beard looked like a tasty bug – your call.
