Random SCABIES Hikes

[cacoseraph]

instead of having a ton of random piddly little threads i will post most of my little stuff here



so:

In Which I Stupid Onto A Tarantula
[YOUTUBE]lGI9ZHp062o[/YOUTUBE]

I have this strange curse... i stupid onto bugs. When i am actually looking for them i am not a particularily good bug hunter. But... i might slip and put my thumb into an empty part of a trapdoor's burrow... or in this case, pull apart a piece of dirt that really had no business having a tarantula in it!

My buddy and i were climbing around in the foothills and valleys around my house when he stopped to collect some weeds, i mean plants. I idly pulled apart an eroded road cut and pretty quickly found this ~2" diagonal leg span tarantula. Finding tarantulas in burrows on roadcuts is NOTHING new... but this was a nasty eroded falling apart mess that the spider had taken temporary refuge in... not a nice little burrow in a normal established road cut.

It is some kind of Aphonopelma species. We have sent very similar spiders from a couple miles away off to science to be analyzed, so maybe one day we might actually find out *what* Aphonopelma species it is!

[uploaded from a 10MB WMV file]

 

[cacoseraph]

California (tarantula) Dreaming hifi

California (tarantula) Dreaming hifi
[YOUTUBE]HTvwCnPCKhM[/YOUTUBE]

California has many species of tarantulas. Many, possibly most, are not even described by science yet. I am not sure what this species is, beyond pretty.

In this video my buddy Steven and I use a tarantula recovery technique commonly known as flooding. The advantage to this method over digging is that it is much less invasive than digging, basically leaving the burrow almost immediately available for another animal to live in. Flooding does not always work. If the soil is too porous or the shape of the burrow is wrong you can pour gallons of water down the hole and never have the spider compelled to leave. Another problem with flooding in dry, hot areas is that you have to carry in quite a bit of water... which is heavy and limits the range you can hike to find bugs. This area happens to be several hundred feet (~100-150 meters) from a little stream which allowed us a basically unlimitted water supply.

[uploaded from a ~120MB WMV file]

 

[cacoseraph]

Catch A Tiger (centipede) By The Tail hifi

Catch A Tiger (centipede) By The Tail hifi
[YOUTUBE]LWYBt4IYU9w[/YOUTUBE]

Scolopendra polymorpha, North American tiger centipede, is probably the most commonly found giant centipede in California. They can give a bit of a bite and large specimens can inject a sizable amount of venom if you let them but they should not be considered dangerous to humans. They are known as tiger centipedes due to the dark horizontal barring you can see on this dude, but not all localities andor specimens from normally barred localities possess the stripes. They will take down other bugs and scavenge meat.

[uploaded from a 29MB WMV file]

 

[cacoseraph]

Dasymutilla sackenii white velvet ant hifi

Dasymutilla sackenii white velvet ant hifi

[YOUTUBE]-ZBtqRaQ4zI[/YOUTUBE]

Dasymutilla sackenii, Sackeni's velvet ant




Dasymutilla is a genus of velvet ants that belongs to the family (Mutillidae). Contrary to what the common name, velvet ant, implies these are not ants, but rather are solitary living wasps. This is a female and as you can see, is wingless. Males possess wings, can fly, and sometimes look quite different from the female of their species.

Velvet ants in general are reputed to have fairly powerful stings. One species, D. occidentalis, is known as the cow-killer due to its powerful sting. It most likely does not really kill cows, though. They also have powerful, fanglike biting parts to their mouth. Generally speaking, they should be treated with respect and not, um, played with as i am doing here.

There are at least two of these whitish species in range of me, D. gloriosa and D. sackenii. Gloriosa seems larger and to have noticeable white hair on its legs, which this specimen seems to lack... therefore i am guessing it is D. sackenii. A third species, D. thetis, might be a possiblity, but it too seems to possess notieable white hair on its legs and so i discounted it.

The picture of the pinned insect is of the related species, D. gloriosa and was taken by Gunther Tschuch. The picture is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5.

Dasymutilla are capable of producing a squeaking sound when frightened or otherwise bothered. Dasymutilla reproduce by the female laying eggs in the burrows of other ground living wasps. Dasymutilla larva will eat the food and eventually the larva of the other wasps.

[This video has been uploaded from a 25MB MOV file]

 

[Vixvy]

Kudos Andrew! nice job! but my it made me tipsy seems that the camera doesn't know where to go because of those fast moving critters!

 

[cacoseraph]

that's pretty much all me, unfortunately. i shake =P

i shake lots when i get excited =P

 

[Vixvy]

The next time I need some protein shake I will give you a buzz hahahaha!

 

[Teal]

Ooh, can I go next time? Please, please?

 

[Mad Hatter]

Ooh, can I go next time? Please, please?

You should! Okay... so I haven't even been on one of these hikes yet, but that would give me even more reason to go.

 

[cacoseraph]

Ooh, can I go next time? Please, please?

totally. i thought you lived in Redding area... which is about 500 miles from me, though =P

You should! Okay... so I haven't even been on one of these hikes yet, but that would give me even more reason to go.

yeah! and drag what along!



we can do a fire roads walk or something... it doesn't have to be a full blown valley crawl or anything silly like that!







oh dang. teal, you are a real deal (teal) dog person, yeah? have any good sniffers? i totally want to see if a smart well trained dog can get the hang of scent hunting for certain bugs

 

[cacoseraph]

Go For That Gopher Snake lofi

Go For That Gopher Snake lofi

[YOUTUBE]U_tT3gsYCA4[/YOUTUBE]

March 23, 2009 — Once again, i am not a snake person so i could very easily be wrong about any information provided here... but i believe this is a gopher snake. In California the only snakes you have to worry about are rattlesnakes... and they are generally quite self evident animals, heh. From my little bit of reseach this appears to be a San Diego gopher snake, Pituophis catenifer annectens.

Gopher snakes are non-venomous and in my experience not all that inclined to bite when handled gently. Some are more nervous and contantly try to escape when handled... but this fellow seemed to be somewhat ok with me handling it. Gopher snakes have a very cool trick which i have read about but never seen... they can shake their tail to mimic a rattlesnake... if they do it in dry leaf litter it even *sounds* kind of like a rattle snake! The can also hiss and puff up their body, but this is more defensive behaviour i have never seen in real life. Apparently for this subspecies, hatchlings are round 15"/38cm and adults can reach 4-5' (1.3-1.6m). I suspect this snake was a male, as i read that males are commonly found in spring when they are out actively searching for females to mate with.

This snake had some physical issues... its tail ended fairly abruptly and it had what appeared to be matching wounds on both sides of its "neck" area. There are some ~detail shots at the end of the video so if you are ze sensitive type you might want to turn it off at XXXXXX

This snake was found in the foothills of Ranchco Cucamonga, California, USA

[uploaded from a 10MB WMV]

 

[cacoseraph]

Don't Tread On Me - - Rattlesnake Encounter hifi

Don't Tread On Me - - Rattlesnake Encounter hifi

[YOUTUBE]uPQWHEK0Sb4[/YOUTUBE]

When you are looking for bugs you are almost forced to go off trail. I try to be as careful as possible, leaving as little a trace as possible. Going off trail is not with out its risks... southern Califorina is full of spiky plants, sharp rocks, and... rattle snakes. I almost stepped on a rattlesnake when i was by my dad's house in Rancho Cucamonga, California, USA. When i realized the snake wasn't going to go anywhere i decided to record it

I am not a reptile person. In general i know how to recognize a rattlesnake by the large, arrow-shaped head and relatively narrow neck. I noticed this trait in the snake, which put me on guard. I doubted myself a little bit when the snake remained almost perfectly motionless even when i was tickling it with a thin stick. Good thing i decided to make SURE it wasn't a rattle snake before i grabbed it!

As i said, i don't know much about rattle snakes... but i described the snake as well as i could to a local herp enthusiast and he said the snake sounded like a Southern Pacific Rattlesnake ( Crotalus oreganus helleri or Crotalus viridis helleri... i am not sure which is the correct trinomial). Apparently, that is one of the WORST snakes to get bit by in California, as in addtion to the normal hemotoxic affects all rattlesnakes possess this species also has neurotoxic affects... :/

WARNING: I have moderately quick reflexes and have a little bit of experience in manipulating rattle snakes (not handling... i keep at least 4 feet of stick between me and them at all times!)... so where as i stand a reasonable chance of not being hurt (or hurting the snake!) the average person off the street should NOT force interaction with potentially dangerous animals! Do not try this at home or field unless you are qualified to!

[uploaded from a 27MB WMV file]

 

[cacoseraph]

Bonus Trapdoor Spider hifi

i found another one of these by stupiding onto it. i slipped and kind of grabbed for a root in an erosion cliff... put my thumb into the burrow

Bonus Trapdoor Spider hifi

[YOUTUBE]1h31UlSPC20[/YOUTUBE]

March 22, 2009 — I was bughunting in an area by my dad's house (in Rancho Cucamonga, Califorina, USA) that i have hunted and hiked in for years. Up until a couple weeks ago i have never found any scorpions or ~trapdoor spider (mygalomorphs), though i have found evidence of some kind of trapdoor spider and saw a mature male tarantula about 10 miles away. In this video i had flipped over a big rock and saw a medium scolopocryptops "giant" blind centipede scurry under the triangle shaped stone. When i went to flip the triangle i moved a different rock first... and found a large, mature female of some mygalomorph! Very Nice!

I will eventually be able to figure out what species this and post it here... for the possibly three ppl who might actually care

n.b. though the discovery method was a bit, er, abrupt the spider is fine and moved into a new semi-temporary housing

edit: this spider has pretty conclusively been identified as an Aptostichus species of wafer lid trapdoor

[uploaded from a 21MB WMV file]

 

[cacoseraph]

Angry Unidentified Caterpillar hifi

Angry Unidentified Caterpillar hifi

[YOUTUBE]ASXdBeS2FfA[/YOUTUBE]

May 25, 2007 — This fuzzy fellow is about 2.5-2.75"/6.5-7cm long. I did not pick it up (though i love playing with bugs) because i was worried that since it might have itching hairs/poison needles and i was all hot and sweaty from walking around in the mountains for the previous 4.5 hours that something bad might be able to happen =P

Also... this was one ANGRY caterpillar! Granted I *was* sort of giving him the the ol' dry grass tickle... but still... ANGRY!

This guy lives in the foothills above Azusa, Califorina, USA.


[UPLOADED FROM A 4.3MB WMV FILE]

 

[zonbonzovi]

Nice thread, sir! I'm a sucker for velvet ants & that D. sackenii is the tits!

 

[cacoseraph]

i want to find gloriosa! like a double size version of sackenii


i'm making another youtube right now. it might actually be a fun idea, but this one is kind of haphazardly thrown together. i am thinking about making a series called "California the Beautiful and Strange" that showcases all the random bugs and pictures that aren't really big enough to go into their own video

i really need to get another movie maker, though. the free windows one seems to be limited to 720x480 and at least my pictures are bigger than that. need to get more hdd and bigger sd cards if i want to shoot in high res =P

 

[cacoseraph]

California the Beautiful and Strange, part 1

California the Beautiful and Strange, part 1

[YOUTUBE]sr5p3PpOsEA[/YOUTUBE]

April 13, 2010 — I accumulate a lot of pictures and video snippets. Normally i only make youtubes when i have enough material to be at least sort of coherent. I decided that it might be kind of fun to just throw together a bunch of kind of random stuff from time to time... so now we have California the Beautiful and Strange.

I might try to add caption ID's to the stuff i know, but a lot of things i just haven't had the time and/or inclination to reserach, yet. If there is anything that anyone is real intent on knowing about just ask and i will get back to you as soon as i can


[Uploaded from an 18MB WMV file]

 

[TomM]

Awesome video!

 

[cacoseraph]

thanks Tom


i have to admit, i love "bragging" about how much cool stuff we have in California =P

 

[Teal]

totally. i thought you lived in Redding area... which is about 500 miles from me, though =P

yeah! and drag what along!

we can do a fire roads walk or something... it doesn't have to be a full blown valley crawl or anything silly like that!

oh dang. teal, you are a real deal (teal) dog person, yeah? have any good sniffers? i totally want to see if a smart well trained dog can get the hang of scent hunting for certain bugs

I am three hours or so south-ish of Redding... I am still a ways from So Cal, but I make trips down there for hunting, and I just like driving haha

Valley crawl.. sounds amazing! Can I do that one? lol

Yup, that's me and yes, I have a dog that would be a really good prospect for that! PM me