American Insects

Having obtained a plethora of fly, wasp and bee photographs, all of them showing CB denizens or visitors, Crumby faces the awesome task of identifying the depicted vermin to genus, at least. Naturally, Crumby would rather figure out what species they are, but given the current state of Hymenopteran and Dipteran systematics handy to a public person like Crumby, dwelling in a corner of our lttle planet dominated by igmos, that may be impossible.

Yet Crumby is no quitter. Well, Crumby is a quitter. But only after tons of aggravation have convinced Crumby to just quit. Crumby is not ready to quit on his bug pictures just yet.

No. First Crumby is fixing to check out the available literature. After that strategy probably belly flops, Crumby is fixing to go find someplace, like maybe a museum, where the museum responsible parties may allow Crumby to look at the specimens. Uh. Back when Crumby was more famous than he is now, responsible parties were generally happy to allow Crumby to nose around in their stuff.

You may espy that what Crumby would like to produce is a pictorial key to the flighted Diptera and Hymenoptera dwelling south on the near shores of the dammed river. That key would, of course, be useful to a broader area than the designated coverage area, since no other such document or similar document exists.

But getting back to American Insects. A library copy of American Insects is this very nonce reclining on Crumby’s desk. It is a heavy tome. Crumby’s first impression is, if you like moths and beetles, American Insects may be your daddy. If you like bees, wasps and flies, then you might be happier with A Field Guide to the Insects, the Borror and White much maligned yet slender and happy tome. That’s how measly the illustrations are in those twain chapters covering the bees, wasp and flies in American Insects. Plus, Crumby is fairly certain that the descriptions of typical species may be more useful outside the miserable ROT, than inside. Plus the dern book costs almost a hundred dollars or more. Mercy! Still, if you like beetles and moths.

Here is an example of what Crumby is up against. This bee is little and black with green eyes. This particular bee is under 5mm in length. If Crumby had a better picture of its wings, it might be doable to genus, maybe.