When Dr. Arthur V. Evans’ remarkable “Beetles of Eastern North America” was published by Princeton University Press in 2014, cheers went up around the entomological world for such an extensive guide becoming available; however there were some – including yours truly – who live “out west” and may have been heard subsequently also to mutter in hushed tones “Eastern North America? Why is it always only eastern?”
I have never liked the epithet “trash panda” as used in reference to raccoons – nor would I particularly care for it if ever applied to pandas, for that matter (and don’t even get me started on “bin chickens” as applied to ibises). It just seems wrong to denigrate the cleverly opportunistic behaviors of our non-human neighbors for making good use of all that we carelessly discard for their own benefit.
A summer’s day as we may have experienced it in 2021 is not quite the same in regard to weather, plant and animal activity, and a range of other natural phenomena as it was in 2001, or 1961, or 1901. And as Joe Shute, keen observer of weather that he is, discovered in years of research into the subject, it’s becoming more and more different more quickly with each passing year.
I think ladybirds (or as my Nan called them in the her American vernacular – ladybugs) were the very first family of insects I learned to identify as a child. Perhaps bees or ants might have been ever-so-slightly earlier, but ladybirds were close behind them if so. Of course, at that young age I assumed that all ladybirds were alike, having no idea of the variation to be found throughout the world among the Family Coccinellidae – or that there was such a thing as the Coccinellidae, or taxonomic families, or taxonomy for that matter.