In today's world, we hear much about "The Web" and "Surfing the Net", and the thought occurs to me that even without computers, what I have been doing for many years is Surfing the Web. Not that rather nebulous and hard to explain computer network, but the "Web of Life"!

An important part of that web is the insect world. Did I hear someone say "Yechch!"? Maybe insects need some better press, as most people seem to prefer fur or feathers on their animals, rather than chitinous coats.

There are many millions of species of insects on the earth, (over 200,000 species of moths, and 60,000 of weevils). If you learned how to identify one species each hour for 8 hours a day, and 5 days a week, it would take many thousands of years to learn them all. To top that off, you would never finish, because 80% of the insects found in studies of the rain forest are new species, so the job would keep getting bigger, not smaller! Just thinking of that makes me want to take a nap.

Most of us, if forced to think about insects, may be able to identify a couple of beneficial "bugs", such as the Honey Bee. Maybe some farmers would mention the Leafcutter Bee, which helps in pollination of seed crops of alfalfa and clovers. One very humble beetle that hardly anyone will think of, is the Dung Beetle, which busily spends it's life collecting and burying little pellets of animal dung. It digs a pit in the ground and puts a pellet of dung in the pit, then lays her eggs on the pellet. This provides food for the new generation of Dung Beetles. It also aerates and fertilizes the soil, making a better environment for plant life, which in turn feeds more animals which provide more raw material for Dung Beetles. (They also help keep us from being knee deep in fertilizer!)

Many people believe that Purple Martins are great mosquito eaters, but only about 3% of their diet is mosquitos. Bats eat far more of these pesky little insects. A colony of a few million Mexican Free-tailed Bats will eat several tons of insects, mostly mosquitos, every night! The people of Austin, Texas have learned this well, and actively protect "their" bats. We in Canada do not have these particular bats to help us out with our mosquito problems, but we do have dragonflies. These beautiful insects eat a lot of mosquitos, and other small bothersome insects. As well, the dragonfly is fun to watch, and can be caught with a butterfly net and compared to dragonfly field guides for identification. With some care and wiles, even old-timers like me can catch them! Please release them after identification, to carry on their work on our behalf.

After all that negative talk about mosquitos, I have to admit that they too have their place in the world. They provide a food source, not only for bats and dragonflies, but for many birds as well. I remember an evening when I watched a family of Canvasback ducks along the edge of a pond. The young ducklings would look up into the air, then lunge up out of the water to snap at the mosquitos buzzing around them. I don't know how many they caught, but they sure did provide me with some great entertainment!

I hope you readers will forgive me for talking about some of the "Creepy-crawlies", but they are all important parts of the "Web of Life", and we naturalists should know a bit more about them.