The "millers" are back.

[rmb...@istar.ca]

I think the wee night flying gnats and midges are called "millers"
because of the way they mill around lights at night. After Monday
night's rain (and we got a couple doses of good rain) the air cleared
a bit and the smoke haze wasn't so evident yesterday. Last night
there were a few gnats and midges and hundreds of little wee
caddisflies again. I've been focused mainly on moths and some other
insects like the ichneumon wasps, burying and a few other beetles,
anything that holds still long enough while I wave the flashlight with
one hand and snap photos with the little Elph pocket camera that is
handy for the task. I rarely try to capture a subject and hold it for
i.d., prefer to get the photo "in the wild" so to speak. Considering
the sheer masses of some of these smaller species I don't think I'll
affect the population by popping a couple of them into a bug box and
cooling them down to get the "better" camera with macro lens focused
on it. iNaturalist doesn't often get some of these insects narrowed
down closer than family or genus, but I'm finding that there are some
specialists who can pinpoint the species. Just this week I've had
someone glean through the craneflies on my observations and pegged a
few of them.

Now. Find the time for this. The wet wet rainy month of May has put
me behind in the gardening and outdoor yardwork department. I have 15
pages in my Hilroy exercise book of downloaded photos that need
processing, averaging 15 photos each page. I download the photos,
then go through them, making note of the "best" (I take 3 or 4 photos
of each species), list the photo # in the book. I run those through
Photo elements, crop and adjust exposure, and format to size and 72dpi
for the web. Then they are uploaded. Probably making more work for
myself but it makes for better photos for iNat. Somewhere, somehow
I'm hoping that this bit of "citizen science" is worth it if some
researcher has use of the data.

Rose-Marie, near Perth Road Village