Next, I resized it on my computer screen so that it matched my 5″ oval template (I’m still on the 84% batch), and – this is very high-tech, I know – held the template over the screen and traced in the parts of the beetle that didn’t exactly match the perfectly oval template. (This is probably not great for my computer screen, I know…) After that, I firmed up the outline and made the spots more realistically-shaped. When I was satisfied with it, I transferred it to drawing paper by – high-tech method alert again – tracing the outline heavily with a ballpoint pen, so that there was an indentation in the drawing paper beneath.

I didn’t take any photos during the drawing process, so I’m jumping straight to the final illustration – much more vividly colored than the specimen, but a beetle loses a lot of color after 100 years in a museum collection! I added a very fine black outline to the entire drawing so that the yellow spots at the edge of the wings wouldn’t blend into the background too much. (I don’t want to rely too heavily on outlines when the beetles are vividly colored – only when white, yellow, or light brown areas would be hard to distinguish from the white of the paper.)

There are, of course, many lady beetles with an 84% ratio, and I took another 5″ oval and outlined this odd-looking beast, Azya orbigera, the Globe-marked Lady Beetle. Yes, it really is metallic blue and fuzzy! For this version, I incised the lines for the hairs into the paper before applying the color; I’m not sure how well it worked out. I’m going to do another version too, in which I’ll color the beetle first and then use white paint and a fine-tipped brush to add the hairs.

The third 84% beetle (I only had three printed ovals) is the gloriously-named Twice-stabbed Lady Beetle, Chilocorus stigma. I went through a LOT of black pencil on this one! “Black with two red spots” is a remarkably common pattern in lady beetles, and I am going to stock up on black pencils…it is sometimes frowned upon to use actual black pencils to draw something black, and usually I’ll build up black with combinations of dark pencils like ultramarine, deep green, and dark red, but there really is no undertone to a Chilocorus lady beetle. That black really is black!

Still, there were plenty of courting robins, male red-winged blackbirds staking out their territory for late spring when the females arrive, adorable juncos and chipping sparrows, and a few male song sparrows and white-throated sparrows that I was able to whistle back and forth with. (I’m very good at imitating white-throated sparrows: once I actually attracted a female!)

On the invertebrate front, I didn’t see very much: worms, pillbugs, and the like scattered when I turned over logs, a few spiders scurried through dead leaves too quickly for me to photograph, and one patch of wild lettuce was infested with tiny glossy flea beetles, which I did attempt to photograph, but none of the pics came out. (“Hey, a tiny black speck that’s either a beetle or a piece of dirt!”)

I’m glad to have seen those warblers, though, and look forward to visiting the park again next weekend. By then a new band of warblers should be in town and more plants will be flowering, attracting more insects. I just hope I find a lady beetle soon…I’ve been dreaming about them every night and it’s getting a little tedious!

The first thing I did was separate the maps into eastern and western, then went through the eastern maps to write down the names of species. A single map could have as many as 5 species on it, from California to Florida, so this did take some time! My species list came in at 179. Yikes. I think I will cheat and not cover all of Tribe Scymnini….

That was Days 1 and 2. Day 3 was going through Gordon again and recording the length and width of every species he provided those for. Most of Tribe Scymnini didn’t have measurements (another reason to avoid them!) and for some reason he didn’t give widths for genus Coccinella…not sure what I’m going to do about that. Go to BugGuide.net and look at measurements for the beetles people have photographed, I suppose.

So, having fun reading this yet? LOL! I was actually having fun doing it. Day 4 was number-crunching time: figuring out the average of minimum/maximum length and width, and then figuring out the ratio of that average. This took MUCH longer than it should have because Microsoft Excel is evil….not as evil as Microsoft Word, but seriously, it took me about an hour to figure out how to divide with it. The function lists are just insane and don’t seem to include division or subtraction!

And that’s where I am now; I’ve got my ratios for all the beetles Gordon provided length and width for. Next up, using a graphics program to draw ellipses with those ratios. That way, I can outline the general shape of each beetle with the correct proportions. No freehand ovals! My husband, God bless him, has already said he’ll do the ovals for me. Once I’ve got a few of them, I’ll start to do the real drawings. Stay tuned!

I plan to illustrate it myself – I am not half-bad at drawing, and I can’t think of a better way to do it. Photos of every species would be difficult to obtain and I have no idea what the royalties would be like. Anyway, I like drawing, I have a fresh set of 72 Prismacolor pencils, and I desperately want to try my hand at it!

Here’s an example of my lady beetle drawing skills, a Seven-spotted Lady Beetle in Prismacolor pencil:

Anyway, I can still mutter, right?

1. Agency :: Temp
2. Ministrations :: Minnesingers
3. Charlie :: Bucket
4. Bricks :: Cobblestone sidewalks that eat high heels (I walk on a lot of those in old Philly!)
5. Contingencies :: Disaster
6. Dad :: Vail. Or Vale. Whatever the regatta is.
7. Zoned :: Out
8. Direct :: Extension (my office just got new phone lines for everyone except me; I specifically requested NOT to get one)
9. Team :: Ster
10. Cave :: Cricket

1. Sarcasm :: A service I provide (I saw that on a t-shirt but it fits me, and some of my best friends, perfectly!)
2. Coke :: I’d like to buy the world a Coke (I’ve had that song in my mind for a few days now)
3. Frank :: enstein (my husband, who’s in a neck brace after surgery, is going to be Frankenstein for Halloween – he’s got the major part of the costume on already, after all!)
4. Party :: like it’s 1999.
5. Witches :: What people always say “bitches” rhymes with. (I don’t know, is calling someone a “rhymes with witch” actually any less insulting? How about “rhymes with rich”?)
6. Intentional :: Un-. (It’s totally more fun that way.)
7. Crisp :: “The air…as crisp as a green apple.” (A line from an unfinished novel of mine, and the way the fall air always feels…)
8. Lockers :: I can only think of high school lockers, and I wish I had a more positive image than nerds getting shoved into them!
9. Walking :: Transportation. (Living in a city, and not having a car, walking and the bus are my major means of getting around. I walk faster in high heels that hurt than most people do in sneakers!)
10. Fundraiser :: Police. (My brother is a cop and I always contribute to police and firefighter fundraisers…my husband wishes they’d stop calling all the time though!)

I’ll post, you also guessed it, one haiku there every day; the mental discipline required by a) the form itself, b) writing one every day, and c) writing ONLY one every day will be an enjoyable challenge and probably do me good!

And, of course, if I do write more than one a day, the overflow will show up here on Butterfly’s Psyche. I’m not made of stone…

Cat
Ears stiff as sailcloth
Whiskers poised like galley oars
The hunter embarks.

Lady Beetle
Smooth-shelled hemisphere
Candy-colored polka dots
Beneath: the dark jaws.