Friday, July 17, 2020

Fig Beetles In Flight

We have so many Cotinus Texanas flying around our yard that we might need to request an air traffic controller from the FAA. It's gotten warm here, our days are regularly in the 80s and 90s, so the Fig Beetles can take off. They're sensitive to temperature, you see.

Enough jibber jabber. Let's get to the photos! Many of them are large, but I think they're all worth a click. Enjoy!







4 comments:

tim eisele said...

Wow. Those are some big, shiny beetles.
Are they flying with their wing covers closed and just sticking their wings out the sides? I have never seen any of our local beetles do that (although, without a nice sharp picture like that, it might be hard to notice). That's pretty cool!

K T Cat said...

Thanks, Tim!

Yes, they fly with their wing covers closed. They do a decent job of it, too, if by decent you mean a C-130 piloted by a drunk.

My favorite is the last of the in-flight photos where the beetle has all of his legs splayed out. It's probably a wise move as whatever he's going to hit is going to collide with him before he can react. It's doubtful that the comms work well between the legs and the wings.

:-)

K T Cat said...

By the way, did you see the link to the paper discussing temperature vs. flight in these guys? I thought that was fascinating.

IlĂ­on said...

"Yes, they fly with their wing covers closed."

If someone had just told me out of the blue that beetles can do that, I'd have been very skeptical.