Cornell has a great project for kids: Finding and documenting ladybugs, Hannah's favorite insect. Any kid's favorite insect. Over the weekend Tom found a huge praying mantis under a rung of his ladder, and we let it go yesterday after days of watching it chomp on store-bought crickets. Small crickets disappeared without a trace, but as for the larger crickets -- no dark meat, thank you very much. The floor of her insect catcher was littered with insect thighs and drumsticks, and I was sad that when she finally let the praying mantis go, they dumped it all out before I could take a picture.
King Kaufman
Scott Rosenberg
Laura Miller
Kristopher Hannum
cwalsh
Richard Gingras
Salon.com
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"Over the past twenty years several native ladybug species that were once very common have become extremely rare. During this same time several species of ladybugs from other places have greatly increased both their numbers and range."
We spot ladybugs around the woods and fields here, so we'll see if we can get some good close-up pics to send off to the program. I didn't even know there was a study going on with this, so thanks for the info. on it.