April Will Bee Flowery

April means showers, and showers mean flowers, and flowers mean insects. Insects may account for 90% of the species on earth (beetles being the most prolific with 360,000 species). Some are social (such as ants and bees), being curiously like ourselves in how we often act, yet so remotely related to us. Insects are ancient creatures; dragonflies (and many others, but I especially like dragonflies) may have been around 300 million years ago. Compare that to the 350 million-year-old fossil of Callixylon Newberryi near the Education Center (of Bernheim Forest at Clermont, Kentucky).

Thinking of the bees that will soon fill the air, Hal Borland mentions four kinds of animals that can fly (true powered flight): insects, extinct flying lizards, bats, and birds. I was amazed to find that Wikipedia still agrees with him.(Smart guy!) Of course, people don't count because we didn't evolve flying machines; we invented them as a tool.

On this date in 1961, Harlan Hubbard mentions having seen an "almost full moon last night". I'm reminded that though our calendar makes the seasonal solar events so easily predictable, lunar events just won't cooperate. Full moons don't happen at the same time each month, or year to year. Well ... maybe once in a blue moon. But there was no moon to see last night. Firstly, it was too cloudy. Secondly, it was nearly a new moon. And thirdly, new moons, besides being nearly invisible, are in the sky only in the daytime! A break in the clouds would have shown us a crescent of a moon early this morning. The new moon occurs this month on April 5th and the next full moon is on April 20th; the full pink moon.


To get started:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect
http://insects.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beetle
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0502.htm

http://www.uky.edu/Ag/CritterFiles/casefile/insects/wasps/wasps.htm
http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Fossil_Galleries/Insect_Galleries_by_Order/Hymenoptera/hymenoptera_fossil_gallery.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odonata
http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Fossil_Galleries/Insect_Galleries_by_Order/Odonata/odonata_fossil_gallery.htm
http://www.cirrusimage.com/odonata.htmhttp://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/distr/insects/dfly/ky/toc.htm

http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/etext/hoosier/PA-03.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_and_gliding_animals

http://www.almanac.com/astronomy/index.php
http://www.almanac.com/astronomy/moondays.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_moon