All in all, the insects weren’t bad in Guyana. I did use my bugspray once in a while, and suffered a very few mosquito bites when I didn’t. Because I wasn’t itching (well, except for when I wandered off into chiggerland a couple of times), I had leisure to look at some attractive, or at least bizarre!, insects now and again.
When Judy called me over to look at this odd creature, all I could think of was that poem “A Garden Grows On Her Face,” or in this case, on her back! I wonder what this turned into; don’t most such highly armed and richly ornamented caterpillars wind up as moths?
Butterflies were terrifically abundant, and it was great to have Narca along to identify so many of them for us. This, to my surprise, turned out to be a satyr, a group that here in the northern hemisphere comprises almost exclusively species clad in discreet brown and gray.
Metalmarks are another group that are modestly hued in temperate climes, but attain great diversity and some wonderful colors in the south.
And sulphurs, of course, we have with us always, especially in the swampy woods around Surama.
Not all the insects we ran into were as innocuous as these. There were a couple of incidents involving hymenopterans, and one afternoon at Karanambu I felt a scratch on my calf and turned to discover a large, colorful mantid creeping up my leg.
It didn’t bite, but I didn’t let it get much higher, either.
