Few things are as satisfying and comforting as learning and observing the rhythms of nature. The more I learn about prairies, and the more familiar I get with individual sites, the better I get at predicting what I’ll find when I visit. Sometimes, I rely on data to anticipate what flowers will be blooming or animals will be active. Usually, though – and this happens more each year – I get a kind of unconscious notion that turns out to be accurate.

For example, during the spring, I’ll often arrive at a prairie and think, “Hey, the upland sandpipers should be back about now.” More often than not, that thought will be shortly followed by the far off ‘wolf whistle’ call of an uppie, loudly proclaiming to other sandpipers that it’s back and ready to party. I’ve also developed a pretty accurate sense of when migratory butterflies will arrive in the spring, when various summer wildflowers will open their blossoms, and when fuzzy caterpillars will start crossing the road in the fall.

I share all this, not to brag, but to gain your admiration. Wait, that’s not what I meant. No, really, I share this because I know many of you follow nature in similar ways and understand how nice it is to be able to anticipate what you might find when you visit a prairie. Surprises are also fun, of course – discoveries of a species you’d not seen before or spotting a species at a different time than you’d expected – but it’s comforting to know that everything is right on schedule.

All that is preamble to a story about my experience of accurately predicting where and when I’d find the two-lined planthopper last weekend.

Two-lined planthoppers are pretty common, but because of their diminutive size and excellent camouflage can be hard to spot. In fact, it took me more than 20 years of frequent visits to Lincoln Creek Prairie (on the east side of Aurora, Nebraska) before I finally noticed my first one. That initial discovery came during the year I was conducting my square meter photography project, an effort that greatly augmented my observational skills. My first two-lined planthopper sighting was outside my square meter plot, but I found one within the plot shortly thereafter.

This summer, I discovered and photographed the nymphal stage of the two-lined planthopper, though I didn’t know that’s what I was looking at until I sent the photos to Bugguide.net. The nymphs look like they recently wandered through a pile of lint and picked some up along the way. What look like white strands of hair or fuzz are actually waxy secretions. You can easily mistake these planthopper nymphs for woolly aphids. In fact, that’s what I thought they were at first, but once I had them magnified through my macro lens, I could tell they were something else.

Both adults and nymphs insert their mouthparts into plant stems to feed on the liquid therein. They feed on a wide variety of plants, so aren’t really considered a pest (unless you just dislike all insects, I guess, but who would do that?). Any damage they might cause to agricultural or horticultural plants is likely to come via the transmission of disease as they move from plant to plant.

As I left the house Sunday morning, I hadn’t yet decided which prairie I was going to. About 30 seconds later, my brain spoke up and said something like, “Hey, I’ll bet those fun planthoppers that look like little leaves are around now – this seems like the time of year you’ve seen them at Lincoln Creek in the past.”

That was enough to swing the vote, so I headed to Lincoln Creek Prairie. And I’m not kidding when I tell you that the first photograph I took that morning was of a two-lined planthopper. It’s funny how that works, isn’t it? I walked into the tall dewy grass and almost immediately spotted the tiny little leaf-like creature on the stem of a stiff sunflower. Over the next hour, I photographed other tiny creatures too, but I kept coming across planthoppers – more than I’d ever seen in one day before.

I don’t know what, exactly, triggered my mind to think about two-lined planthoppers that morning, but it was sure nice to see them when I arrived at the prairie. There would have been plenty of other subject matter for my camera if they hadn’t been there, of course. However, aside from the pleasure that comes from seeing that nature is still on schedule, finding those planthoppers meant that I got to say – initially to myself, but now also to you –

“Called it!”

If you’ve followed this blog any length of time, you know that one of my objectives is to show people the wonderful, fascinating aspects of nature, including the insects and other small creatures that can be found right in their backyards. By sharing the amazing natural history stories of those tiny animals, I hope to build empathy and admiration for ‘bugs’. I do this knowing that many (most?) people see invertebrates as bothersome, icky, or even scary – and that those attitudes are not likely to lead to conservation support.

I’ve made small gains through my writing/photography, as well as by engaging directly with kids and adults. Give me 2 minutes with just about anyone and I can have them holding a spider and exclaiming that they can’t believe they’re doing it. I love hearing from people how much my stories about insects have enriched their understanding and even their comfort level with them.

But then I read stories like this one and I want to just crawl into a hole and cry. I hate to even provide the link because I don’t want to drive more traffic to it, but it’s just so bad…

The author of the NBC online article shares her traumatic experiences related to moving out of the city and into the suburbs. Primarily her trauma came from the fact that there were insects (INSECTS!) all over the place. Oh the horror! She details how she fought back against the awful creatures that had the audacity to live where she did.

See, I’m already falling into the trap… I’m not really mad at Pat Olsen for her perspective on insects. (However, I am a little mad that she wrote the article the way she did, and even angrier that NBC published it – especially with such a stupid headline.) Mostly, it’s a sobering reminder of how far we have to go if we’re going to make nature relevant to the majority of humans. Since most humans live in cities now, our job is even harder – we have to help them understand and care about something they don’t have easy access to.

Writing and photography is one way to reach people in cities, but it’s not enough. We have to bring nature to cities – and interpret it for people living there. Pat says she contacted several university extension staff (and read articles) to learn how to get rid of the pests in her yard. I don’t know what those extension folks told her directly, but I read the same articles she did and certainly didn’t reach the same conclusions she did about the ‘infestations’ she was dealing with. That’s not completely her fault, it’s also a failing on the part of the writers of those articles.

The worst misinterpretation came from Pat’s research on cicada killer wasps. The extension article said multiple times that the wasps are no threat to humans, but also provided ways to deal with those harmless creatures if people were made uncomfortable by them. That, unfortunately, included swatting them with a tennis racket, which then found its way into the click bait headline.

I’m guessing Pat is a person who thinks pandas and eagles are pretty nice. I’ll bet she has at least passive support for conservation efforts that keep those species around. What’s frustrating is that she isn’t drawing a link between the tiny invertebrates she abhors and the species she admires.

We in the conservation world need to clearly draw that link for her, and others like her, and help her see that we can only have pandas and eagles (and clean air and water, for that matter) if we also have the complex and interconnected ecosystems that support them. And yes, those ecosystems include bugs…