Bees. Imagine (all you birders) that any time you talked to people about birds they said “Oh, yeah, chickens!” Never mind the thousands of other species that live in all kinds of habitats with a variety of nests, the only birds they know about are chickens. Also, imagine that most of the mainstream news you hear is about how chickens are “dying by the millions” despite lots of species that are threatened with actual extinction.
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I had a brief argument in a facebook ‘native plants’ group, where the other person insisted that there was no ecological importance to spurges/sandmats as long as one has “pollinator plants” in their garden. Of course, many people won’t notice if Perdita go extinct, because they are too small to be honeybees. To be fair, I knew nothing about Scoliid wasps or digger bees a year ago.
Great book that opened my eyes: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691160771/the-bees-in-your-backyard
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I’m surprised when Texans can’t ID a mockingbird.
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I once showed this picture to a random neighbor walking down my street, and the response was something along the lines of “Oh cool, a woodpecker!” I mean, surely people can at least recognize a hummingbird?
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and I in turn have ‘brief arguments on FB’ when I try to explain that the - plant these 14 for bees - is targeting a USA audience (or at least temperate Northern hemisphere). And is not useful to our bees. A plant is a plant right - who cares about locally indigenous to support this biodiversity.
@fluffyinca 'tis a very little woodpecker, they also have their niche ;~)
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What’s hilarious, yet sad, is when people see a crow carrying something large and white, and think it is a bald eagle. Birders even have a word for it – creagle.
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honestly! I saw a small green garter on my porch and my boyfriend asked me if it would hurt our dogs. How? it was smaller than my shoestring
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You mean there’s more than insects and spiders? I looked up the ones you mentioned and they look like insects to me. Looks like biologists have gone “taxo-happy” with all the extra layers added since I left college. I just remember figuring out a sentence so our girls could get them in order. “King Paul Can Order Fresh Garden Supplies.” I don’t know what I’d have to come up now. I don’t want to think of all the different layers now and I don’t know if I tried if I’d get them all. Life was so much simpler… back then. 
I can understand the need for more layers as more is learned about the “bugs” so it’s exciting to learn! Never too old to learn more and life would be boring if there wasn’t anything else to learn.
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While I learned a different pneumonic, I wasn’t in school that long ago (and I took AP Biology and Environmental Science in high school) and there was no mentions of subfamilies, tribes, or sections. I also grew up with bird common names only. Aside from a few vague references to bumble and mason bees, I had no idea of the diversity of Hymenoptera a year ago. There’s a lot that could be done to increase awareness of diversity in schools.
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Well, they’re out of insects since 70s and in own class since 90s. It’s not a new layer though, a regular class.
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Here in S. California, every snake is a giant Diamondback ready to strike unsuspecting children and pets, even the 10-inch baby striped racer…
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And every largish spider that happens to be brown is a brown recluse 
. Even far outside the range of the brown recluse.
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I once saw a post on Nextdoor of a large, mildly brownish California Ebony Tarantula. The top handful of comments were people asking if it could be a brown recluse…
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The Nextdoor app can be a truly terrible place for misIDs. The correct answers to questions about an animal ID typically get lost among all the ignorant responses. I’ve largely given up on trying to educate anyone on that app.
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I don’t like the Nextdoor app for a lot of reasons. But you did remind me of this article:
https://blog.nature.org/science/2021/06/22/theres-a-wolverine-in-my-neighborhood-app/
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I think probably the poor old Crane Fly forever being called a ‘big mozzie’ and treated with the same disdain, yet they are extremely commonly seen.
Second prize to every wasp being called a ‘murder hornet’ and feared…
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The exact same thing happened to me when I was observing white breasted nuthatches in a local woods.
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“Herrings are gregarious?”
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Same in Texas…until someone post a photo of them holding a copperhead asking if it’s a garter snake. I can’t put into words how frustrating the combination is…
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Pretty much every misidentified plant on iNaturalist. I look at the picture, I see what they identified it as, and I think, “But it looks nothing like that!”
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