Washington Oaks Gardens

We are into our fourth week of bug hunting for Sir Son’s Biology class.  We try to go out at least once a week to hike an area in search of the six legged creatures.  Why God created some of them, is way beyond my thinking.

Last Saturday we took an hours drive down to St. Augustine, to visit Washington Oaks Gardens.  It is mostly a formal garden, but there are some very nice not so formal areas too. 🙂

 There is a path down to the river Matanzas River. Since it was a slightly wet, very windy, and cool day, we didn’t find many insects.

I did see some strange things growing out of the sand, right at the waters edge. You would think these were hard, but they are very soft and easy to bind over. I’ll have to do some research to find out what they are.

By the end of the day, Sir Son had captured one Bumble Flower Beetle and a Gulf Fritillary Butterfly.

We took one of Sir Son’s friends to help. He tried to catch a Zebra Butterfly. He really tried hard.

We do live in Florida so…

we HAD to get one of these.

The friend we took spotted this while I was looking under a log. He called it a large beetle and I used all my energy to capture said beetle. It wasn’t until after it was in the jar that we saw it was a Palmetto Bug. SCORE!    Ladies look at the hair on those legs!