Scott King Curator

Joined: Dec 4, 2014 Last Active: Jun 15, 2021 iNaturalist

I'm a poet and citizen scientist living in Northfield, Minnesota. While a bit of a generalist, my main interests have been with the insect orders Odonata and Hymenoptera. Over the last several years, this interest has expanded to include the order Diptera, resulting in my most recent book: Flower Flies of Minnesota.

In 2017, I challenged myself to make iNaturalist observations for each day of the year. In addition to the photo observations, I also wrote daily journal entries for each day. Those journal entries have been gathered, edited, and published as Following the Earth Around: Journal of a Naturalist's Year.

Due to upgrades in the iNaturalist site, the journal was downgraded in importance and the links between the observations and the journal entries were removed. For instance, anyone finding this observation about Chaoborus (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/5513218) will have no idea that an accompanying essay was written and is available as well (https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/scottking/9180-go-ball). So it goes. [note: it does work the other way around: if you make it to the journal pages, there are links to the observations associated with each day's text.]

Rice County Odonata Journal: Volume Four (http://a.co/iyU7weW) was published in 2018. Volume Four covers the year 2011 and includes accounts of trips to the Tallgrass Aspen Parkland in northeast Minnesota in search of Red-veined Meadowhawks, Persian poetry, Minnesota Odonata Survey Project work weeks, an up-to-date Minnesota Odonata species checklist and a species index.

I've been at work for several years on a natural history of the dragonflies of the genus Sympetrum. As part of that project, I've put together a website to present and organize information about these dragonflies: http://www.meadowhawks.info/

Occasionally, I write about subjects other than dragonflies, and even less occasionally, these musings get posted on a blog: http://ofbooksandbugs.wordpress.com/

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