Monthly Archives: September 2016

Agelenidaea (Funnel Weaver)

This time of the year the spiders are quite think in the lawn and garden around our house. I’m not sure why we only see them this time of year but in the morning when there is dew on the ground we look out and see their webs all over. There must be three or four dozen of them in our backyard alone. This picture is looking down on the spider from directly overhead as she stood on her bejeweled web out in the grass in our backyard. This was in the evening, as the day cooled and the webs began to collect water droplets for the night.

Chortophaga viridifasciata viridifasciata (Northern Green-striped Grasshopper)

In addition to quite a few photos of the ailanthus webworm moth (Atteva aurea) I’ve already posted (I posted them in the wrong order, but they are sorted by date and time taken, so this one shows up first, the other is here: Saturday, September 24, 2016 ), I saw this little grasshopper and managed to get a few good pictures. It is very well camouflaged and extremely difficult to see when it isn’t moving or if you haven’t kept good track of where it landed. This is one of the many short-horned grasshoppers (Family Acrididae) and is quite interesting to look at. I was also able to get a few shots in profile, which also turned out nicely. You have to get down in the grass more if you want to see these things, and seeing them is its own reward.

Jumping Spider

Don’t be alarmed. Although there isn’t anything to give you a sense of scale, I assure you that this is a tiny little spider, less than one centimeter in length. It’s pretty ferocious looking but it’s not going to attack you. There are a lot of spiders and even among the jumping spiders (Family Salticidae) there are a lot this could be. My suspicion is Platycryptus undatus but I’m no expert. I’ll report back here if someone from BugGuide.net can nail it down. As you might have guessed, the red background is the fender of our car. This was taken with the 100mm macro and 25mm extension tube, focused nearly all the way in.

Field Cricket

Cathy and I were out in the back yard after work this evening. She noticed a dead cabbage white on the patio and I took a few pictures of that. They are hard to get close enough to when they are alive but they aren’t as interesting when dead, of course. Then I was lying in the grass and we were chatting as she pulled weeds when I noticed this cricket. I had my 100mm macro lens and a 25mm extension tube, along with a bean bag to set my camera on. I managed to get pretty close. At first I was only able to get the little fellow on the other side of a blade of grass but then he moved around and was looking at me. I’m fairly pleased with the results. I don’t know which of the many species of true crickets (family Gryllidae) this is, but I think it’s most likely a field cricket (subfamily Gryllinae).

Mythimna unipuncta (Armyworm Moth)

As I was about to leave for work this morning I noticed this moth by the front door. I picked up my camera and took a dozen or so pictures before shooing it out the door and then leaving myself. It is an armyworm moth (Mythimna unipuncta) and I suspect I probably should have squashed it instead of letting it loose, but them’s the breaks, as they say. It’s a mid-sized moth, about 2cm long and looking at it up close it seems to be quite hairy. Note that the ‘hair’ on moths is really the same as the tiny scales on butterfly wings, only larger and more hair like. In both cases, the scales are made of chitin, which (to quote from Wikipedia), “is a long-chain polymer of an N-acetylglucosamine, a derivative of glucose, and is found in many places throughout the natural world. It is a characteristic component of the cell walls of fungi, the exoskeletons of arthropods such as crustaceans (e.g., crabs, lobsters and shrimps) and insects, the radulae of molluscs, and the beaks and internal shells of cephalopods, including squid and octopuses and on the scales and other soft tissues of fish and lissamphibians.”