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Here and There…Now and Then |
Eastern Tailed Blue
These little guys don’t sit still for long and don’t like being approached but I managed to get a reasonable shot of one today. Eastern tailed blue, Everes comyntas.
Follow-up: I have two more pictures of this butterfly taken on April 27 in my Extras gallery.
Yellow Jacket
I went out hoping to get a better butterfly picture today. I got a few but they aren’t enough better than yesterday’s picture to justify putting them here. So, here’s a picture of a yellow jacket on a garlic mustard flower.
Buckeye
his is a common buckeye (Junonia coenia), posing for me on a garlic mustard. An uncommonly beautiful butterfly, I think.
Lady Beetle
I found a lady beetle today. She was nice and bright and crawling around on garlic mustard and mile-a-minute vine. Cute little thing, isn’t she?
Tiny Green Damselfly
These little things are quite shy and wouldn’t let me get very close so this is cropped from a larger image. It could be a little sharper but I’m pretty pleased with it.
What Is It?
Anyone have a guess as to what this is?
Male Ebony Jewelwing
Without the white spot on the wing, this is the male Ebony Jewelwing Damselfly (Calopteryx maculata). Handsome fellow, too, but fairly shy.
Tiny Fly
This little fellow is only about 3/8 inch long but he’s as busy as any bee you’ll find. I originally labeled this as a bee but noticing that it only has two wings, I’ve changed the title to Tiny Fly. I’m guessing that it’s a diptera (di = two, and ptera = wings) — a true fly.
Variable Dancer
These little damselflies don’t stay put for very long and they don’t like you to get too close. Also, it was on the warm side today, especially in the sun, which made it harder. I did manage to get two shots of this one. Argia fumipennis violacea
Variegated Lady Beetle
This is a Variegated Lady Beetle (Hippodamia variegata), a non-native species that has only relatively recently (since the 1980s) been found on this side of the Atlantic. Like all the lady beetles, they are predaceous on other insect pests and are welcome in the garden or (as here) the farm.
Lopidea
I’m not sure which one but I’m fairly certain that this is one of the 50+ Lopidea species, possibly L. media. It’s posing for me on an unopened stock flower. No more than 3/8 inch long (not counting the antennae).
Eastern Amberwing
Albert corrected me as to the identification. I had labeled it as Perithemis domitia, the slough amberwing. He correctly identified it as Perithemis tenera, the eastern amberwing. That makes more sense, base on where I took the picture and the range of the two species. Also, the differences in markings, although not glaring, are certainly enough to be definitive. Thanks, Albert.
Honey Bee on Wild Onion
I’ll end the first six months of Project 365 with a honey bee (Apis mellifera), busily visiting the flowers on a wild onion in the empty lot next to my office.
Catching Fireflies
We enjoyed a pleasant dusk catching fireflies in the yard today. The joys of summer. Kind of hard to photograph, though. Here’s one on Dorothy’s thumb. She thought it interesting that little girls that don’t normally associate closely with insects have no problem catching fireflies. Somehow they are different.
Sweat Bee
I know some of you are probably getting tired of wasps but I this is one of the nicer wasp pictures I’ve gotten, so, here you go with another one. UPDATE: Identified as Halictus parallelus, a sweat bee.
If I get an identification for it I’ll change the label but for now, it’s a wasp of some kind. I spent about a half hour at the mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) in the back yard today. The sun was pretty hot so by the time I came in I was wilting. The insects didn’t mind and were really out in huge numbers.
Great Golden Digger Wasp
I keep thinking I’m done with wasps and bees and then I find a new one (there are thousands, after all). This, I’m pretty sure, is a great golden digger wasp (Sphex ichneumoneus). This isn’t the best picture I took in terms of identifying the wasp but I really like this head-on view.
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
This is a male eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus). These and more of the silver-spotted skippers (see photo in yesterday’s Extra gallery) were out in force today feeding on the teasel (Dipsacus sp.) flowers in the lot next to my office.
Polyphemus Moth Caterpillar
This thing is huge. It’s as big around as my thumb and as long as my middle finger. Actually, I think it’s pretty amazing that this big, squishy, green blob turns into a beautiful (and quite large) moth. In this case, a Polyphemus moth (Antheraea polyphemus). It’s named after the Cyclops Polyphemus in Homer’s Odyssey because of the large “eye spot” on its hindwings.
Pale Beauty
I saw a few of these little moths today. I believe it is a pale beauty (Campaea perlata).
Grasshopper
What a perfectly beautiful day it was after the rain stopped and it cleared up. It was a pleasant temperature and there was a gentle breeze. I went outside briefly and took a few pictures including some of this little grasshopper who let me get quite close.
Mushrooms and Ant
These mushrooms have suddenly appeared in our back yard. I’m hoping they are growing on the roots of the tree that came down in the summer of 2010.
Poecilocapsus lineatus (Four-lined Plant Bug)
I don’t know that I’d call this a serious pest but it certainly does make our garden look worse this time of year. This little bug has been here in pretty good numbers in recent years and they suck the juices out of some of our plants, making their leaves brown and desiccated. It generally doesn’t do the plant irreparable harm but it doesn’t do it much good, either. In past years I spray them and cut them off before they do their worst. This year I never got around to it and the damage is pretty well done at this point. They’re pretty, little things, I admit. But pests, nonetheless.
Insect Exuviae
I was out in the yard taking pictures this evening and after taking a few of the rose I just posted, I noticed that there were a lot of little insects moving around in the grass. When I say little, I’m talking about insects in the 2 to 3mm range. As I walked around, they leapt away from me. I got down on the ground but when they were not moving, they were hard to find. What I did find, however, was this exuviae, the exoskeleton of some small insect that left it behind on a blade of grass. It’s about 5mm long and appears to be from some sort of grasshopper or cricket. The word exuviae is Latin and means ‘things stripped from a body.’
Skipper on Coreopsis
I sat on the patio for a while this afternoon, just enjoying being in the sun. It was actually a little hot for my taste, but still nice for all of that. Also, the light is better for macro photography in the sun, when you want as much depth of field and as fast a shutter speed as possible. I was watching the insects around the potted flowers on the patio and got a few pictures of this skipper (family Hesperiidae) on a coreopsis (a.k.a. tickseed) flower. The insects aren’t around it the huge numbers we’ll have in a few weeks, particularly when the mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) starts to bloom, but they are certainly here and I really enjoy them.
Speyeria cybele cybele (Great Spangled Fritillary)
I drove down to Lake Needwood on the way home today and stopped to take a few pictures. I followed a pair of fritillaries for a while and got a few half decent pictures. I also went after a great blue heron but wasn’t able to get anything worth while there. This is a great spangled fritillary and apparently there are at least 7 subspecies (and depending on who you ask, more than that). I naively assumed they were distinguished by variations in the patterns on their wings but apparently they are identified by distribution. Who knew? This was identified by the good people of BugGuide.net as subspecies S. c. cybele. Note: the red in the background is my car. I tried to get pictures without that but for this one, which turned out the best of the butterfly, it was unavoidable. Oh, well.
Scudderia Nymph
I went out to take some pictures of flowers this afternoon and that’s what I did at first. Well, first I got a few pictures of a rabbit (an eastern cottontail, Sylvilagus floridanus). Then I took a few flower pictures but I noticed this little fellow on a coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). It is the nymph of a Scudderia, a genus of eight species in our area comprising the bush katydids. This is just a small portion of the larger group of all katydids, of which there are nearly 250 species in 49 genera in eastern North America. Anyway, I think this is a cute little guy and I took quite a few pictures. Enjoy.
Lady Beetle Larva
It was a beautiful, if somewhat hot afternoon today and I went out into the woods next to my building. As I walked through the underbrush under the sycamore, tulip poplar, redbud, walnut, and black cherry trees, I noticed this little creature on a leaf. This is the larva of a lady beetle. The family Coccinellidae, the lady beetles, has about 6,000 species in 360 genera worldwide and nearly 500 in eastern North America. I have no idea to which of those this larva belongs and I’m not even going to try to figure it out. The adults are generally easier to narrow down but to me, anyway, the larva are just too much alike. I found a key to the larva of North American lady beetles but it starts out as follows. Tell me how helpful this is to you:
Mandible with digitiform teeth, retinaculum absent; terga with scoli, sometimes with parascoli; frontoclypeal suture complete; antenna long, 3 or more times as long as wide, of nearly uniform diameter.
Blow Fly on Monarda
I got a few insect photos today, including a few of large milkweed bugs (Oncopeltus fasciatus) on milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), an eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) on buddleia flowers, an eastern bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) on a coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), and some sort of longlegged fly (family Dolichopodidae). Finally, I got some of this blow fly (family Calliphoridae) on scarlet beebalm (Monarda didyma). It’s not my favorite insect. In fact, I’d have to rank it in the bottom half rather than the top. I don’t mind wasps and bees in general but flies and particular what I consider to be the ‘annoying flies’ are in the negative side of the scale, along with mosquitoes and horse and deer flies. But their metallic green bodies are pretty cool, in spite of that.
Melanoplus Species
It was a hot but beautiful day and I went out into the lot next to my office this afternoon. I saw and photographed a young white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), an eastern tailed-blue (Cupido comyntas), an eastern bumble bee (Bombus impatiens), and an eastern carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica). As I sat next to a dried up drainage pond I watched grasshoppers moving around. I was able to get close enough to this one to get a pretty good photograph. This is one of over 260 Melanoplus species, which are spur-throated grasshoppers, subfamily Melanoplinae of the short-horned grasshoppers, family Acrididae. After I came back to my parking lot, I walked down to the pond and saw a pair of belted kingfishers (Megaceryle alcyon) and got a pictures of one that’s good enough to confirm the sighting but not much better than that.
Bee on Asclepias
I haven’t had a chance to look up this bee and I’m not sure this picture is good enough for a positive identification, in any case. There are a lot of little bees that look somewhat like this. This is the best of the pictures I got and it is still not very sharp. It’s a pretty little bee and I’m happy with the picture overall, though. I love the bright orange of the butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa). It generally makes a nice contrast to the dark colors of bees. I didn’t take a lot of pictures today, though, so there were not a lot to choose from.