We have had a relatively mild August this year. I don’t know if it’s any sort of record or where it stands in comparison to averages but it has definitely been on the cool side. Today, however, it was hot. I went out into the empty lot this afternoon and had trouble because there was standing water in a few places. Once I made my way to one of the drainage ponds I sat in the shade and watched the dragonflies darting around over the shallow water. I happened to see this little rice stink bug (Oebalus pugnax) on a blade of grass and got two photos before he flew away. This species has characteristic spikes at the front corners of their pronotum (sort of at the ‘shoulders’).
Tagged With: Stink Bugs
Oebalus pugnax (Rice Stink Bug)
Cosmopepla lintneriana (Twice-stabbed Stink Bug)
I came across another new bug today (new to me, that is). This is the twice-stabbed stink bug (Cosmopepla lintneriana), so called because of the two red ‘wounds’ the apex of the scutellum. There were at least three of them on the American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) in our back garden, including the two shown here. I had a hard time photographing them because they kept crawling around to the underside of the branches and under the bunches of purple berries. My camera, with a 100mm macro lens and two off camera flashes is a little unwieldy and takes two hands to manage properly. So, I’d use one hand to scare the bugs onto the upper side of the branch and then let go to get the picture. By the time I had found them again through the viewfinder and focused on them, they were half way back to the underside of the branch.