Yesterday was the first time in a long time that I was actually completely rained out of doing a bug walk. There was a brief window of opportunity between thunderstorms that I missed, and that was it. I think we probably got about 3 inches of rain in the last week. It will be interesting to see now if July acts like July usually does, and we end up with a few more weeks of rainlessness.
So, sunny, warm, perfect bug hunting weather...
Backyard Bug of the Day:
I am pretty sure this is a sawfly, which is actually a kind of stingless wasp.
The milkweed patch was still wildly popular with bumblebees and other insects:
Like this honey bee. I don't see very many of those.
Two different species of skippers; the larger one is a silver spot skipper.
This wasp has badly damaged or deformed wings on its right side. It had a lot of trouble flying, but it could fly.
Plume moth
Some kind of flower beetle. Beetles have been rather underrepresented among the milkweed lately.
There were plenty of other bugs elsewhere in the backyard:
Beetle
Robber fly
Praying mantis nymph
Weevil
Radcliffe's dagger moth caterpillar. I had a hard time finding this in the book, because looking at it I assumed it was a datana of some kind, but I could not find it in that section of the book. Then I found it elsewhere, in a different family altogether, and was interested to read that even experts sometimes confuse it for a datana. I am no expert, but I was pleased to at least have found it.
Sweat bee on black-eyed Susan
Caterpillar
Lace bug nymphs:
These are various instars, including the little one in the upper left corner half out of the picture.
Some kind of beetle larva:
I found these on multiple leaves of a dogwood tree.
Earwig
No comments:
Post a Comment