August 2019
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Blue-winged Wasps & Flies
Scolia dubia, the Blue-winged Wasp or Blue-winged Scoliid Wasp, with two i’s. “Two eyes” may be a good mnemonic for this one with the two orange marks on their reddish abdomen. When they are gathering nectar, they’re easy to spot. But I’ve seen two bunch of them patrolling what I thought must be a courtship…
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Viceroy vs. Monarch
Limenitis archippus. Danaus plexippus. Viceroy pictured first. The black band across the hindwings is the most obvious field-mark difference. In the Southwest, however, this band can be faint or even missing. The Viceroy is also smaller than the Monarch, which is one of our largest butterfly species. This Viceroy was seen, along with a couple…
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A Miscellany
Indian pipe in fruit. A spider wasp of some kind, found dead on this car. The pearly paint really shows up in detail; I bet its production is toxic as hell. The Pompilidae family of spider wasps has some 5000 species in it… There are a number of fungi that stain wood various colors. Denim…
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Emergence
On Saturday, your correspondent stumbled upon a cicada emerging from its larval husk. The folded forewing has sprung from the exoskeleton, but the hindwing remains inside. The left hindwing, on the other side, was free soon enough, but this right one would remain inside the tight confines of the husk for the entire time. From…
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Catbird
Migrating, breeding, molting, migrating. While Gray Catbirds are resident year around along the Atlantic Coast up into Massachusetts, the vast majority leave NYC and head south come the fall. Before that, they molt into their basic, non-breeding plumage. This one in Prospect Park is in the midst of shaking out the old and growing in…
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The Better To See You With
You may have noticed the long antennae of butterflies, or the sometimes very elaborate and feathery antenna of certain moths. Male moths especially, like this Chickweed Geometer (Haematopis grataria), pick up the scent of female pheromones from great distances. Some beetles also have long antenna; c.f. the “long-horned beetles.” But note how minor a dragonfly’s…
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To Market, To Market
Are we locusts? In telling the “hidden histories of seven natural objects” consumed by humans, Edward Posnett ponders the question in Strange Harvests. True, he puts it in other words, but that’s what it boils down to. Female Common Eider (Somateria mollissima) with ducklings in Iceland, 2010. Edible birds nests, civet coffee, sea silk (byssus),…
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The Mosaic
All this week I’ve been detailing little pieces of the great mosaic of life around here. That’s what this blog has been doing for years now, sure, but this week’s cicada / Cicada-killer wasp / Mockingbird sequence was vary connect-the-dots. Usually I see something and then say something, building up observation after observation, painting a…
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An Ecosystem
On Monday, we started with cicadas. I’ve been trying to get a photo of a Cicada-killer Wasp with her six mitts on a cicada. Thrice now laden-wasps have zipped by me, white underside of their prey visible, but I haven’t been quick enough with the camera. ONce they land, the wasps are quite quick into…
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Still Under the Lilac
Joining the wasps under the lilac were three species of sap-happy butterfly. A couple of Red Admirals quietly suckled. But it was the Polygonia genus butterflies that were really stealing the show. This is a Comma (P. comma). More views of Commas. Here we have both a Comma, lower left, and a Question Mark. These…
Backyard and Beyond 