Hymenoptera

One of the metallic sweat bees on the tiny flowers of Rhus aromatica.

Somebody has eaten a chunk of this Quaking Aspen leaf and then tucked itself into the fold of the leaf.

This is a sawfly larvae, NOT a caterpillar. Caterpillars, the larvae of moths and butterflies, have five or fewer prolegs; sawfly larvae have six or more prolegs; admittedly, it can be hard to count them at this scale. Sawflies aren’t flies (Diptera); they’re classed with the wasps, bees, and ants (Hymenoptera).

Nomada bee; these lay their eggs in the nest of other ground-nesting bees.

Common Hover Fly Parasitoid Wasp hunting for hover fly larvae–which look like a combination of caterpillar and slug and which eat aphids–to inject with her eggs.

Central European Bicolored Ant. On iNaturalist you can see how NYC is the epicenter of this species’s introduction to North America. (Nothing yet on Staten Island or further east on Long Island than Queens.) Bugguide calls the introduction “very recent.”

There are innumerable tiny wasp species out there, virtually impossible to identify with photos alone. At 5mm long, this one isn’t as small as many.

(Why yes, this post was supposed to launch at 7 AM today but I forgot to change the PM to AM.)