mthew

Fragile? Well, that’s the common name of Ischnura posita, but they’re tough enough for most NYC habitats. Another Fragile Forktail, recently emerged. Eastern/Ischnura verticalis. Currently upstate, where I spotted an Aurora Damsel/Chromagrion conditum for the first time. More upstaters: Lancet Clubtail/Phanogomphus exilis Azure Bluet/Enallagma aspersum Skinning Bluet/Enallagma geminatum Springtime Darner/Basiaeschna janata A good perch is…

12:49 12:56 1:20 1:27 1:35 1:39 A paralyzed caterpillar will be stuffed in here with one of the wasps’s eggs. I observed for about a dozen more minutes to see if that would happen while I was there, but I didn’t see her again. (Another iNaturalist user has captured this.) More about this introduced species.

(With one eye, anyway.) *** I wrote a feature on Black Mask magazine, the birth of the hardboiled detective, and the Klan they fought in fiction.

Tufted Globetail Sphaerophoria contigua While adults flower flies eat pollen and nectar, their larvae eat aphids. A bit slug like, the larvae. No idea which species this is. This Bare-winged Aphideater Eupeodes perplexus was probably ovipositing right next to dinner… My first sighting of this species, and this was the best overall photo I could get she…

Grackle joins in…

From the Falcon Cam at 55 Water Street in downtown Manhattan, May 11th. A baby Peregrine at about a week’s age. In falconry, an unfledged chick is an eyas. This was May 5th, a day or two after hatching. Back to May 11th. Parent atop chick and…uh… Why yes, that is the head of a…

Seven-spotted Lady Beetle/Coccinella septempunctata, adult and late-stage larva. Widely introduced in the U.S. from Europe, where it’s one of the most common ladybug species, during the second half of the last century. They were introduced here to combat aphids, since it’s always war war war against the bugs. They’re all over North America now. This…

It takes a LOT of caterpillars to make a bird, even one as small as a Common Yellowthroat. Thousands of caterpillars make up a single brood of songbirds, for instance. The sheer number of caterpillars that are out there, or at least supposed to be out there, must be mind-boggling.

A bit late, but here’s my sometimes annual The Catbirds Are Here announcement.

Rufous-backed Cellophane Bees (Colletes thoracicus) mating. This is one of the 4000+ bees species found in North America; and/or one of approximately 450 species found in NYS; and/or one of around 200 species in NYC. This female, by the way, has damaged wings. Just over half of our bees are ground-nesters like the Rufous-backed. About…