mthew

The two introduced Tenodera species of mantises we have in NYC look very similar. The way to tell them apart is to check the colored spot between their forelimbs. Ah, but there’s the rub, isn’t it? It’s not like they want to be picked up… Orange means Tenodera angustipennis You can just see the yellow…

I’d never seen a Carolinian Elegant/Meromacrus acutus fly before this summer. Now I’ve seen three. My first was the second New York state iNat record, and the first in the city. Now there are six state records, four here in the city–which is the southernmost part of the state. The distribution has been more southernly,…

Cactus? Apantesis genus caterpillar.

In the space of a long minute, two Bald Eagles… … an American Kestrel… …an Osprey… … and a Northern Harrier were spotted overhead at Marine Park Nature Center. Then, there were plenty of Osprey sightings. Hard to say how many individuals, however. A minimum of two, certainly.

And suddenly, Odonata season is almost over. Familiar Bluet/Enallagma civile.  Orange Bluet/Enallagma signatum. Rambur’s Forktail/Ischnura ramburii. Fragile Forktail/Ischnura posita. The usual suspects around d the edge of Sylvan Water. Common Green Darner/Anax junius, one of the last dragonfly species to be seen in the year. (This is a female.) We still have a few weeks…

Every picture shows a different individual. Or, in the case of the first image: three individuals, one of whom is also seen with another Monarch in the second picture. So, there were four on those Mexican Sunflowers.

If you look for it, there’s ample evidence of Organ-pipe Mud-dauber/Trypoxylon politum activity. The female wasps build these long chambered tubes, stuffing them with spider prey for their young. Most are vertical, but there re some horizontal ones, too. They sometimes follow the topography of the terrain, as it were. I am assuming these entire…

Snails and slugs are both gastropod mollusks. The big difference of course is the shell. Snails live inside their shells. Most slugs you’re likely to run into live around their shell. It’s internal. (There are three families of slugs that don’t have shells at all.) This decomposing slug shows off the calcareous, plate-like form, eroded…

One of the “armyworms.” Dogbane Saucrobotys Moth/Saucrobotys futilalis Salt Marsh Moth/Estigmene acrea. Ailanthus Webworm Moth/Atteva aurea Oh no, an early instar of Monarch that didn’t make it. A geometer family caterpillar, I guess, on goldenrod. There are a lot of small difficul-to-ID caterpillars out there. Here’s another one: Happy Fall! ( A day late.)

The US Army Corps of Engineers spent millions on restoration at Marine Park Nature Center, but without maintenance, the usual bane, it’s largely gone back to phragmites and mugwort. Still, there are some scraps of habitat. This was actually most unusual: the first iNaturalist observations of Myzinum maculatum.