mthew

Reflected in two different Polished Lady Beetles/Cycloneda munda. (Nice detail on the head and pronotum patterns here, btw, helpful in distinguishing these from the occasional other spot-less ladybugs one comes across)

To make a prairie, says Emily Dickinson, you need one clover and one bee. (Also, to be frank today, some seed mixes.) Link to the ED poem has a parenthetical 1755 in title, which has led to at least one person on Facebook saying the poem was written in 1755, which would be remarkable since…

Two or three species of ants are on this Cheeto.

Scenes around the Old Chapel at Green-Wood. The Red-tailed Hawk and the male American Kestrel are perched at the same spot (on different days).

Twelve-spotted Skimmer female. Two males, one missing half a hindwing. Good chance of seeing these on Sunday on my last Green-Wood Bugging Out Walk of the year. There may still be tickets available…

The colorful little Coelioxys coturnix is a recently introduced Eurasian species. They’re a cuckoo species, cleptoparasitic, laying their eggs in Megachile nests. Which Megachile are attacked this way here–does anybody even know yet? Foraging on Horseweed/Erigeron canadensis. On Sunday the 17th, I’ll be doing another of my Green-Wood Bugging Out Walks for Kids.

Way up in a linden at Sylvan Water in Green-Wood. And on the rocks at Bush Terminal Park.

New York City isn’t very rich in Scolliidae. Above is the first Noble Scoliid Wasp/Scolia nobilitata I’ve seen here, spotted last week in Green-Wood. It’s the tenth iNaturalist observation of the species in the city. We do have a lot of Blue-winged Scoliid Wasps, also known as Two-spotted Scoliid here in the East (Scolia dubia ssp. dubia).…