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Nine-Spotted Lady Beetles
Do you remember when the Flatbush Gardener released Nine-spotted Lady Beetle larvae in his native meadow garden? Coccinella novemnotata is the New York State insect, but it is almost non-existent now in the state. In fact, the species is hardly to be found anywhere in the east. Cornell’s Lost Ladybug Project has been working to…
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Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright
I’m missing the egg stage, but otherwise here’s the run: The first few instars of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail mimic bird droppings. This one was on the nearly horizontal surface of a magnolia leaf, right out in the open. Finally saw one! The caterpillar is green in youth. Or is that middle age? Old age,…
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Webworm Days
Fall Webworm caterpillars have been everywhere. This one was on a raised bed on the sidewalk next to the local high school last week, with barely a tree in sight. I don’t even remember where this was, back in July. Here’s yet another, along the 5th Avenue Green-Wood fence. Uh-oh! You see, everybody knows the…
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BioBlitz Notes
Birds are hard to capture with phone cameras, the standard way people enter information on iNaturalist. I led two bird groups of Macualay Honors College students on the BioBlitz Saturday. This is the only picture of a bird I put into iNaturalist. We tallied birds seen the old fashioned way, with paper and pencil. Macaulay…
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What Came To Light
Moths spotted during the Macaulay Honors College BioBlitz in Green-Wood cemetery Saturday night: Black-bordered Lemon Moth (Marimatha nigrofimbria). Explicit Arches (Lacinipolia explicata). The Gem, or Gem Moth (Orthonama obstipata). Idia genus. Fall Armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda). White-speck (Mythimna unipuncta). Same individual, showing the effects of different light regimes on the subject. Greater Black-letter Dart? Opinions differ…
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Serious Moonlight
As part of the Macaulay Honors College Bioblitz in Green-Wood this weekend, I got to go inside the cemetery after dark. Under a gravid Moon, Chimney Swifts scoured the air. A trio of ultraviolet moth stations were set up around the Crescent and Dell Waters. After sunset, two Common Nighthawks flew into view amidst the…
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Location (3)
Still at Shawangunk. There’s one of those perma-porta-potties, thick with Drain Flies, and an observation gazebo. Mud-daubers and paper wasps appreciate the dry, sheltered spot. Seemed like everywhere you looked up there were old or current Polistes nests. There are… a number species of paper wasps in the Polistes genus in the northeast; 11 by…
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Location (2)
The Shawangunk Grasslands NWR, that is. This Ulster Co. area is best known for its winter raptor scene, but the grasslands are at their peak in late summer. A distant Red-tail and a closer Cooper’s Hawk were the only raptors in sight. But the invertebrate situation was fine indeed. Yesterday, we had some grasshoppers on…
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Location (1)
Here’s a fine essay on paying attention, listening, noticing, watching, the natural world. A cicada sounds as I type this. Two mornings in a row the only sound around 5 a.m. has been a cricket outside. The boom of bombastic car stereos, the revving of little men’s big engines, and tear and crash of garbage…
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Backyard and Beyond 