“This used to be a sand box,” says a guy in his sixties or more after he asks if there are any fish in there. Mulsant’s Water Treader/Mesovelia mulsanti Physa bladder snail. There were a few goldfish, but there were a lot more American Bullfrog/Lithobates catesbeianus tadpoles. And a gigantic adult. The tiny lily pond…

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Whatever this is, it’s all over the place. And I’ve found pretty much all the lady bugs to be had in NYC in it recently. Seven-spotted. Fourteen-spotted. Asian (larva stage). An interesting variation on the Two-spotted. (For a hot naturalist moment, I thought I had an unfamiliar species.) Variegated. Not sure whose larva this is.…

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Summer Fishfly/Chauliodes pectinicornis flailing about. Four wings awkward. Seen in Staatsburg like the rest of the insects below. (Brooklyn has few Megaloptera.) Atymna querci, no common name. There are innumerable craneflies, most impossible to identify from photos, but this Tipula longiventris is quite distinctive, not least with its large size, 3.5cm long. A mayfly. Turns…

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Female. First representative of Enallagma geminatum I’ve seen in Brooklyn. (And the only one only for Kings Co. on iNat.) Hanging out at the crest of the hill southwest of Sylvan Water in Green-Wood. Look at every bird, I always say, you never know what you’ll end up seeing, and now I must expand this…

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Yellow-legged Mud-dauber Wasp/Sceliphron caementarium working on a second mud tube structure next to an already completed one. Once this tube is done, she will stuff it with paralyzed spiders and lay an egg in there. Note that the mud ball she’s collected somewhere nearby is larger than her head. Sometimes they clump more mud around…

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Spinola’s Mason Wasp/Ancistrocerus spinolae Walden’s Potter Wasp/Ancistrocerus waldenii drinking from the pool covering. Bramble Mason Wasp/Ancistrocerus adiabatus exploring a not-deep-enough recessed screw hole. Parancistrocerus genus Ammophila Therion circumflexum (?) Dolichomitus irritator, maybe. All the above seen in Staatsburg, NY. This just in: my first sighting of Sceliphron curvatum, the Asian Mud-dauber, was on Sunday in…

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We certainly were spoiled having American Kestrels up close and personal all those years when a pair nested on the corner and perched in a tree right across the street. Now the nearest nest I know about is a long-shot for the camera. On Monday, two males and two females were seen around the nest.…

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Phanogomphus exilis–if that’s what this is; there are a lot of clubtails.

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Sulphur-winged Grasshoppers/Arphia sulphure. A little burst of yellow when they fly. Not to mention the sound. Here’s one the carpenter ants are scavenging. In addition, there were a few early instars of other grasshoppers hopping about:

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