insects
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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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So Many Insects, So Little Time
Agapostemon splendens, obviously. Looking like something out of 1950s science-fiction, the Tersa Sphinx. Shining flower beetles. Spittlebug nest. Sumac leaf wrapped around… something invertebrate. There are leaf-folders and leaf-rollers; perhaps a tortricid moth caterpillar did the work here. There’s another in the background, too. Pondhawks are known to be voracious predators. This female was eating…
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Viceroy vs. Monarch
Limenitis archippus. Danaus plexippus. Viceroy pictured first. The black band across the hindwings is the most obvious field-mark difference. In the Southwest, however, this band can be faint or even missing. The Viceroy is also smaller than the Monarch, which is one of our largest butterfly species. This Viceroy was seen, along with a couple…
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A Miscellany
Indian pipe in fruit. A spider wasp of some kind, found dead on this car. The pearly paint really shows up in detail; I bet its production is toxic as hell. The Pompilidae family of spider wasps has some 5000 species in it… There are a number of fungi that stain wood various colors. Denim…
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Emergence
On Saturday, your correspondent stumbled upon a cicada emerging from its larval husk. The folded forewing has sprung from the exoskeleton, but the hindwing remains inside. The left hindwing, on the other side, was free soon enough, but this right one would remain inside the tight confines of the husk for the entire time. From…
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The Better To See You With
You may have noticed the long antennae of butterflies, or the sometimes very elaborate and feathery antenna of certain moths. Male moths especially, like this Chickweed Geometer (Haematopis grataria), pick up the scent of female pheromones from great distances. Some beetles also have long antenna; c.f. the “long-horned beetles.” But note how minor a dragonfly’s…
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The Mosaic
All this week I’ve been detailing little pieces of the great mosaic of life around here. That’s what this blog has been doing for years now, sure, but this week’s cicada / Cicada-killer wasp / Mockingbird sequence was vary connect-the-dots. Usually I see something and then say something, building up observation after observation, painting a…
Backyard and Beyond 