insects
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Darning (?)
Common Green Darner dragonflies (Anax junius). This is a migratory species, one of the first seen in the spring and one of the last seen in the fall as they move up and down North America. Male is grasping the female as she oviposits, laying her eggs in the lake in Woodlawn Cemetery. Not all…
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Biodiversity Day
Well, the picture of the aphid on the street oak tree leaf that feeds the ladybug was too blurry to use, but you get my drift… . We certainly merit an extra post today for biodiversity. This is the husk of the larval stage of the Winter Firefly (Pyractomena borealis). As firefly maven Sara Lewis…
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The Mother of Her Country
In the garden at the Geo. Washington Birthplace Monument in Virginia, I was delighted to discover this queen Southern Yellowjacket (Vespula squamose).Here she shows how she gets that pollen on the top of her thorax.The workers of this species are more traditionally yellow and black, so this big orange queen must really stand out among…
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And the Damsels
Still in Virginia: Female Fragile Forktail (Ischnura posita) depositing eggs.Furtive Forktail (Ischnura prognata) male, a first for me. Such a challenge to photograph these wee critters!And then to ID them! Immediately above and below, a female Familiar Bluet ((Enallagama civile)). (My best guess: iNaturalist and bug guide.net haven’t come through.) The females of this species…
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Enter The Dragons
A trip a few states south results in a preview of the shape of Odonata to come. Emerging adult dragonflies in a small pond. There were about a dozen. Eastern Pondhawks, I think. Once they wiggle out of the husks of their larval forms, they need to harden off, develop their color, stiffen their wings.…
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Bombus griseocollis
One of the few flying insects seen at Morris Arboretum recently. The Brown-belted Bumble Bee. Probably a female, who has overwintered and is getting ready to start a new colony.The second most common Bombus species in the mid-Atlantic but scarcer further north. Note that the animal is using two of its legs to scrape across…
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Spring Flies In
On Thursday, I saw two Phoebes in widely spaced parts of Green-Wood Cemetery. Clouds of insects were visible, too, so we know what these fly-catchers were hunting. The next day, when the temperature got close to 70, reports of Pine Warblers, usually the first warbler species of the year, came in from the cemetery as…
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Pupa Knows Best
Revisiting this pupa of what I think is an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail in better light and because I find it fascinating. If you look closely, you can see breathing holes on the segments. And the support filament that secures the lower end (or right third in the horizontal view) of the structure to the rock.…
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Twiggy
I saw this and the shape and size instantly put me in mind of a pupa. Then I had doubts. It is so incredibly twig-like! Yet the concentric rings, the firm binding at the top to the stone, and the secondary binding on the side, just a thin, flexible thread, were all there to convince…
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Winterized
Look up, look down, look all around. This surely must be the mantra of the naturalist. I was looking at an American Kestrel way in a big willow oak; it had been flying from tree to tree and antenna, too, on the border of Green-Wood. But now the lighting and distance were not conducive to…
Backyard and Beyond 