invertebrates
-
Two of Our Smallest Butterflies
Eastern Tailed-Blue (Cupido comyntas). Nice to see the pale blue here, for it usually perches like this:This is a male. Females are browner. I must say, my field guide suggests a much darker blue, but the harsh sunlight here is bleaching everything out. The tiny trailing “tails” can be seen emerging just below the lower…
-
Maryland Monument Dasher
Two hundred and forty years ago today, the British and their Hessian swine-mercenaries walloped the still-loose conglomeration that was the Continental Army in Brooklyn. There’s a memorial in Prospect Park to the Maryland 400, troops who held the Old Stone House (the existing structure in J. J. Byrne Park is a recreation) down in the…
-
Megachile on Asclepias
Leaf-cutter bee on Butterfly Weed. You can’t tell this when they’re in the air, or, frankly, very easily when they’re still, but bees have four wings (flies have two). In this photo, however, you can just see the smaller hindwing underneath the forewing on the right side here.
-
Blue Dasher, White Tail
You have to get pretty close to see the white face on one of NYC’s most common dragonflies, the Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis). This is a male; as he gets older, his blue abdomen will get more powdery or chalkier looking. Such pruinescence, as it’s called, is caused by wax exuded from the animals’ cuticle.…
-
Clearwings
Another critter hard to pin down. This is a Snowberry Clearwing Moth (Hemaris diffinis), named after one of its host plants and, more obviously, those see-through parts of the wings. This was moving quickly between honeysuckle blossoms, another of its caterpillar hosts, and proving hard to capture in the lens. Note that it mimics a…
-
Skippers
In my listing of NYC butterflies, I noted that the skippers are hard to identify. These little butterflies in the Hesperiidae family are mostly small, orangish to tawny brown, and have a tendency to look like jet planes when perched.This male Sachem (Atalopedes campestris)–identification tentative–assumes the position: hindwings and forewings are separately opened at different…
-
Brooklyn Long-horns
This black bee was a real brawler, tackling each flower like a linebacker, rolling up and over the flower parts until it was upside-down. Note the long opera-glove-like sleeves of pollen on the hind legs. These legs have more hair than the other two sets, and these pollen packs are rather larger than you see…
-
More Beetlemania
This tiny beetle is Sehirus cinctus, the White-margined Burrowing Beetle. 4-6.5mm long. There were several on the very hairy leaves of what looks like Stachys something or other. Adult females of this species care for their young, which is fairly unusual in the insect world. Plenty of insects provision their young, but most aren’t around…
-
Tiger Bee Fly
Xenox tiginus is a large fly with a distinctive black and clear wing patterning. At least in our eastern region, where there is just one of these Xenox genus flies; there are a few more out west. These lay their eggs at the entrances of Carpenter Bee nests so that their larvae can parasitize the bee’s larvae.…
Backyard and Beyond 