invertebrates
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Dragonfly Exuviae
Dragonflies seen at Brooklyn Bridge Park these days include the twelve-spotted skimmer, blue dasher, painted skimmer, and variegated meadowhawk. These long exuviae, the shed exoskeleton of dragonfly larvae, belong to one of these, or perhaps another, species. In their larval stage, dragonflies are aquatic, and voracious predators. When ready to make the leap to the…
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Brooklyn Bridge Park
Painted skimmer, Libellula semifascianata. (Oh, come now, much more than just semi fascianata!)A ladybug larva demolishing aphids. Perhaps the seven spotted, Coccinella septempunctata. Twice or more as big as the insects below, and a little more lumbering, hence the best shot of the post! This is an Eastern carpenter bee, Xylocopa virginica, working the swamp…
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The Monarchs Are Here
A male monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus, in the Battery Bosque yesterdy. You can see some examples of monarch caterpillars in my post from last August. (And you can tell this is a male, even this blurry, because of the small spots in the hindwing veins.) The Bosque, named after the trees that tower over it,…
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Back 40 Spiders
Very late spring cleaning in the Back 40 reveals some spiders, as usual. This one had two silky egg cases nearby:
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Insects, spider
Ragweed leaf beetle. The woods at Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary were dripping with caterpillars, and caterpillar droppings, which rained down invisibly but created a little pitter patter on the leaf-litter.At Ipswich, I got my first mosquito bites of the year. This one was taken down back in Haverhill, MA. Note how its harpoon is longer…
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Tiger Swallowtail
One of our biggest butterflies, the eastern tiger swallowtail, Papilio glaucus. Seen all over the East Coast and Midwest; this one was photographed yesterday in Hudson River Park. Note that the upper “swallowtail” is abbreviated, broken or bitten off. This may be a female, because of the extensive blue on the hindwing. Her tongue is…
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Sulphur
A female orange sulphur butterfly, Colias eurytheme, I think, and not a female clouded sulphur, C. philodice, because, although these species are quite similar, this one looks just like the example in Kaufman’s Field Guide to Butterflies of North America. Complicating matters, these two species can hybridize.
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Tick
I found four dog ticks crawling up my legs yesterday. This was a first for me within the bounds of the city. I was at Four Sparrow Marsh on the edge of Brooklyn. (My companion, on the other ankle, found none; maybe because of her wellies or her press pass.) As you can tell from…
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Phylloxera
As a miniscule part of the complex life-system of the planet, I understand that everything comes back to the nature that surrounds me and is me. Most of the invasive species that have crossed the oceans have come from Eurasia. The Americas, long separated from the planet’s largest continent, were sitting ducks for viruses, bacteria,…
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Fort Tilden Stars
At the western-most parking lot at Fort Tilden, we came across a pile of treasures of suspicious provenance. There were perfectly intact shells of both our big whelk species, moon snails (including the largest I’ve ever seen), and lots of sea stars. I’ve never found a sea star on the beach around here, and usually…
Backyard and Beyond 