moths
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Webworm Parent
The Ailanthus Webworm Moth (Atteva aurea) is distinctive. For one thing, it was working in daylight and most moths are nocturnal. Also, with its small wings tightly rolled, it doesn’t look like your typical moth; it’s one of the ermine moths. Its nominal host plant, Ailanthus (The Tree that Grows on Roofs), is originally from…
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O brave new world
That has such creatures in’t! These are all new discoveries for me, excepting the last, because there’s one thing the arthropods prove, and that’s ever-new discoveries.The aptly-named named Saddleback caterpillar (Acharia stimulea), about 2cm long. The adult moth is one of the fuzzy indistinguishable brown jobs, but this larval stage form is amazingly unique. The…
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Insects of the Weekend
A mess of these sand wasps (Bembicini) were trying to dig into the little beach along the Hudson by Ossining train station. Sand seemed too loose, though, for their nest chambers.Moth Night at the Greenbelt Nature Center with the Staten Island Museum on Saturday meant more than moths. This harvestman (Opiliones) has little red mites…
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Bagged
On a young Baldcypress in a still-industrial stretch of Plymouth Street: several of these bag worm cocoons. These are the egg cases of a Psychidae family moth. From a distance they look like cones or some other part of the tree itself. Small twigs are glued onto the surprisingly, or, actually, not so surprisingly, tough…
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Ant, Wing
An ant wrestles with a lepidoptera wing. An aerodynamic challenge.
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Hovering Now
At last! A good look at a Snowberry Clearwing moth (Hemaris diffinis). I had originally thought this was the Hummingbird Clearwing (H. thysbe) but the black line through the eyes across the sides of the thorax, and the dark legs, are distinguishing. Both species look a little like hummingbirds, but are even smaller than our smallest birds.…
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British Bugs
A selection of the insects spotted on my Dartmoor walk, most of which I can’t identify, so if you know ’em, holler below in the comments.This one was easy to look up. (And be sure to click on the image to get a closer look at the wings.) There are only two damselfly species with…
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Giant Caterpillar in the Night
Traci spotted this big, burly, bristly 2.5″ caterpillar Saturday night. It was crossing the mowed median between Flatbush Ave. and the bicycle path at Floyd Bennett Field. As we approached, the ‘pillar rose up, its deep black eyes alert to hominid danger. Evidently, if we’d attempted to touch it, it would have rolled into a…
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Wooly
The familiar caterpillar of the Isabella Tiger moth (Pyrrharctia isabella), better known as the Wooly Bear. We usually run into these in the fall, around the time of the first frosts, often crossing the road. (Why did the Wooly Bear cross the road?) But they have several generations a year on the East Coast, and…
Backyard and Beyond 