We all went fishing at the Otter Lake Dam on July 1, 2012. And while fishing in the fast-flowing water just below the dam, we spotted this big, leggy spider walking across the surface.
How big was it? Well, here he is next to my forefinger. Note: I do not have small hands. His body was about 15 mm long (a bit over half an inch), and his legspan was about 8 cm (a hair over 3 inches).
And here’s the last moth photographed around our porch light on June 30, 2012.
This next photo shows the head slightly less shaded (not that it shows that much more detail, though).
Happy Mother’s Day![1] And as an appropriate topic for the day, here’s a shining example of arthropod motherhood, that we found on June 19, 2012 – a mother wolf spider carrying her newly-hatched babies on her back!
We can see she’s a wolf spider from her eyes, as she spins around to stare down the camera and defend her children, if necessary.
This next June 30, 2012 moth was another easy one to find in the Peterson Guide to Moths, once I started with the fact that it has an elongated snout.
This is Hypena palparia, which apparently goes by several common names – the Peterson guide calls it the “Mottled Snout”, while BugGuide gives the names “Mottled Bomolocha” and “Variegated Snout-Moth”. And speaking of its snout, here’s a side view.
Sandy found this tiny insect crawling on the counter, near our fruit basket (apples, bananas, and such) on February 13, 2013. It was only a few millimeters long, and it was hard to see details with the naked eye, but the camera did better.
Here are three more moths that came to the light on June 30, 2012. I think that they are all slightly different color morphs of the same species, they all have similar wavy lines on pale-brown-tending-towards-white wings, with black dots in the center of each wing. The first one is medium brown with fairly distinct lines on the wings:
While we almost always get moths when we leave a light on overnight, the kinds of moths changes pretty quickly with the seasons. On June 30, 2012, we started getting these pretty emerald-green moths:
This is a Wavy-Lined Emerald, Synchlora aerata. The shape of the wavy lines on the emerald-green wings is exactly right, and on top of that this is the most common of the Emeralds this far north.
Sandy spotted this huge, sprawling ichneumon wasp on the inside of our garage window on June 27, 2012. The wingspan was about two inches, and the whole body length (including the abdomen) was about the length of my hand from fingertip to wrist (roughly 6 inches!)
Sometimes specimens just fall into your hands. On June 22, 2012, I came home and Sam presented me with this nearly perfect Canadian Tiger Swallowtail, Papilio canadensis
A European House Spider took up residence in a corner of the ceiling in the girls’ room and made an egg case, which I took pictures of on June 19, 2012
