The Backyard Arthropod Project

Sam found this one under her crib on May 27. It’s a rather striking gold-colored beetle with intricate tracery on the wing covers.

This is certainly one of the Calligrapha leaf beetles[1]. Based on the dark green pronotum (the plate between the head and the wing covers), it looks like it is related to Calligrapha alni, the Russet Alder Leaf Beetle. I’m not so sure it is that exact species, though. While the pattern on the wing covers is very close, the examples in Bug Guide show more of a rusty coloration, and a bit less gold.

Continue reading ‘Calligrapha Leaf Beetle’ »

This is one of two water striders that I caught on the little stream that runs alongside of our road. They are normally almost impossible to catch, but I spotted a pair that was mating. They were moving pretty slowly, and I was able to corner them up against some rocks and nudge them into my collecting jar. They unfortunately stopped mating by the time I got them home, so I couldn’t get a picture of them both at once.

Continue reading ‘Water Striders’ »

This one smacked me in the back of the neck while I was working in the yard the weekend of May 24, and got tangled up in the hair on my upper back until I grabbed it and pulled it out.

I then noticed there were several others flying about, so they are obviously something really common. It looks exactly like a Red Turpentine Beetle, Dendroctonus valens. This is a pretty likely identification, because (a) they are well-known pests of pine trees, (b) there is a pine plantation just behind our house, and (c) they emerge as adult beetles very early in the spring.

Continue reading ‘Red Turpentine Beetle’ »

Back on March 30, there was a rare sunny, not-quite-freezing day, and we took the opportunity to take a walk down the road. On the shoulder of the road, right next to our yard, we spotted this caterpillar:

Continue reading ‘St. Lawrence Tiger Moth Caterpillar (?)’ »

Water boatmen, like this one, are all over the place. They can fly, so they end up in bodies of water ranging from full-blown lakes, to puddles and birdbaths. This particular one was at the mouth of Cole’s Creek, just down the road from our house.

Continue reading ‘Water Boatman’ »

While cleaning up some stuff in the basement, out of the corner of my eye I spotted something bounding up in the air. And by “bounding”, I mean getting up about two feet off the floor. So I went to investigate, and found this:

Continue reading ‘Camel Cricket’ »

April 4 was pretty warm[1], so we went down to the Pilgrim River just east of Houghton to see if the walking trails beside the river had melted off enough to be passible[2]. While we were there, we noticed that there were small, black insects hanging out on the wooden bridge railings

Continue reading ‘Winter Stoneflies’ »

An accidental capture

So, while we were capturing the Gammarus for last week’s entry, we scooped up some water from the stream into a jar to put them in. In the process, since the stream was so shallow, we got some debris off of the bottom into the jar, too. Then, when we got it back to the house and started looking at what we had, S_ noticed that one of the bits of debris was oddly symmetrical and had a hole in one end[1]. So, we put it into the petri dish along with the amphipods, and waited to see if anything came out. Something did:

Continue reading ‘Caddisfly nymph’ »

In February, I posted a picture of a larva of a carpet beetle. Well, now we have some pictures of an adult[1] that I found climbing up the side of the shower, to round out the set:

Continue reading ‘Carpet Beetle Adult’ »

This is the second Ichneumon wasp (photographed last June), that I mentioned in last week’s posting:

The very long ovipositor (in this case, longer than her body!) is pretty characteristic. While it looks dangerous, it isn’t a stinger and she’s harmless (to us! More on this later . . .) - the ovipositor is used for laying eggs in awkward places.

Continue reading ‘Ichneumon #2’ »