A Field Guide to the North Side of Old Mill Hill, Atlantic Mine, MI
Archive for the ‘Hemiptera’ Category.
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.
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.
This week we have a bonus bug, courtesy of my daughter
So, while I was finishing off the posting yesterday about the western conifer seed bug, my daughter came charging into the room with something in her hand, announcing “Take picture, Dada! Take picture!”[1] So, I did. This is what she had:
Assassin, or innocent bystander?
Last week, we had an assassin bug. So, what’s this one? At first glance, it doesn’t look all that much different from the assassin bug, other than coloration[1]. It even looks like it has a neck. If we look closer, though, there is a key feature that gives it away: the middle section of the hind legs (the tibia) is flattened and enlarged, kind of like a leaf.
This one is an assassin bug. It’s actually in the same family (Reduviidae) as the Thread-Legged Bug from last week, but it certainly doesn’t look like it:
Specifically, I think it is Reduvius personatus, commonly known as the “Masked Hunter”.
I’ve never seen one of these before, but I think that’s because they’re hard to spot, not because they’re particularly rare:
This is a “thread-legged bug” that I found in the bottom of the wheelbarrow after moving some old lumber. At first, I thought it was a tiny splinter of wood, before I realized that it seemed to be levitating slightly[1]. The legs are long, thin, and practically invisible, hence the name.
What you hear screaming in the trees in the summer
We are a bit too far north for the well-known “periodic cicadas”, the ones that come out in masses every 17 or 13 years to raise a ruckus. The ones that we have are the “dog day” cicadas, that come out every summer when it gets hot to yell in the treetops.
Technically, this one wasn’t on our property, but the ones that were in our yard were at the top of the cedar tree and I couldn’t reach them. This one was found dead on a trail only about a mile from the house[1], though, so I’ll take it. From head to wingtip it is about 2 inches long, which again was way too big to be photographed with the macro lens.
We were picking mulberries back in June, and found these cute little guys, who had just hatched from their egg clutch on the bottom of a mulberry leaf. When we spotted them, they were all in a little cluster next to the eggs, but started to disperse by the time I got them to the camera stand.
We found these two stink bugs on the lilac bush in the front yard. They were very focused on the task, and stayed coupled the whole time they were being handled and photographed.
I tried to get a side view, but they were big enough that it was hard to get them completely in focus with the macro lens.