So, on April 22, 2015, I got an email from one of my students asking if she could have a couple of days extension on her final class assignment, because (and I quote):
“I discovered today that my apartment has bed bugs and so I have to move all in one night to my friends house. I swear to you that this is the truth and I am willing to provide any evidence. I just need to move right now because the bites are getting really bad.”
Now, I did not actually doubt her for even for a second[1], but this looked like a golden opportunity to get pictures of an insect that I not only hadn’t yet seen, but that I really, really hope we never find in our own house. So, I told her she could have the time extension, told her about this blog, and asked if she could maybe catch one for me to photograph and post. And the next morning, she appeared at my office with a ziploc bag with about a half-dozen bedbugs in it.
Porch light, September 7, 2014. I only got dorsal shots of this moth, because it was lying so flat I couldn’t see anything from the side. The pose screams, “Geometrid Moth!”[1], so that’s the family I looked to for a match.
This little black-and-white moth came to our porch light on September 7, 2014.
It stayed still as long as I photographed it from the back, but as soon as I started taking pictures from the side, the flash scared it and it started running. This is one of the few pictures that didn’t just show its rear wings as it rapidly ran out of the frame of the picture.
I found these two small dragonflies (only about an inch and a half long, about half the length of my little finger) beside the road[1] on August 28, 2014. One was dying (it would only twitch occasionally), and one was already dead.
The dying one was still fairly bright orange-red, while the dead one was becoming distinctly gray.
This little brown jumping spider was on our windowsill on August 16, 2014.
He was only about 3 mm long, so not very big at all. I can tell he’s a male from the big, boxing-glove-like pedipalps on either side of his face.
Rosie found this beetle larva crawling on the outside wall near our front door on August 24, 2014. It was fairly large, at about 2 cm long (close to 3/4 of an inch). It was pretty fast for a larva, and it would regularly run like crazy, then freeze, which is the sort of thing that makes photographing them kind of annoying.
And here’s the last moth from the August 10, 2014 porch-lighting.
I had a lot of trouble identifying this one. The banding on the wings angles in the opposite direction from most moths. The banding makes a sort of “V” pointing backwards, where most moths either have the banding run straight across, or make a “V” pointing forwards. Ultimately I had to post it on BugGuide, where I was first pointed to the Forage Looper, Caenurgina erechtea. But, on closer examination, I think it could just as easily be the closely-related Clover Looper, Caenurgina crassiuscula.
This pyralid moth from the porch light on August 10, 2014 wasn’t as tiny as some, but was still pretty small at only 11 mm long[1].
I eventually found a good match in the Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America. It looks like the Belted Leafroller, Sciota vetustella.
This little moth from around the porch light on August 10, 2014 didn’t really look that much like a moth at first – it was only 10 mm long, kind of irregular, and looked more like a bit of chaff that had stuck to the wall.
Sandy has been planting milkweed near the house for the Monarch butterflies for some years now. On August 10, 2014, she noticed that some of the plants had an aphid infestation.
This was a bit unusual, as the species of aphid that is most commonly found on milkweed is bright yellow-orange, while these are dark colored to the point where they are nearly black (but with white legs). The things that look like lighter-colored, more spindly insects around them are shed aphid skins.