23rd January 2010, 05:00 am
Sam caught this one in the yard on July 30. She kept it in a box with some grass to eat for about a day, but ultimately decided that it would be better off if she let it go.
The distinguishing features on it are the black patch on the shoulders just above the front legs; the nearly clear forewings with irregular dark splotches on them; the dark bands running diagonally across the thighs on the hind legs; and the white lines on the top edges of the wings that meet about halfway down the back.
Continue reading ‘Clear-Winged Grasshopper’ »
5th December 2009, 05:00 am
And here we have yet another huge sphinx moth that was drawn to our porch light on June 22.
This is most likely a Waved Sphinx, Ceratomia undulosa, so named because of the wavy pattern across the back of the wings. This particular one also has a mark on its shoulders that I think looks quite a lot like a face [1].
Continue reading ‘Waved Sphinx’ »
28th November 2009, 05:00 am
Here’s another sphinx moth for you. S_ caught this one in the end of June, about a week after last week’s Modest Sphinx. It was also found hanging out near a porch light. It’s not quite as big as the Modest Sphinx, but it’s still quite a bruiser with a body considerably longer than the width of my finger.
Continue reading ‘Blinded Sphinx’ »
21st November 2009, 05:00 am
On June 22, we turned on the porch light and waited for sundown to see what would be drawn to the light. We didn’t get anything until about 11:00[1], but then I heard something going “Whump! Whump! Whump!” on the window. I thought it was something like a crazed bat at first, it was pretty big. But then, once I netted it, this is what we found:
Continue reading ‘Modest Sphinx’ »
14th November 2009, 08:09 pm
There are several different kinds of small orange-and-black butterflies around here in the summer. They mostly look about the same from a distance, and telling them apart requires actually catching them for a close look. A lot of them hang around on lawns, so they are easy enough to catch with a standard butterfly net. Here is one of them that Sam caught back in the middle of June:
Continue reading ‘Northern Crescent (or maybe Pearl Crescent)’ »
7th November 2009, 01:15 pm
This beetle was photographed back in August. I’m not sure whether to classify this as a “found in house” or “found in yard”, because this particular one was hanging out on the doorjam and was most likely trying to get in when it died there. Most summers, we get significant eruptions of them, although this year they were not as common as they have been in the past.
Aside from the color, they are generally similar to the Clover weevils that are also pretty common around here, with the blunt, short snouts and the armored wing covers that wrap quite a way around the abdomen.
Continue reading ‘Green Immigrant Leaf Weevil’ »
17th October 2009, 11:19 am
We had a serious snowfall last week which really knocked out the active insects, so I guess it’s time to look at some of the insects from earlier this summer. This moth is one that came to our porch light in June[1]. There were several others just like it, so they are obviously pretty common locally.
They are pretty large moths, and in daylight they are practically comatose, so it was easy to use my thumb to spread the forewing so we could see a hindwing:
Continue reading ‘Tiger moth – Grammia’ »
10th October 2009, 05:03 am
On Wednesday, we were all out for a walk and I happened to mention that even though the Woolly Bear caterpillar was very common, and October is prime woolly bear season, I somehow hadn’t gotten a picture of one yet, and I’d really ought to do something about it. So, on Thursday, Sam went out and caught one, and S_ took a series of pictures[1]:
I’d say that this is probably the single most widely known caterpillar in North America, because they are (a) distinctive, (b) common, (c) widespread, (d) pretty big, and (e) often found crawling across roads and sidewalks in fall, just in time to appear in school playgrounds where as many kids as possible are going to see them.
Continue reading ‘Banded Woolly Bear’ »
11th September 2009, 08:10 pm
Sam caught this grasshopper in the yard, close to the house. She then brought it inside where she kept picking it up, letting it jump out of her hands, and then laughing uproariously as it flew partway across the room. Then, after it was tired enough that it didn’t bother jumping anymore, she built a “train” out of MegaBlocks, and put the grasshopper onto the first block as the engineer:
It turned out that the MegaBlock was actually a fairly good place for it to sit for photographs. It was a pretty good sized grasshopper, a bit over an inch long.
Continue reading ‘Carolina Grasshopper’ »
29th August 2009, 05:00 am
S_ caught this one in the yard on August 10, and put it into one of the little bug-capture cages that Sam got from her grandparents (they bought them at the local dollar store for practically nothing)>
Continue reading ‘Scaly Bee Fly’ »