We regularly find these wasps building nests like this one in a bunch of places, generally anywhere that they are protected from the rain and wind. They are usually in my father-in-law’s hunting blind out back, they really like the old carriage-house, they are fond of the little enclosure that I keep beekeeping supplies in, and they really, really like the inside of the metal cover over the filling port on our propane tank[1].
This wasn’t actually found on our property, and properly speaking they don’t even live in the wild in Michigan, but if we keep bringing in houseplants we will probably get an infestation of them sooner or later. Our friend Michelle found it, along with a bunch of others, in a greenhouse at the University, and gave it to us so I could get some pictures.
I found this wasp crawling on our window at about the same time as we found last weeks Blue Mud Dauber (mid-July of 2007[1]). This is the related Black and Yellow Mud Dauber, Sceliphron caementarium.
When I was a kid, I used to find these blobs of mud stuck on our farm buildings, mostly under the eaves or in other spots where they would be protected from the rain. When I broke them open from time to time, they were either filled with paralyzed spiders, or had a wasp pupa inside. I’d often watch them being repaired and stocked by wasps that looked like this:
This is another old picture that I took in 2007, and the wasp was large enough that I tried getting the pictures without the macro lens, which is why the pictures came out a bit blurry.
These were pretty numerous in early June of 2007, both inside and outside the house.
I’m pretty sure that this is a conifer sawfly, in the family Diprionidae. Sawflies are in the same order as bees, wasps, and ants (Hymenoptera), and have a lot of wasp-like characteristics, except that they don’t have the narrow waist and don’t have stingers.
We found this little guy on the side of the house on May 14, 2008,[1] when it was still getting pretty cold at night. He’s an example of the ones that S_ refers to as “mufflemouths”[2], because of their big, muff-like antennae.
This looks to be a midge in the family Chironomidae. He’s certainly a male, because it is the males that have the huge, fluffy antennae. They evidently use them to track the scent of the females, who have much more “normal” antennae.
At least, I think it’s a winter crane fly.
Here’s another one from early May of 2007. It was hanging out on our window, and I was able to get a couple of shots in-place before it flew off.
It resembles a mosquito, but it is a bit bigger (the body was about a centimeter long). It’s most likely something in the family Trichoceridae, which are crane flies that are a bit smaller than the huge, gangly things that normally spring to mind when you think of crane flies.
We found the first of these little flies on May 23 of 2007[1], on our window:
A second one turned up a few days later, on June 2.
I was down in the basement last August trying to decide which of the many spiders down there to catch and photograph, when this little lady caught my eye. Where most of them were dark brown to black, she was practically white!
Sometimes called “Sweet Clover Weevils”, although they don’t seem to be all that picky about which clover they eat.
Every spring, and on through the first part of the summer, we get these little brown beetles all over the place. They tend to hang out on the sides of buildings, and of course get into the house a lot. When touched, they tuck in their legs and antennae and play dead, obviously depending on their very stiff wing covers and heavy exoskeleton to protect them.
The one above was photographed at the end of May of 2008, this next one was from almost a year earlier, July of 2007:
