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:
The word for today is “Snarge”
As I’ve mentioned before, butterflies give me trouble, because they are large, flighty, and will not sit still. People who get really nice pictures of butterflies generally do it with a combination of persistence, excellent equipment, skill, and a bit of luck[1]. I’m not so good in the equipment and skill categories, and only occasionally have the time to really go in for the persistence, so for butterflies I mainly have to depend on the “luck” part. Which means taking advantage of “snarge”[2] when I get the chance.
This one was a piece of snarge that got caught under our windshield wiper, way back in May of 2007[3]. It actually didn’t get mangled all that badly, considering[4]. One of the hindwings had the “tail” broken off, but while the other hindwing was cocked up at an angle, it was otherwise intact:
Our friend Seri was chainsawing some logs in our driveway yesterday[1], and she turned up these two beetles under the bark of a basswood log[2]. They were each about an inch long, and were initially stunned by the cold, although they got over it quickly enough.
Here’s another beetle with soft wing covers, that Sam caught in the house back on May 28, 2008. To make up for the nebulous identification of last week’s beetle (“some sort of soldier beetle”), this time I can be much more specific: it’s a Scarlet Malachite[1] Beetle, Malachius aeneus. Bug Guide actually has a list of characteristic features for this beetle, let’s see how it shapes up:
1. Black and red (black areas have greenish sheen in good light); elytra red with basal triangular black strip along inner margin, tapering to a point about two-thirds distance from base – Check