In the last two posts, I mentioned that we found southern Florida in December to be surprisingly lacking in insects. But not completely. And here’s something that was actually extremely common — Antlions. Their conical pits in the ground were all over the place. Pretty much every inland sandy patch on Sanibel Island was covered with these antlion pits (photographed on December 18, 2016), some of which were a couple of inches across.
So, when we were planning our trip to Florida last year, the girls asked what sort of things they could expect to see that the don’t see at home[1]. I said, “well, for one thing, they have lizards . . .”
“Lizards!” they cried. Then they bounded around the room, crying in glee “Lizards! Lizards! Lizards!”[2]
And now, for a bit of a change of location: in December of 2016, the whole family took a trip down to Sanibel Island, which is a barrier island just of the coast of Florida that is almost entirely composed of seashells. This was not primarily an insect-hunting expedition[1], but I figured that I wouldn’t spurn any that we found[2]. So, on December 17, 2016, we spotted this pretty good-sized stink bug, which was about the diameter of a nickel (I didn’t think to put a nickel in the picture, so you’ll have to take my word for it).
This plant was blooming on the margin of our roadside ditch on July 8, 2016. It had a cluster of long, narrow leaves with a spike of flowers about a foot and a half tall.
The flower spike consisted of green, oblong flowers fairly closely-packed together. I forgot to sniff them, so I don’t know if they had an odor.
I found this great big insect lying dead beside the road on July 7, 2016. It was right around 2 inches long, or about the length of my thumb.
We’ve seen one of these before, in a set of pictures that our friend Bob took in 2014. This is a Fishfly, most likely the Summer Fishfly, Chauliodes pectinicornis.
These plants stand about a foot and a half tall, and we find them pretty commonly throughout our yard and in the woods. They bloom around midsummer, like this one that I photographed on July 1, 2016.
I first noticed these plants downstate when I was a kid. I thought at the time that they were some sort of wild hemp related to marijhuana, based on the palmate leaves with long leaflets, although I later found out that the leaf shape is actually wrong (the tips are too broad and rounded, for one thing).
This got into the house on July 31, 2016. I don’t remember now whether one of the girls caught it and brought it in, or if it just appeared inside (maybe due to a caterpillar that I’d brought in to rear and then forgotten about?)
Right around the end of June, and running through most of July, we start seeing little orange flowers in the yard, like these that I photographed on July 2, 2016.
The flowers grow in clusters at the end of a fairly long stalk (about 6 to 12 inches tall), and don’t all bloom at once. The stems are a bit furry.
A few years ago, Sandy planted Swamp Milkweed at a few strategic places around the house, primarily as food for Monarch Butterfly caterpillars, and the plants are mostly doing well. On September 25, 2016, Sam and Rosie told me that there were aphids all over some of them, and so I came out to have a look. And yes, the aphid infestation was pretty heavy:
We have a number of these medium-sized trees growing alongside of our road, and I photographed them on July 8, 2016.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen one much more than about 25 feet tall, or with a trunk much more than maybe six inches in diameter.