Silverfish are so rare around Houghton that I had actually come to think that they didn’t live in this area at all. Until Sam came home from school on October 25, 2016 with this specimen in a jar:
It seems that she’d been seeing it in her locker for some days, and had finally caught it when it was trying to devour her science book.
These plants are common in swampy areas around here, they stand about 3 to 4 feet tall and bloom through most of August. I photographed them on August 1, 2016.
The flowers grow in a loose cluster at the top of the stem, and consist of little purple cylinders with threadlike petals.
Rosie caught this weevil for me on September 19, 2016. Its body was about the size of a grain of wheat, and the snout was about as long as its entire body.
These low-growing plants with clusters of irregularly-blooming purple flowers are common in our backyard. I photographed them on July 19, 2016, but they seem to bloom for a pretty extended period that covers most of the summer.
The girls found this caterpillar somewhere in the yard on June 25, 2016. It was such a dark maroon color that it looked almost black, with a yellow stripe down each side and a velvety sheen to its skin.
These plants were growing in the ditch beside our road, and were photographed on July 5, 2016. At the time I took the pictures, I thought they were both the same species, but I’ve since found that they are different (but closely related) plants.
The first one is Curly Dock, Rumex crispus. This is a fairly tall plant, with this specimen standing something over three feet tall.
We found this large, handsome beetle under one of the “snake sheets”[1] on June 26, 2016.
The gold spots on the wing covers are quite pretty.
Sam, Rosie, and I were out walking in the woods on October 9, 2016, when Rosie spotted these two slugs, huddled together in a little slime-filled pit in the ground. She wanted to know what they were doing.
Green Leafhopper with Smoky-Gray Back
Sam and Rosie caught this leafhopper for me on June 25, 2016. Most of the leafhoppers we see are either green, or have some sort of complex coloration. But this one just looked like it had started green and then had its back smoked.
This plant was going to seed alongside our road on July 7, 2016. It was quite tall, and while I don’t have a picture of it here, it exudes a milky latex if a stem is broken.
I just missed the flowers, but I’ve seen them (they are composite-type flowers, with long, thin, yellow ray petals). Once the flowers finish, they close up and drop their petals, and finish ripening while looking like this: