White Admiral, and a beat-up Crocus Geometer
The only really connection between these two insects is that Sam caught both of them on the same day, on June 29, 2015[1]. The first one is a White Admiral, Limentis arthemis. It is in somewhat better shape than the rather beat-up ones I posted earlier. Unfortunately, it was back-lit too much and it is hard to see the coloration on the upper surface of the wings, although the white stripe is clearly visible.
Insects Found While Crossing Lake Michigan
Earlier this year (2015), Sam had said that she wanted to see what it was like to travel on a “real ship”. So when we took a trip downstate on July 23, we went down to Manitowoc, Wisconsin so that we could cross Lake Michigan[1] on the SS Badger[2], the last remaining coal-powered passenger ship operating on the Great Lakes.
These pictures were taken almost exactly a year ago, on August 31, 2014, while I was out playing with my then-new Olympus TG-3 camera. The bee is on a goldenrod flower head.
Ah, but what kind of bee is it? There’s the question.
Black Fly Larvae and Water Striders
We were all up at a small stream near Eagle Harbor on July 19, 2015, where Sam and Rosie were busily rummaging around to see what they could catch in their nets. And we noticed a particular spot in the fairly rapidly-flowing stream where objects on the bottom were coated with these little black insect larvae. They were each only about 3 to 4 mm long.
Sam spotted this little black fellow on my shirt collar on May 27, 2015.
I say “fellow” because, well, just look at those huge pedipalps.
Here’s the situation. I’ve been accumulating pictures of huge, ugly cutworms for some time now. And it’s high time I did something with them. I’ve been putting it off because identifying cutworms to species is kind of off-putting. They are the classic “generally tubular eating machine”, and they aren’t exactly rich in distinguishing features, so going through the guides is an excercise in frustration over some frankly unattactive insects. But, on the other hand, I suspect the average gardener doesn’t much care what the exact species is – they just want the buggers dead, dead, dead. And saying, “It’s a cutworm, you should feed it to the chickens, if you have any”, is likely to be sufficient for most purposes. So, in that spirit, let’s see what we have here.
Let’s start with the most recent one, that I think Rosie found in the garden on May 16, 2015. Unfortunately, I didn’t take the pictures until the next morning, and it had gone prepupal on us. It turned much darker and more greasy-looking than it was when she found it, and was pulling itself into a pupa shape.
Samantha found this cocoon stuck to a tree branch in fall of 2014. It was clearly a giant silkmoth cocoon (probably a Cecropia Moth). At this point we’d had good success in overwintering silkmoth cocoons for a couple of years running, so we put it in an insect cage on the cellar steps like we’d done in previous years.
Tiny scavenging beetle (and a little something extra)
On May 23, 2015, Sandy was working in her garden and found a dead woodlouse that had these tiny little beetles inside. You can see part of the woodlouse in the upper left side of the picture. The beetle we can see was only about 2 millimeters long.
I don’t think these are house flies, but they do appear to be among their many relatives. And they are busily engaged in making more. Sam and Rosie found this couple near our front door on April 12, 2015, and when I came out to get pictures the flies hopped onto the back of my left hand and kept right on with what they were doing.
Sam caught this butterfly on June 29, 2014, and kept it in one of our mesh cages until I could come home to take pictures[1].
It is clearly one of the Greater Fritillaries, genus Speyeria, but it isn’t immediately obvious to me which one.