Sandy found this caterpillar on August 12, 2014. It was crawling on the raised-bed garden frame that she’d just built in front of the house.
It looks to be fairly typical of the woolly caterpillars of the various tiger moths (Arctiini) aside from the color – most of them are dark, not golden yellow like this one.
Another moth from around the porch light on August 10, 2014. This one was reddish-brown, with a prominent tuft behind the head and two distinct white spots on the wings.
After rummaging through the Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America, I believe that this moth is Putnam’s Looper, Plusia putnami.
Back to the porch light on August 10, 2014, we drew in this white moth overnight. Looking at it, my first thought was, “Oh no, not another one of these plain white ones. I’ll never ID this!”
But then, I used Google to do a site: search of Bugguide.net for “white moth michigan”, and . . . there it was, fourth image. Exact match, right down to the wing vein pattern and the way it drapes its antennae down its back. It’s a Carrot-Seed Moth, Sitochroa palealis
Sam found this click beetle crawling on the sidewalk in front of the house on August 7, 2014. It was about half an inch long, fairly typical for a click beetle.
There are a number of red and black click beetles similar to this one in the genus Ampedus, and Ampedus apicatus in particular looks like a really good match, right down to the vaguely heart-shaped dark patch at the tips of the wing covers.
Sandy spotted this crawling on the house siding around our front door on August 3, 2014. While this specimen looks like an ant, she isn’t. She is a species of “Velvet Ant”, which are actually wingless, solitary wasps.
Sam found this in town on July 27, 2014, when we went to Culver’s for ice cream. She said the long jumping legs were missing when she found it (which was probably why she was even able to catch it).
This is actually a species we’ve seen before, Roesel’s Katydid. The difference is that last time we had the short-winged, flightless form, while this is the long-winged, migratory form. Aside from the long wings, it has the same pattern of yellow marks on its thorax as we saw last time.
Rosie found this moderately colorful true bug out back somewhere on July 22, 2014.
While it looks a bit like a standard stink bug (aside from the reddish-brown cross-like markings on its back), it turns out to actually be a Red Cross Shield Bug, Elasmostethus cruciatus.
Sam found this tiny insect in her room on July 27, 2014. It was so very small (only a few millimeters long, including the wings) that I’m surprised that she spotted it at all.
It looks like one of the Moth Flies, family Psychodidae, and more specifically in the subfamily Psychodinae. These have semi-aquatic, scavenging larvae, and are well known for breeding in and around sink drains (particularly if they are partially clogged).
Sandy and I were out snowshoeing in the woods behind our house on January 3, 2015, when I spotted this little insect slowly pacing across the surface of the snow. For reference, it was only about 25 degrees F (-4 deg. C) at the time, so we were well into freezing conditions. For scale, that’s my fingertip in the upper right corner.
I caught a couple of these with a net out of the pond back in the woods on July 11, 2014. They were clearly nymphs of some type of predatory water bug, and I decided to keep one to see if I could raise it to adulthood.
