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.
I’m still calling this one a “June Beetle”, even though Sandy found it in her new raised-bed garden on July 12, 2014[1]. While it looks a lot like the big beetles that come to our porch light in May and June, it was only about half as big (closer to half an inch long than to an inch).
Assassin bug with green legs and red abdomen
On July 16, 2014, Rosie presented me with this rather spindly, delicate-looking true bug. It was about a centimeter long (half an inch).
Unfortunately, she kind of mangled it in the process, with the wings all disarranged and tangled up with the long hind legs. She didn’t kill it, though.
When I opened the hatch into the basement of the old house on July 12, 2014, there were a number of these camel crickets hopping around on the steps. So, since the last time I photographed one of these was way back in 2008 (and my camera has been considerably upgraded since then), I caught two new ones for photographs, a male and a female.
At first, I thought that this was another midge at the porch light on June 29, 2014, but on closer examination it looks like one of the smaller parasitic wasps (it was only about 3-4 mm long).
From what I can see of the wing veins, I think it is a Braconid wasp, not an ichneumon. And, from the substantial, spear-like ovipositor, I think it is pretty safe to say it is a female:
This midge from the porch light on June 29, 2014 is similar to one posted earlier, except that it is a darker shade of green, and its eyes are smaller and not so red.
Miscellaneous Micromoth One-Shots – Early Summer 2014
For every larger moth drawn to our porch light, there are generally close to a dozen little “micromoths” scattered about. A lot of these only give me one shot at a photo, as they fly off as soon as the camera flash goes off. So here are four species that were at the porch light on June 28, 2014. It is probably a safe bet that these same species would have been found a few days later in July, as well. This first one is attractive in a quiet way, with a silvery sheen and yellow trim at the wing edges. Comparing it with the ripples in our house siding, it is around 1 cm long (a bit under half an inch). A. Hendrickson on BugGuide suggested that it is the Cranberry Girdler, Chrysoteuchia topiarius, one of the Crambine Snout Moths.
Something that I’ve mentioned before is the possibility of catching biting flies before they can bite by using a hat with something sticky on it. This idea is based on Dr. R. F. Mizell’s traps, which he originally designed for putting on slow-moving vehicles to “troll” for deer flies. But it works even better if the trap is on a person’s head, since then we are adding some actual bait to the system. Since our yard has big issues with horse flies, deer flies, black flies, mosquitos, biting midges, and the like, I had quite a lot of incentive to actually go ahead and give the whole idea a whirl over the summer. So here it is, complete with the couple of deer flies it caught within the first few minutes of use:
Here’s a very convincing lichen-mimic moth that came to the porch light on July 6, 2014. If it had been on a lichen-covered tree trunk instead of on the concrete around our front door, I doubt that I would have spotted it.
