On August 15, 2013, Joe (one of our graduate students) told me that he had seen a large, green moth downtown. From the description, I suspected that it was a Luna moth. I’ve been wanting to get pictures of a luna moth for this site for a long time. Unfortunately, by the time I got to where he had seen it, it was gone. But fortunately, he had taken a picture of it with his cellphone, which he kindly sent to me. And here it is:
Here are a bunch more moths from around our front porch light on July 4, 2013. Rather than dole them out in individual postings over several weeks, let’s just run through them all at once. I think a lot of these are duplicates of moths that I previously posted from past years of turning on the porch light[1]. Like this one, which is another one-eyed sphinx, possibly a direct descendant of the ones we raised from eggs a while back..
Here’s a very pretty moth that came to our porch light on July 4, 2013 (along with a bunch of others that we will be getting to in later posts). It was quite obliging about being photographed, first perching on the front door weatherstripping for a profile view
Predatory stink bugs reared from eggs – I’m calling them “Webworm destroyers”
On July 7, 2013, Sandy found this clutch of eggs on a branch of a spruce tree in the yard. They were in the process of hatching out tiny stink bugs.
Now, this is hardly the first time we’ve found stink bug eggs, but on previous occasions I found that it is surprisingly difficult to get an ID on the eggs and nymphs. So, this time I decided to try rearing them to adulthood to see what we got.
Here is a horse fly that I caught on July 2, 2013 when it was trying to bite me on the back of the head[1]. I only squashed it a little, so it was still in OK shape for photographing.
On July 2, 2013, we noticed hundreds of these moths fluttering around the clump of Black Locust trees just southeast of our house, so we caught one.
I was out walking the dog on July 7, 2013, and found this mostly-white “true bug” nymph, suborder Heteroptera. I could tell it was a nymph, because it didn’t have its wings grown in yet.
Dragonfly Nymph Shed Skin – More elongated than usual
Here’s a shed skin from a dragonfly nymph that Sandy and Rosie found while they were out fishing. This one has a longer, thinner abdomen than dragonfly nymph molts that we’ve found previously.
Crane Fly with Large, Branched Antennae
I found this good-sized crane fly in the road on July 1, 2013. It had apparently been banged up by a near-miss from a car, so it wasn’t in any shape to flee.
Its most striking feature is its large, branched, antler-like antennae.
Sandy was digging a post-hole in the yard on June 29, 2013, and Sam happened to notice this fine, large beetle falling into the hole.
It is clearly predatory. Those mandibles are obviously best suited for, say, dicing caterpillars and slugs into bite-sized chunks.