I found this mostly black fly with red legs on our dining-room window on June 6, 2013. Here it is on my fingertip, for scale:
It looks like one of the “March Flies” in the genus Bibio.
For our 500th posting[1], here is an old “friend”: a Deer Tick that Sandy found on our dog[2] on June 6, 2013. Unlike the previous deer ticks I photographed, this one hadn’t attached and drawn blood yet, so we get to see what they look like before they become grotesquely bloated.
I was walking in the woods to the northwest of the house with the girls[1] on June 2, 2013, when we quite literally stumbled across this big anthill. As in, Rosie tripped over it. So, I made a note of the location, and came back later with a camera and a ruler. The mound was a mixture of dirt and bits of dead grass, with live grass growing in it. It stood about six inches tall, and was about a foot wide.
The last time I photographed a larder beetle (Dermestes lardarius) was way back in September of 2007, and it’s time to get up some better-quality pictures, I think. So, here’s one that we found inside the light fixture in Rosie’s room.
On May 25, 2013, Rosie introduced me to her “pet fly”, and said I could take pictures if I wanted.
It appears to be a Blow Fly, one of the “bluebottle” flies in the family Calliphoridae.
Here’s an attractive little true bug that I found crawling on the outside wall of the garage on May 19, 2013
Its jet-black body with white trim running around the edges and down the legs is quite elegant, don’t you think?
In 2013, it took until May 15 for the pond in the woods out back to thaw enough to go netting for aquatic insects. One kind that is easy to find early in the season, is these caddisfly larvae. These three were in a single scoop of the net. The bottom of that pond must be absolutely crawling with them.
So here we are, back in Michigan. On May 17, 2013 we decided to have another look at the contents of the little pond back in the woods. So, we were poking around on the shore, and Sandy spotted an odd orange object in the weeds. Which we promptly netted, and found to be – A Leech! A big one!
Tasmania – Fossil Bluff, and Heading Home Again
And then, it was time to go home. The airport in Wynyard turns out to be just a few miles from another interesting beach, so we left a bit early so we could visit Fossil Bluff. This is a rocky beach, with a big cliff exposed to the waves.
Of course, in addition to taking pictures of various invertebrates, I photographed a lot of other things, of which I only have room for a few here. One thing that is particularly notable, is how much better trees grow in Tasmania than here in northern Michigan. For example: this is one of the pines my Dad planted around 1984, and it is just a bit over 30 years old:
For comparison, here’s a selfie of me with one of the pines in the plantation behind our house here in Michigan. It is also about 30 years old:
