I found this large caterpillar on August 31, 2012, crawling across the sidewalk on campus. How large was it? Well, here it is crawling on my thumb:
It’s certainly one of the Sphinx Moths (family Sphingidae), and one of the larger ones at that. It doesn’t have much in the way of distinguishing marks, aside from some stripes on its head,
On August 12, 2012, the whole family was bicycling along the trail that runs beside Portage Lake. As we were coming up on where the trail crosses the Pilgrim River, we ran into swarms of these little black insects:
I found these nearly-black spiders on August 11, 2012, nder the hatch leading to the old basement (although I could have found them there at any time, they always seem to be around in there). The first one is a male.
For something that is supposed to be so common, I certainly took long enough to find one. This is a “snow flea”, tiny little creatures that are known for coming out on top of the snow in the winter. I found it by walking around the house on a sunny day in early Spring (April 14, 2013), and looking closely at the snow for tiny black specks.
In March of 2013, we had been sledding at the Nara Nature Center and Trails at the east end of town, and had happened to spot a couple of small black insects walking slowly over the surface of the snow. These were winter stoneflies, and they had come from the Pilgrim River that flows through the park. Since the last time I photographed them was in 2008 and the pictures weren’t very good, I’d been wanting to rephotograph them. So, I went back to the river on March 30 to collect some more specimens. I collected two different kinds that day, one with wings that just barely covered its abdomen (and could probably fly);
On March 20, 2013, it had been pretty cold, and the snow was still several feet deep. But, the sun was shining, and so insects hibernating in spots that were in direct sunlight got above freezing. And some of them foolishly ventured out of their hidey-holes – to their doom. Like this unfortunate wasp that I found dead in the snow beside a sidewalk at work.
Sandy spotted this tiny moth (about a quarter-inch long) fluttering around the house on March 17, 2013. There aren’t a lot of insects active around here in March, so I had to take pictures.
This is probably an Indian Meal Moth, Plodia interpunctella, which is a pretty safe bet any time you find a small, bicolored moth indoors. Particularly if you find it at a time of year that moths generally aren’t flying.
We were spotting these smallish (less than a quarter-inch long), pale spiders off and on all through the winter of 2013. This particular one was found on an exterior door on a part that was covered by a snowbank on March 2, 2013. It was evidently running around under the snow.
Sandy has developed a fondness for
Some time ago, Sandy mentioned to me that the bait shops sometimes sold something they called “mousies” for ice-fishing bait. After she described them, I suspected that they were actually drone fly maggots, but we wanted to confirm this. So, last January, we decided to get some and see what they really were. None of the local bait shops had any on hand at the time, so we ended up ordering some through the mail, which we received on January 12, 2013. They were mixed in with sawdust, mainly just to keep them from banging around in the tubes.
