Mosaic Darner #1: Shadow Darner (Slanting Green Stripes)
I was pushing my bike up the hill on August 31, 2011, when I found this dragonfly alongside the road. The end of August is getting to be late in the season for dragonflies around here, and I thought it was dying. When I picked it up and brought it home, it only moved feebly, with slight vibrations of the wings. So I put it on a sheet of paper for photographs.
And for Leap Day, here’s a little something that leaps!
Sandy found this great big jumping spider in the house on October 13, 2011. It was about a centimeter long, which is unusually large for the local jumping spiders.
Sam found this rather large moth (body about 3 cm long) on the wall of the front porch on August 14, 2011. Its forewings were pretty well camouflaged for resting on bark, making it look kind of nondescript.
This one abruptly appeared in the house on August 14, 2011 (Sandy said she saw it come in through the front door with her, but wasn’t able to catch it). It finally settled down on the kitchen window for photographs.
Sandy found this green caterpillar with brown markings on its back in one of our apple trees on August 10, 2011. Sam called it a “Jaguar Green Caterpillar” and wanted to hold it, so these pictures were taken of the caterpillar in the palm of her hand. It was a little guy, only about 1/2 inch long.
On July 30, 2011, I decided to take down our old, unused satellite dish[1]. So I loosened the mounting bolts on the support bracket, and turned it a bit on the post to loosen it up, and it creaked and vibrated. At which point I heard “bbzzzzZZZZZ” and got popped a couple of times on the arm and back by some very irate wasps that were moving too fast to really see properly. So I made an orderly retreat[2], went in and got my sting-proof shirt[3], and then loosened up the bolts more and finished the job. And then, when I looked inside the LNB[4] support on the satellite dish, this is what I found there:
Sandy found several of these caterpillars eating the leaves of one of our young cherry trees on July 25, 2011.
These are pretty distinctive. The only caterpillar I could find on-line that has that combination of double-orange dots running down the back and the white “racing stripes” is the Interrupted Dagger Moth, Acronicta interrupta. But, that didn’t look quite right, and although BugGuide mentions that the caterpillars of the Quadrate Dagger Moth, Acronicta quadrata, look similar, there weren’t any online pictures of its caterpillar to compare. But, as it turns out, in January I just acquired a copy of the new book Owlet Caterpillars of Eastern North America[1]. And right there on page 298 is a picture of the Square-Eyed (or Quadrate) Dagger. Which is a dead ringer for my specimens.
Last winter, on March 16, 2011, a friend found this click beetle in his supply of wood for his wood-burning stove (Hi, Bill!). Since he thought it was odd to find an active beetle in what is, for us, still the middle of winter, he brought it to me to see if I had any ideas as to what it was:
This is a fly that tried to bite me on the back of the head on July 20, 2011. She was about a centimeter long. Yes, I killed her. I’m not even a little bit sorry.
She’s a pretty typical deer fly, subfamily Chrysopsinae, except for one thing: most deer flies seem to have these crazily-colored iridescent eyes, while this one’s eyes are dark and featureless:
Sandy found this moth indoors, fluttering around the lights in the bathroom, on July 15, 2011. It was a pretty good-sized moth, with a body about 2 cm long (almost an inch).
While it was found in the house, it was our fault that it was inside. You see, Sam and Rosie like to play with Tent Caterpillars when they come out in the spring and summer, keeping them in jars and feeding them leaves. And there are a fair number of them that escape. Most of the escapees probably starve, but at least one of the Eastern Tent Caterpillars (Malacosoma americanum) evidently escaped, found a quiet corner to make a cocoon in, and then successfully pupated inside the house.