On June 25, 2011, I was unlocking my bike to ride home from work when I spotted a large, dark lady beetle on a grass stem. So I caught it in one of the little jars that I carry with me, brought it home, and put it on the table until I had a chance to get pictures. At which point, Rosie picked up the jar and wanted to get a closer look, so she opened it. And the beetle promptly flew away up to the ceiling. Well, I couldn’t reach it there, so I figured that it would tend to hang around the windows and would eventually come down where I could reach it again. Which sort of happened, but not the way I expected:
The spider was a cobweb-weaver that was hanging around the lower corner of the window, and was obviously a very good hunter. I’ll get back to her at a later date.
Gee, thanks, Etienne Trouvelot. Thanks a lot.
Sandy found a couple of these caterpillars eating her new rosebushes on July 13, 2011. She was greatly displeased with them – the bush they were on was only about a foot tall, and just two of the caterpillars were coming close to completely stripping the plant.
In last week’s posting, what I thought was a yellowjacket turned out to be something else, but I didn’t realize this until after writing a bunch of stuff that was specific to yellowjackets. So, for this week’s post, I specifically went out looking for some actual specimens of the real thing. The goldenrod that grows alongside the road is very attractive to all manner of bees and wasps in the fall, so on August 22, 2011 I went to check them out. And I did find this black and yellow one –
Sam and I found this wasp hauling her prey up the side of our house, probably to a nest up somewhere under the eaves. The wasp was pretty game about the whole business. I think the caterpillar was too big for her to fly with, and so she had to haul it back home on foot[1]. Although, I suppose it’s possible that she was just climbing the wall to gain enough altitude so that she could get airborne.
We caught a number of these soft-winged beetles in broad daylight on July 12, 2011. They were just about a centimeter long, and pretty easy to catch and photograph. Which implies that they aren’t accustomed to fleeing from predators. Which further implies that they are not good to eat.
I found this one lying dazed at the side of the road on July 13, 2011, about halfway up the hill to home. It caught my eye partly because of its size, but mostly because of the big orange patch on its abdomen
It squeaks!
Here’s a beetle Sam found on the side of the house on June 27, 2011. She thought it was a bird dropping at first until it moved, and now she calls it a “Poo beetle”.
From the elongated snout, it is clearly one of the snout beetles in the family Curculionidae, and I think it is a “Poplar and Willow Borer”, Cryptorhynchus lapathi.
Sam found this one walking across our sidewalk in front of the house on May 21, 2011. It was almost 1 cm long, slow-moving, heavily-armored, and would tuck itself into a neat little ball when disturbed.
I thought at first it was some kind of scarab beetle, but scarab beetles have complex antennae that split into multiple “fingers” at the tips, while this one had simple, “beaded” antennae.
So, I was bicycling home on May 21, 2011 when I suddenly caught a swarm of these little guys in the face. I tagged this as “Found in Teeth” because I had to spit out two or three of them afterwards, but those weren’t in any shape to photograph. I caught this one by going back to the swarm (which quickly reformed itself) and waving a small jar around until I snagged one.
Sandy found this large, active beetle larva under a rock in the garden on June 4, 2011. It was pretty big at about 3 cm long, but skinny and not enormous. Sam found two more a few days later, so they are certainly very common. It ran and ran and ran, so to have half a chance of getting a picture I put it in a little ceramic dish [1], where it could run around but couldn’t climb the sides.
