Here are some more earwigs, because I know they are everybody’s most favorite insect ever . . .
The summer of 2010 was another bumper crop for European Earwigs, which we have seen on these pages before. But, on July 1, Sam and I were turning over rocks and found something a bit different: a white earwig.
Here’s a decent-sized hopping insect that we caught while sweep-netting in the tall grass on July 31, 2010.
It’s sort of a mimic, but this time, instead of mimicking another (more dangerous) insect, it is mimicking a plant part: a thorn.
We have a large boulder in the front yard that the girls and I like to play on (Sandy bought it for me on my birthday a couple of years ago. She got it at the gravel pit in Hancock. It’s about 6 feet in diameter. I’m very fond of it). It is gradually weathering away, and pieces of it flake off from time to time. A pretty large piece flaked off on September 5, 2010. This exposed hundreds of tiny red-orange eggs (each only about a quarter of a millimeter across) that had been laid in the crevice underneath the flake[1]:
We have a small potted lemon tree that S_ put outside for the summer, so that it could actually absorb some real sunlight, have its blossoms pollinated properly, and set some fruit[1]. But, once September rolled around, the risk of frost at night got to be too much, and so on September 8 she picked it up to bring inside. The pot had been sitting on a layer of wood mulch, which left some gaps between it and the ground. Which allowed something to crawl in under it and build this mud nest:
On several occasions over the summer, we went out back with a sweep net to see what types of things we could find in the tall grass. In general, sweeping it back and forth a couple of times through the grass would turn up dozens of small insects, mostly various types of true bugs. We would regularly find bugs with this particular body shape: Elongated body about 5-10 millimeters long, long hind legs, and large-diameter forelegs. Some were black and wingless;
If I remember right, Sam found this in the garden on her parsley patch in June of 2010. It was hiding in a mass of bubbles on the plant stem.
It is definitely a spittlebug, family Cercopidae. They suck plant juices for food, and as nymphs they defend themselves by secreting a mucilaginous liquid from glands near their anus.
Sam found this on May 17, 2010 crawling on some rocks. It was clearly some kind of inchworm, as it had no prolegs in the middle of the body and moved by inching along. It also had a fringe of kind of fleshy protrusions along its belly, which is an odd feature in an inchworm that I hadn’t seen previously.
The millipede posted back in January was photographed some years ago, but this one is more current. Sam found it under a rock in 2010, on March 14, which is, for us, just about the earliest time where you might conceivably be able to find a patch where the snow has melted. In this case, I think the rock in question was on the south side of the house, which is noticeably warmer than anywhere else in the yard.
Here’s another specimen that Sam and Rosie caught for me when we went to Otter Lake on May 23, 2010. This fine, glossy beetle was about a centimeter long.
This is a good match for the Oak Timberworm, Arrhenodes minutus, which has larvae that burrow under the bark of dead oak trees (and also elm, poplar, and beech).
We went down to the Stanton Township North Entry Park (“The Breakers”) on June 21, 2010 and Sam found this very, very green insect in the process of drowning in the waves. We brought it home (we didn’t have a jar, so I carried it in my hand the whole way), and once it dried out, it looked none the worse for the experience.
