good bugs

All is not armies of Japanese beetles at the Nuthatch residence. A densely planted chemical-free yard in suburbia is a haven for all sorts of interesting insects.

This juvenile Greater Angle-wing Katydid (Microcentrum rhombifolium) was on my butterfly bush. This is not a true katydid; the call is the lisping or ticking one.

I thought this was an attractive leaf-footed bug (although not as cool as the one I saw in Panama). I identified it as Leptoglossus clypealis, and it turns out it's a state record -- unofficial since I did not obtain a voucher specimen.  Drats.  Same thing with a grass-carrying wasp I photographed last year, but that species was found by an entomologist in Ann Arbor, so we get to co-write a paper on the range expansion.

 

Our milkweeds have had lots of monarch larvae, which we've been raising in the monarch condo so that we can tag them.

We also had a load of Milkweed Tussock Moth (Euchaetes egle) larvae. They are communal, but generally only feed at night.  In the past, I've tried observing where they hid during the day without much success.  When we moved a new brood into the condo, I noted they spent the day under leaves or up in the corners.  They pupate in the ground or leaf litter, so once they got large, we scooped 'em up and let them go in our milkweed patch.  In husband's hand, they looked like a handful of chopped corduroy.

I found this floating in our pond, and thought it was a horse chestnut.  It was a stag beetle known as "the pinching bug", Lucanus capreolus. After we took pictures, I set it on the bookcase, thinking I'd send it to the University museum.  The next day something grabbed my bare toe...it was the pinching bug, revived somehow and wandering around the floor.  It was escorted outside.

With another six weeks of good weather and the asters yet to bloom, there may be some new things yet to be discovered.

Comments

[Aydin]

Do we/they still need voucher specimens in this age of digital photography?

[Nuthatch]

Yes, sir. And with insects, it's a policy I agree with. For so many of them, a photo is not diagnostic, and having specimens available to study is valuable in a myriad of ways.

[Rurality]

Nice! I really had to laugh about the chopped corduroy. The leaf-footed bugs are all over my veggies this time of year.

[tai haku]

The issue of voucher specimens is a bit of a toughie - its a real problem for us underwater photographers - we keep taking pictures of what turn out to probably be new species of nudibranch (but we only realise this a week later with no chance of finding the same slug).