Top Photo: A female monarch butterfly sips nectar from sunflower. Fall is here. It’s September and fall is all around us. Birds and butterflies are migrating, late season flowers are blooming, seeds are nearly ready to cut loose into the wind, and fruit is on the vine. It’s even a bit cooler outside than it’s been the past few weeks. Here’s a group of photos of what’s going on outside, in case you missed it because of the heat. AnRead more
Posts filed in: Insects
A Pair of Wasps?
Top Photo: A mating pair of insects The pair drifted down to the ground from a nearby shrub. Superficially, they looked like wasps, paper wasps. But I could see right away there was something different about them which wasn’t quite wasp-like. But as it so often happens when you’re trying to capture a fleeting moment on camera, the eye stays on the viewfinder, positive IDs can wait till later. The two were locked into mating and appeared to be tryingRead more
Robber Flies
Top Photo: Giant robber fly Some call them assassin flies. I first learned of them as robber flies. Whatever you call them, they’re predatory flies which perch out in the open, often near areas with heavy insect traffic in order to wait in ambush to snatch other insects out of the air. Visit a flowering group of Tithonia, milkweed, Joe Pye weed, or other rich nectar source with insects busily flying from flower to flower and you might see oneRead more
Needle Ant
Top Photo: Asian needle ant (Brachyponera chinensis). Depending upon who you reference, there are somewhere around 10,000 to 12,000 known species of ant in the world. New species are still being discovered. There’s an estimated total of some 20,000 species including what has yet to be described. The number 1,000 is most often returned in searches for North American species. And it seems 192 species is the most recently calculated number for North Carolina. I have no idea how manyRead more
Lacewing
Top Photo: Green lacewing egg on leatherleaf viburnum. While standing next to a leatherleaf viburnum near the Sandbox in Gateway Park, I took a close look at the leaves of the shrub, you never know what you’ll find, getting up close to vegetation. To my surprise I spotted two green lacewing eggs. There was one egg on two separate leaves several inches apart. I’ve seen lacewing eggs before, but perhaps only once here at the museum. Most descriptions of lacewingsRead more
Eating Elm
Top Photo: Larger elm leaf beetle larva feeding on elm leaves. Back at the end of May, we Rangers discovered many adult, larger elm leaf beetles on the far side of the museum’s outdoor loop between Explore the Wild and Catch the Wind. The beetles were all down low on the vegetation and boulders that line the path in that area. The insects weren’t eating but slowly walking about on the rocks and mostly poison ivy leaves, presumably to findRead more
A Few Butterflies, a Great Egret, and a Lifesaver.
Top Photo: Large milkweed bugs mate between milkweed seed pods. Butterfly sightings are increasing. The common buckeye pictured here is a fairly easy find in grass along road and path edges. The Joe-Pye-weed in Wander Away is in bloom. Its tiny blossoms attract a variety of insects including hairstreak butterflies. Though I wanted to show you a juniper hairstreak on the Joe-Pye-weed as well, the one I was in pursuit of kept itself just out of reach. You’ll have toRead more
Cardinal and Pandora, Tortoise Beetle, and Annual Caterpillar Feast
Top Photo: Male cardinal wrestles with large green caterpillar. The cardinal flopped to the ground no more than a dozen feet from us on the Dinosaur Trail. It had a large green caterpillar under its control. Two months earlier, just feet away from where we now stood, I photographed a male cardinal tearing apart two luna moths. May was a busy month for luna moths, mating and laying eggs. Could this big caterpillar which was now committed to being eatenRead more
Sand Wasps
Top Photo: Sand wasp hovers above concealed burrow. I just assumed the sand wasps I was looking at were Bembix species of wasps. The wasps were buzzing low over sections of the large, empty sandbox area of Gateway Park which has been closed since the start of the Pandemic (I’ve been told the area will re-open in the near future, but until that time it’s home to various insects including the always fun to watch sand wasps). The 20 someRead more