Capture

I have a new computer that's taking a little getting used to. The pros are obvious: My m and n keys are no longer worn out, the case isn't cracked at the seams, and boy, is it zippy fast.

Really the only con is that many things work differently. As an official old person, I think I'm obliged to resist change. Or whine about it a little, at least.

Photoshop Elements will do so much more than my old mini-featured generic program. I couldn't resist the urge to make my bug photo look like a cartoon, as you see. But the features aren't intuitively obvious, and they're not much like the old Photoshop 3 I used to know.

You people with wide-screen computers were so sweet not to tell me how off-kilter I've been. I like my new screen, but some things (mainly my blog header) appear centered incorrectly. I haven't figured out how to fix that yet.

The screen is also very bright. So I may have trouble getting the photo levels right for a while.

I have a spiffy new Bluetooth mouse. No cords, it's great! But it has a bit of a tendency to drift to the left all on its own when I use my usual sofa-pillow-as-mousepad.

I will figure it all out eventually.

Strange orange moth

My husband photographed this gigantic orange moth on a recent business trip. Thankfully, something this odd is usually pretty easy to identify on the internet. It didn't take long to find out that this is a Regal Moth, also known as Royal Walnut Moth, Citheronia regalis.



It would be odd enough if it were the size of a normal moth. But according to Wikipedia, this is the biggest moth north of Mexico. (That's weight, not wing span, though that's not shabby either.) In this lighter wide-angle view, you can compare him to the door hardware to see how large he is.

This was on the door of the hotel, so maybe he's a watch-moth. I know several people who would hesitate to open that door!

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Updated:
This one was found in Virginia, but they are at home anywhere in the east, I believe.

Submitted to the Friday Ark.

BestBug

What strange little insects, that looked like miniature beetles with longish snouts. Turns out, that's more or less the definition of weevils.

These are in the subfamily Baridinae, probably Odontocorynus scutellumalbum. What a mouthful of a name! It may change though, because according to Wiki, "the higher classification of weevils is in a state of flux". I imagine it's an exciting time for entomologists.

Several were feeding on Rudbeckia. Not being familiar with weevils yet, I'd temporarily named the photo files "besbug" as shorthand for black-eyed-susan-bug. It started me thinking, what if people were as interested in insects as in electronics. When showing off your creepy-crawlies, you could tell your friends that you got a really good deal at BestBug.



Anyway, I found another one on a daisy.

I didn't notice until processing the photos back home, that there was something sinister lurking below.



Eek! I think that little weevil is in for a big surprise.

I wish I'd realized the whole picture when I was there. I wonder who came out alive. Who won Best Bug? In hopes of the preservation of local wildflowers, I think I'd have to root for the spider.

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Update:
In case you've got a dark computer screen, let me lighten that last picture up for you.



Eek!

More spiny caterpillars

I had a difficult time identifying this caterpillar. It looked a lot like an American Painted Lady (Vanessa virginiensis), but not exactly the same. I couldn't find anything else that it resembled any more, though.



It's been a big year, as far as spiny/bristly caterpillars go. On the driveway today I spotted a Yellow Bear. Also a tiny, tiny shrew or vole. And me without my camera.

Green and black cicada

Newly emerged Linne's Cicada, Tibicen linnei. Looking pretty spiffy, especially considering the dirt nap.

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I think that this is Linne's Cicada, but as you can see here, the Tibicen cicadas are very similar.

Go here to hear some of the songs.

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Submitted to the Friday Ark.

Spiny caterpillars

I've been seeing a lot of spiny caterpillars this spring.

It seems simplistic, but googling what something looks like, in very basic terms -- in this case, "black spiny caterpillar" -- works amazingly well, most of the time.



It brings up the site What's this North American Caterpillar, which spiffily shows my caterpillar on the front page.

And how exciting that this scary goth individual will turn into a Mourning Cloak butterfly!

This bristly guy below was a little more difficult.



But I think he becomes one of my favorites, a Question Mark butterfly.

I wasn't tempted in the least to touch either one of them!

Visit Wayne to see his spiny caterpillar siting too.

Bee fly

Major bee-fly, a.k.a. Greater bee-fly, Bombylius major.

Bee flies are what they sound like: flies that resemble bees. This one is the one we see most here, though there are several similar species in the family Bombyliidae.

See photos of several of them at Giff Beaton's site. (You know there are a lot of members in the family when there's a World Catalog of them.)

They hover about like small cute bumblebees, and they don't seem to mind drawing attention to themselves, the way they'll hover in the same position for quite a while. I've also seen them dart back and forth between two positions a foot or so apart -- if it were a bird, you'd say it was a mating dance, though I would assume that flies don't do that.

According to this site, "Its larvae are brood parasites and are found in bees' nests. Adults feed on nectar, using their long proboscises whilst hovering beside a flower." The whilst there should give you a clue that this fly is also found in England.

BugGuide has a species account here with more details, and some nice shots of them hovering.

I haven't found any one article detailing information about this bee-fly, but there are lots of links highlighting certain aspects of their behavior:

Drawing up sand or sawdust to coat eggs (here).

Comparing them, as generalist pollinators, to more species-specific pollinators (here).

Wingbeats in B flat? (here)

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Friday Ark is here.

Hummingbird Clearwing Moth

Hummingbird Clearwing Moth , Hemaris thysbe, nectaring on Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica).

They are sometimes called hawk moths, and are in the same family as those most unwelcome guests, the tomato hornworms.

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Thysbe (Thisbe) in myth: the Greek version of Juliet.

One web source suggests that Hemaris comes from the root haem (blood), but another says it derives from the Greek hemera (day). See here.

A hornworm on your viburnum is probably this species. Leave it! It won't eat much. And it turns into this enchanting creature.

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I wondered whether this moth's wing motion was the same as a hummingbird's. The second photo would seem to suggest it, but I couldn't find confirmation on the internet.

Spider heaven

The only good thing I can think of about the drought is that mosquitoes weren't much of a problem this summer. Bugs were down overall, I think.

One day before we had a frost, there was an explosion of tiny flying things. You may have to click the picture to enlarge it enough to see, but it was clearly spider heaven.

Now that it has frozen and warmed up again, the explosion is of those ladybug look-alikes, Asian ladybird beetles (Harmonia axyridis).

Harmonia! If ever a species needed renaming, it's this one. How about Discordia detestabile. OK you can tell I don't really know Latin, but you get the idea.

Exit strategies

Last year I finally figured out that these were cicada exit holes. (I had mentally accused my husband... Derp.)

This was roughly the same spot where Jasmine discovered a digging armadillo at exactly 3:30 this morning. After the excitement was over, she was extremely messy but very proud of herself. Ick, but cleanup will have to wait til hubby gets home. The last time I tried washing her by myself (after the cow poop incident) it was... disagreeable.

But the extra-fun part was afterwards. We headed back to bed, only to find the bedroom door locked. Or actually, broken. A strict parakeet-protecting closed-door policy made me shut it on the way out.

Force of habit. I was still half asleep. Not my fault it decided to break, anyway. Sadly, the person who closed the door for no apparent reason usually gets the blame in these situations.

Luckily though, hubby excels at middle-of-the-night repairs.

Recent visitors

Red phase American Toad, Bufo americanus, in the garden.


Please stay and eat some bugs.


A nice webpage that includes info on how to differentiate similar species by cranial ridge patterns.


Cool red dragonfly: Carolina Saddlebags, Tramea carolina. Thanks again Giff Beaton.


A turtle I haven't identified yet. But now I see why they call it a turtleneck.


She was in a hurry to get somewhere.


Unwelcome visitor. One of the neighbor's cows, again. Tremendous painintherearus.

Gnome bug zapper

Why do so many people have garden gnomes? Because they allegedly help in the garden at night.

I was a skeptic, until one of ours started attracting and killing the faux lady bugs, a.k.a. Asian lady beetles (Harmonia axyridis).

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Visit the Friday Ark.

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Updated: See the comments, where the shallow depth of my bug knowledge is tragically revealed.

Stings

When I was a kid, we called the wasps that make these nests Dirt Daubers. Or rather, Dirt Dobbers. Outside the south they are apparently known as Mud Daubers. (1, 2)



It took me a minute to realize what seemed so strange about finding one of their nests in the woods. I think it's the first time I'd ever seen one that was not attached to something manmade. We normally see them on buildings, under eaves or elsewhere out of reach of the rain.

Apparently, the Daubers aren't aggressive and don't sting often. Plus, they lay eggs on Black Widow spiders that they stuff into those pipes as food for their offspring. So, Daubers = on my good side.

Paper Wasps = on my bad side. The previous "just shoo them out the door" policy is history. The last one that got that treatment repaid me with a sting on the proximal interphalangeal joint of my index finger.



I looked up the medical name so that I could be specific about how painful it was.

According to Dr. Justin O. Schmidt and his insect Pain Index, the sensation is rated at

3.0: Caustic & burning. Like spilling a beaker of Hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.

Schmidt is an stinging-insect expert -- if you run across an article on African giant stink ants, it's likely to have his name on it somewhere.

But his index is limited to bites and stings from insects. Nobody has done the important cross-indexing with spiders, snakes, platypus, jellyfish, and so on. Because you might just think pepsis wasps or bullet ants were bad, until you came across the Australian jellyfish that can cause Irukandji syndrome.

Behind closed doors

Snout butterfly

It's all anyone ever mentions.

Poor Cyrano of butterflies, with his enormous... panache.



But that eye!

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A very agreeable butterfly:
Easy ID -- the only species with elongated labial palpi (the "snout"). Plus, the two front legs on the male are tiny, while the female's are normal.
Easy to predict mass migration -- long drought + lots of rain = lots of snout butterflies, especially in the southwest.

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Side Notes:

Libytheana bachmanii.

Mass migrations. We drove through one of these in south Texas in 1996.

Photos with wings open.

There is actually a Cyrano Darner.

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More critters at the Friday Ark.

Zorak?

(Click for extra-large version of beady eyes.)

Do you suppose praying mantids have religious disputes?

Is there a pope of European mantids, and if so, have mantids in Islamic countries declared jihad against him?

Chinese mantids - was there a Confucius among them? Are Indian mantids divided into Hindus and Sikhs?

And, are the Carolina mantids likely to be fundamentalists?

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Cool pics of Flower mantids: here, here, here, here, and here.

I just have to throw in the bizarre Wandering Violin mantis.

Rumpelstiltskin's handiwork

Eastern amberwing (Perithemis tenera) male.

Friday Ark.

Stalking the Earth

I bought a birthday card once with a dinosaur on the cover. Inside, instead of "Happy Birthday," it read, "Congratulations on another year of stalking the Earth."

In birthday terms, I've probably been stalking for more years than I have years remaining to stalk. But it's amazing what can still surprise.

I saw a velvet ant this week. I don't think they're particularly rare, but this makes only the third time I've encountered one.



She was in a hurry and wouldn't pose at all. When I looked up the latin name, Dasymutilla occidentalis, I read that they make an odd sqeaking/squealing noise when captured. So now I'll have to try that next time I see one. They're also called cow-killers because of an extremely painful sting, though I haven't found anyone who has first-hand knowledge of it.

During the weekly cat walk, George investigated a humongous fungus. A champion champignon!



I don't remember ever seeing a mushroom this large. Some wild critter had left small scratches on the surface - it must have been curious too.

Hubby found a spider hiding between some rocks in the creek.



Turns out there are fishing spiders! Dolomedes tenebrosus or scriptus. I think this is the latter. The leg span can reach 3 inches (7.6 cm). I like spiders reasonably well, but I think I'd have to put this one out if he came in the house... I've seen enough spy movies to know that a spider that big and hairy would definitely want to crawl all over my face in the middle of the night.

What new thing did you discover this week?

Odd bugs

I started out composing this post by whining about how I couldn't identify these bugs, even with the aid of BugGuide. Then I remembered to search on the plant name too, and voilà! Jagged Ambush bug, Phymata erosa.

These individuals weren't too happy about being observed, and crawled away to the underside of the flower when I tried to get closer.

More pics from BugGuide.net.

Recalled to life

The cicadas (Tibicen sp.?) are emerging. So am I.


Glad to finally be above ground.