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25 February 2013
Monday macrobug: Hercules
Eastern Hercules Beetle, Dynastes tityus. Dessicated sample, collected at the 7-11 on the corner of route 55 and route 522 north of Front Royal, Virginia. Collected by one of my wife’s students (she’s a science teacher). I like the shadow of the horns in this one: Monday macrobug is officially on winter hiatus. We’ll resume when the weather warms up and the creepy-crawlies come scuttling back out.
31 January 2013
Industrious iridescent blue wasps
A friend of the family sent me these photos from coastal Ecuador, where these fast-working wasps rapidly constructed a nest. Photo #1 is from Tuesday morning, and photo #2 is on the afternoon of the same day!
21 January 2013
Monday macrobug: ladybug infestation
October 2012 was a bumper month for macrobugs here at Bentley Farm. But… none more so than the ladybugs: One of the downsides to living way out in the sticks is that we have to deal with a lot of insects. Mostly, I relish this interaction, as the “Monday Macrobug” series attests. But the gnats, the ticks, the black widow spiders – they’re collectively a bit of a bummer. Add …
14 January 2013
Monday macrobug: Orange wasp
Saw this one on the Neoacadian Inner Piedmont field trip before GSA in the fall… I guess it’s something of a break from tradition to show you a bug from any place other than my yard, but this one’s pretty enough to justify the excursion… Yes, that’s the Walker Top Granite that it’s resting on.
7 January 2013
Monday macrobug: Leafhopper from below
This leafhopper, seen through my sliding doors to the deck, is about 6 mm long. Basically, this critter is a miniature cicada!
31 December 2012
Monday macrobug: Katydid
Happy New Year’s Eve! Here’s a katydid seen on my porch back before it got really cold: Can you tell if it’s a male or a female? (Hint: look for the ovipositor!) This one’s out of focus, but I like it anyhow because of the character lurking in the background: Happy New Year!
24 December 2012
Monday macrobug: Fishing spider
Found this fellow in my woodpile: Note the finger tip at lower left for scale. Here’s a close-up. I think it’s a fishing spider:
17 December 2012
Monday macrobug: Lovecraftian larva
This maggot, with his prominent segmentation and his contrasting armor plates, reminded me of something in an H.P. Lovecraft story: Cool. And “ewww.”
13 December 2012
When a batfly is really a deer ked
Monday I posted photos of what I had thought was a batfly, but I was wrong. A skeptical reader forwarded a link to the post to an actual entomologist, and he said “Nope, that’s no batfly.” I was right about it being parasitic, but the host is more likely deer (which we have in abundance in the tall grass on our land) rather than bats. It’s called a “deer ked.” …
10 December 2012
Monday macrobug: Batfly!!
UPDATE: This isn’t really a bat fly. It’s a deer ked. Back in October, I was weed-whacking in the yard, cutting down some 1-meter-tall grass and then picking up bundles of the fallen grass to put on our compost pile. I was out in the yard doing this for about an hour, then I came inside to have dinner with Lily and Baxter. Halfway through dinner, I felt something crawling …