Month: April 2020

Yard List Count: 77

Well, rats. I came up a few short in my goal for 80 insects by this week. I’d love to get to 100 by next week, so I’ll have to double down.

This first new addition (above) is a moth in the Udea genus. I think it’s a celery leaf tier. An article from Michigan State University says they’re called that because the larvae use silk to bind, or tie, leaves together, where they pupate.

This little flower fly is in the genus toxomerus. It’s a western calligrapher, I believe, since this fantastic article at iNaturalist says there are only two species of toxomerus in western North America, and this one’s color wraps around its abdomen (the other species doesn’t). I love the common name “calligrapher.” It matches the fine, painted quality of the lines on the abdomen. Another cool thing: Coloration can vary quite a bit! People think it depends on the temperature when the flies were pupae. This one’s darker, so it was probably colder when it was in that stage. Fascinating.

Here’s a hoverfly that I thought would be a duplicate, but upon looking more closely at the picture it turns out to be a “thick legged” hoverfly or syritta pipiens. They’re pretty common, and because they eat aphids as larvae and pollinate flowers as adults, they’re well liked.

I saw several of these tiny hoppers in the past week. They’re an early nymph of a grasshopper*, but I don’t know which one. I submitted pictures to BugGuide.net. The light legs and black body are attractive, and that swoosh on its “cheek” isn’t a trick of the light, it’s a neon green marking.

As usual, there were many sightings this week that don’t count on the Yard List because I didn’t get pictures. One particularly poignant one was the melanopygus bumblebee I saw and tried to photograph. It flew up my sleeve (!) and stung me (ouch). I apologized, it was my fault. I’m hoping since the tree it was on is still in bloom that I’ll get a portrait of one in the next few days.

*Exciting update! The hopper has been i.d.’d as a shield katydid! I’ve never seen an adult, but in bugguide.net they look more like crickets than the katydids I’ve seen, so I can believe it… I hope to see one as it gets to the next molt!

Yard List Count: 67

Some days when I go out to look for insects, I see one right away. That was true with this red-shouldered stink bug. It was very cooperative and I was able to get nice pictures from several angles. If you look up their life cycle, you’ll see they are striped and colorful in their earlier stages.

This gray hairstreak was also compliant, and flew to a couple of locations I could get to, stopping for a few portraits each time. I’ve noticed this week that the thought of going on a long walk to look for insects is less appealing than looking for them in my yard. I’ve found so many things I didn’t expect, and now the challenge of increasing the list has taken hold. Plus, I’m rewarded nearly every single outing by seeing something new or surprising, a result of the incredible richness of insect life, even in the suburbs on a small, unremarkable plot of land.

The female megalonotini seed bug (right) seemed to be using the grass stalk as an anchor or a signal for the male. She didn’t leave it, and he would dash away and then return.

I kept seeing these brilliant green bees, but they’d take off so quickly I couldn’t come close to getting a picture. So I caught one in my net for the Oregon Bee Project. It’s in the Osmia genus, but I’m not sure of the species yet. Isn’t it beautiful?

And now a few words about ladybugs. Typically, I’m less interested in butterflies, honeybees and ladybugs because they get plenty of press. However, it’s been illuminating to try to figure out how many coccinella species live in the yard. The best place to look to identify a species is at the thorax, the segment behind the head.

In the upper left is a seven-spot ladybug. They have two dots on the head and two patches of white on either side of the thorax. They also have the distinctive white “bowtie” on the abdomen. In the upper right is a hippodamea convergens, or convergent ladybug. It has two slashes on the thorax and may have zero to 13 spots. In the lower left is a pattern I really like, the white “glasses” on black of the spotless lady beetle or cycloneda. I’ve now described two lady beetles with no spots, and the last panel shows a third. But it’s mating with a female that has three sets of black spots “haloed” in yellow. So there’s proof right there that you can’t count on the spots to spot insects in the same species! Those are coccinella trifasciata subversa, by the way.

My goal for next week is to get to at least 80 species of insects in the yard!

Yard List Count: 50

I never imagined a crane fly could be so gorgeous, but this lovely one was posing in our backyard last Friday when I went out to look for insects. It’s a tiger crane fly, genus nephrotoma.

I was sitting on my deck talking to a friend from college when I saw this amazing longhorn beetle. I took a picture of it on my iPad with my elbow (sorry Susan, it was when you were talking about getting a puppy). It occurred to me later that I could have tried putting the macro lens on the iPad, but I didn’t, so this is the best picture I got. According to folks on iNaturalist, it’s a small cedar borer, atimia confusa. I think it’s pretty rare in Oregon.

This is a bee from the genus nomada. There are tons of these bees zigzagging, nonstop, over the more barren areas of my yard right now. They don’t care about flowers, they’re looking for ground bee nests to parasitize. I can’t believe there are more non-parasitic bees in the yard than nomada, but there have to be or being a cuckoo bee wouldn’t work! You can just see the white spot on this one’s abdomen. I caught a couple for the Oregon Bee Project, and I’ll show them below.

I don’t know yet whether these are different species, or a male and female, or what. The ones like the one on the right look much more white in motion, and you can’t focus on them because they never stop moving (the redder one above is the only kind I’ve found taking a break).

I finally got an okay picture of a bee fly this week! Aren’t they the best thing ever? The most cuddly fluffball of the insect world? I’m not completely satisfied with the photo, though. Its spectacular proboscis, for example, isn’t evident enough, and the wings are blurry (because they hardly ever stop moving). There’s always something to strive for!

I also saw a damselfly this week, and I catalogued several types of ladybug (perhaps I’ll get into that in the next week or two). As always, there were many things I only caught glimpses of but haven’t been able to photograph, among them at least two butterflies and two moths. I feel like I need to step it up if I’m going to find 110 species in a month (which leads the current yard bird standings). I’ll post again next week!

Yard List Count: 40

I had an awesome day on Monday in the yard. This alluring creature was something I spotted as I was heading back inside. It was on some grasses near the front sidewalk. I had no idea what it was, but thanks to iNaturalist, I learned it’s a type of March fly, bibio femoratus. This one’s a female. The male looks significantly different, including having eyes that take up nearly its whole face, like a regular fly. This one made all kinds of flailing motions as its perch swayed in the breeze. It looked like it was conducting an orchestra.

Here’s another insect I found that same day. It’s a cereal beetle, or Oulema melanopus. There are lots of articles about how to “control” them, but I can’t see that it’s doing any damage in the tall grass at the back of my yard. And it’s such a brilliant green!

I think this is a clover weevil. I’ve been hoping to see a weevil and get a profile of its weird snout. Some of them have antennae that project off of the rostrum–a bizarre look. This one’s a broad-nosed variety, so it’s not as preposterous. I’ll keep looking for a more outlandish type.

I saw this leafhopper today. It’s on a clover leaf, so you can kind of imagine the size. Appropriately, I think it’s a clover leafhopper. I’m curious to see how many leafhopper types I encounter this season. There are about 3,000 in North America.

As usual, there were so many things I couldn’t get pictures of (I will photograph a bee fly this year!) and so many things I couldn’t even focus my eyes on before they were gone. At the same time, I never have a bad experience staring at even a nearly barren patch of mismanaged yard. It’s mind boggling how much life happens in modest places. For example, I was watching the bald patch referenced above and it wasn’t until 10 or 15 minutes later that I noticed a tan caterpillar / pupa right in front of me.

I’ll check in again next week. I hope to have over 50 sightings by then!

Backyard Backtrack

This insect is one of my favorite discoveries from the last week. If you notice the copyright date, you’ll see that I saw it last year. I took pictures of a few different, and weird, syrphid flies in our yard that day, so I’d never paid much attention to identifying each of them.

For example, here’s a syrphid fly that mimics a bumblebee (from that same date in May, 2019). Can you see how it looks different from the top picture? Check out the eyes. Fly eyes take up most of the face, often nearly joining in front. Bee eyes are always more oval and to the side of the face. Which means that top image is a bee! Geek alert: It made my day to discover this. I’m nearly sure it’s a Wool Carder Bee, or anthidium. They take things like the fluff from lamb’s ear to build their nests. They were accidentally introduced to the U.S. from Europe in the 50’s or 60’s, and do maim and sometimes kill other bees to defend territory, but I’m nonetheless elated to have seen one in my yard.

Which brings me back to the title of this post. I decided to look back a year (we’ve lived in this house just one previous spring) and see how many insects I’d seen here so far. Again, I’m only “counting” them if it was in the house or yard, not in the nearby alley, and if I have photographic proof. So the katydid above counts, having lost its life in our garage.

It’s been much colder and rainy the past week, so I’ve only added two new insects. I found these young crickets under a piece of wood. I thought I’d have a chance to watch them mature and get more pictures, but they were all gone when I looked a few days later. I also saw young termites under the same block, and they had moved on as well.

Total number of Insect Yard Species to date (now including 2019) is 29. I have some work to do to catch those birders!

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