Month: August 2020

Sights and Sounds

When I first saw this paper wasp, I thought it was old, because it was pale colored and the antennae are curled. But then I did a little research and learned that male Polistes are generally lighter colored and they have curly antennae! There aren’t as many males, generally, and they only show up later in the season so they can fulfill their one purpose, to create more wasps. They don’t sting, and are such cartoon characters, doesn’t it make you feel a little more friendly toward wasps?

This week, there was another new insect order added to the Yard List: Trichoptera (literally “hair wing” … scientific names are tragically unimaginative and Greek). This caddisfly refused my efforts to get it to pause on a leaf, so this is the best shot I have of it. I don’t have a great i.d. yet, but I think it’s a net-spinning caddisfly, family Hydropsychidae (= water soul). If so, it lives its larval life in flowing streams (which are much closer to here than standing water) and makes a webby case to catch prey while in that state. Adults live on land, and females lay eggs in or near the water.

Now for my obsession of the week: singing tree crickets! I’d always thought the “crickets” that chirped at night were the more squatty brown and black insects, but no! I’ve gone out the past two nights and been able to spot a snowy tree cricket in the blackberries in the alley behind our house as it was calling. They raise their oval wings upward and rub them together.

Here’s the same male Oecanthus fultoni with its wings down. Having seen them, now I smile as I’m falling asleep, because I know who’s out there trilling. By the way, I found a couple of fantastic articles about Oregon tree crickets. They were written in the 1920s by B.B. Fulton. It didn’t occur to me until just now that the snowy tree cricket species, which he calls niveus in his writing, was named after him!

Tree crickets were also the subject of my blog for the Mount Pisgah website this week. There are more pictures there from the arboretum.

Cheers!

Wings and Things

Rove beetles have tiny little elytra that only cover about a third of their abdomen. Yet they fly. I happened to catch this Xantholinini genus beetle while it was tucking away its wings (I didn’t know this until I looked at the images, the insect is pretty small). Isn’t it an amazing feat of folding? Can you believe that thin material supports flight? And what muscle-like movement allows this origami to happen? Turns out, other people have asked these questions. There’s an interesting paper on their wing folding here. Apparently the right and left sides have different crease patterns, so they can overlap and simultaneously fold both wings. Wow.

What you see here on this dandelion are thrips. These are in a new insect order for my yard count: Thysanoptera, which means “fringe wing.” Thrips is both singular and plural, so if there had been only one in this picture, it would still be a thrips. They are odd insects, in that they have mandibles only on the left side of their mouth, the females can lay unfertilized eggs that grow into only males or females (depending on the species), and their wings develop outside their pupa. This page from an English entomology group has nice information. Most of the other search results you’ll find are about how to get rid of thrips. Which is not nice.

It’s been a fairly slow week, so I was happy to see this little female wasp on the plaster inside. (That’s not a stinger, it’s an egg-layer or ovipositor). This is a Torymidae family wasp, which Wikipedia says are often parasitoids on gall-forming insects. We have a few oak trees in front with lots of galls on them, but this wasp would definitely be camouflaged on the bark, so I’m glad it came to visit.

I’m at 245 yard insects to date. Which means I’ve found more insect species in 2020 than anyone who is keeping a bird list for their yard. I’m still behind a dozen or so people, though, who have found up to 284 birds in their yard over many years, which is quite a feat!

Leaving the Yard

I’ve been spending some time insect-watching at a location other than my yard in the past few weeks (!). The plant bug above (Tupiocoris californicus) is on a sticky tarweed plant at Mt. Pisgah Arboretum. As of this month, I’m writing a bi-weekly blog post for them about insects in the park.

These mirid bugs are able to amble around on this gummy plant without getting stuck. Other small insects, like aphids, are trapped, providing food for the plant bugs. You can see the pointy proboscis in the photo above, it can pierce the stalk of the plant to get food, or spear an aphid dinner. At least a couple groups of scientists think the plant and the bug have developed a mutually beneficial relationship.

Meanwhile, at home, I continue to find new species, like the mylitta crescent above. I was sure it was another skipper (see the split-proboscis butterfly from last week), but it turned out to be a different orange butterfly of about the same size. It has been around in the same quadrant of the yard for a couple of days now. I’ll share another picture below that shows the wings a little better, though at a side angle because to be on top of it, I would have blocked the sun.

Phyciodes mylitta breed on thistles, and while we don’t have any here, there are surely plenty in the neighborhood.

This crazy little fly is less than nondescript in life … just a dark speck on concrete. There have been several of them sitting horizontally on surfaces in the sun recently. This shot is taken looking down on a vertical wall. The color and unusual stance only came through when I downloaded the pictures. It turns out this is a woodpecker fly in the genus Medetera. As you can imagine, Googling “woodpecker fly” brings up all kinds of bird pictures, but no insects. “Medetera” works better, although there still isn’t a ton of information. BugGuide.net says the larvae eat the larvae of bark beetles.

The last thing I’ll share this week is this Montana six-plume moth. It was on the front door glass, so it appeared very black and white. Against a different background, it looks more brown and tan. Still, the feathery wings are impressive this way. They can be seen year-round, and when the wings are closed, they look like an average small house moth.

Have a great week!

Mouthing Off

This western skipper butterfly confused me when I downloaded the picture… do they usually have a split proboscis? I looked it up and learned this crazy thing: All butterflies have two-part proboscises, and they “zip” them together as they emerge from their chrysalis. Sometimes, the two parts don’t join, and then they have a harder time sucking up nectar. Some sources say butterflies will starve to death with split proboscises, but more, and recent articles, say they can live, and that both sides of the organ can get food via sucking and capillary draw.

Speaking of proboscises, here’s a yellow one! This (what I think is a) mouse moth was on our stovetop. Not a great place for any insect, but it did seem to think there were things worth tasting. It moved around for quite a while, probing all the way.

And while it isn’t a proboscis, you can see the mouthparts of this ichneumon wasp. Wasps have mandibles (think “cutting instruments”) for making nests and provisioning food, but adults aren’t carnivores. They also have mouthparts for sucking, to get their own nutrition. Because only females make nests and feed the brood, it’s been shown that males have smaller chewing mouthparts. Since the wasp above doesn’t have an ovipositor, that means it’s a male. Maybe a female’s sucking mouthparts would look smaller?

Here’s another ichneumon I saw in the yard this week. This one’s a female. That black line off the top of the picture is the ovipositor, and it was using its antennae, held together like this, as a probing tool. I may be completely making up this story, but I thought it was looking for eligible gaps in the bark in which to lay its eggs.

This may be evidence for my theory. The wasp stopped for a while to, it looked like, poke its ovipositor into the bark. I’ll keep an eye on that tree next year for evidence of emerging wasps!

FYI: I’m at 234 yard insects as of this week.

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