insects

Moth trap mania

I recently bought a moth trap from Miller Moth dot com and on the first night I tried it, this beautiful sphinx moth was waiting for me in the morning! The white-lined sphinx has a wingspan of 2½ to 3½ inches, and beats its wings like a hummingbird as it hovers in front of flowers. In fact, look twice if you see a hummingbird at dusk, because it might be a sphinx moth!

I moved the bucket and the moth to our front yard and it stayed there for several hours. These hearty moths migrate north in the spring, although I haven’t been able to find out where they spend the winters… maybe no one knows. To me, they’re as charismatic as Monarch butterflies, and seem like a creature worthy of more study.

I’ve only tried the trap one other night, and that was near the Oregon coast. I found just two moths inside the bucket, but then I started looking around and found about eight more: two on the outside of the bucket and half a dozen on a nearby wall. Above is a Pero moth. The species holds its abdomen up in the air, making for a funny looking profile.

I was able to coax it onto a stick and get a front view as well. The caterpillars are thin, brown twig mimics.

All of the rest of the moth photos were taken in low light and aren’t in the best focus. They were in various shades of off white and brown, but all distinct from each other. I’ve definitely got a lot to learn about the nighttime fliers.

Cheers!

Scorpionfly! And a few words about names

I first saw this little creature in dappled light on a leaf, partially hidden by other huckleberry leaves. I thought it was a caddisfly, but its stance looked wrong.

I looked up the first image and was happily surprised to learn that there’s a West Coast scorpionfly (I’ve seen one on the East Coast). The problem was, I hadn’t gotten great photos. As I was thinking about going back outside, I looked on the window and there was another scorpionfly! The wings form a delicate, long heart.

Because it stayed on the glass for a while, I was able to take a picture of it from the inside, and here you can see the appendage that is the reason for its common name. Okay, buckle up because it’s crazy fact time: All of the scorpionflies I saw that day (and I saw three or four more) were males. Female Brachypanorpa oregonensis have stunted wings and can’t fly! Because of that, the species can’t migrate very far very fast, so it can become threatened if its habitat is destroyed. All the more reason to celebrate the local population.

Scorpionfly is a descriptive enough name, but common names for insects are remarkably dull and simple. Not to mention confusing. Flies have an entire order to themselves: Diptera. But there are oodles of other orders that include the word “fly,” but are not flies. Then there’s the fact that many insects are named after other creatures. If I ever find a new genus or species, I’d like to come up with a common name that doesn’t borrow from something else. The beetle above could be Looby or Minglet. Instead, it’s a genus of Soldier Beetle.

I saw a few snakeflies the other day as well. They are amazingly cool creatures, but with (IMO) a lackluster name. This is not a fly and really, there’s not a ton of snakiness here except for the extended neck. How about calling this type of insect a Fantifab or Winkress? Really, entomologists could take some lessons from Charles Dickens or J.K. Rowling about coming up with better names.

Cheers!

Eastern Easter eggs

I was in North Carolina this week and had the chance to see some insects that don’t cross the Mississippi River (and some that do). Above is a Locust Leaf Miner beetle. This flat, colorful insect spends its youth inside the layers of the leaves of locust trees! Although the trees may look browned and unhealthy in a year when there are many beetles, the same trees are not usually affected for years in a row, and the locusts recover.

The twice-stabbed stink bug is a cute little critter, and there were many of them on mint plants. According to BugGuide, adult females guard their eggs, which is an unusual behavior for insects. While these bugs are residents of Oregon as well, I’ve never seen one here.

This robust sawfly was moving slowly over some grass. It’s a pine sawfly, or Diprion similis. Apparently, it’s an interloper from Europe. The males have big, feathery antennae, so this is a female. The angle of the shot, and the interference of the grass, make this one look like a droid from a Star Wars film. Females lay eggs in slits cut in pine needles (with their built-in bodily saws!) in May and June. Too many sawfly larvae can be a problem for pines, killing branches or trees.

Happy May!

Alder and Elder

When I first saw this insect, it was on a leaf above my head, and I held my phone in a position that I thought might take a picture, and pressed the button. Seeing that it was either a very interesting bee, or something else, I moved closer and was able to get some great profile pictures. To my delight, it turned out to be a furry, club-antennae’d sawfly!

This is a Trichiosoma (=hairy body) triangulum genus sawfly. I’m guessing that the larvae grow up in the stem or roots of alder trees, because closely related sawflies are associated with birch, a similar tree.

I’m going to make two more guesses with little evidence. 1. This is a female. Comments on BugGuide say the males are thinner and females more robust. 2. The species name (triangulum) refers either to the triangle of simple eyes that you can barely see here between the two eyes, or the fact that when it’s at rest, the wings form a triangle.

This snazzy beetle is an Elderberry Longhorn. It happened to be resting in an appropriate location, on Elderberry. I love the way the red edging on its elytra looks scalloped. In the sun, the entire abdomen shines gold, as the tail end of the beetle appears above. Fittingly, the scientific name is Desmocerus aureipennis, or “gold wing.”

There are a few different sub-species of the Elderberry Longhorn. I don’t think this one has different morphs for males and females, but most or all of the others do. And, apparently the Valley Elderberry Longhorn, native to California, is threatened.

Happy Earth Day, 2024!

Unlikely colors

It’s been a fun week. I’ve seen about five insects that are new to me, and several of them have been in colors that aren’t typical for insects. Above is a Western Fruit Beetle or Syneta Albida. I saw several on currants, hanging out on and under the leaves. This one had silver elytra with a black centerline, and silver is a color I’ve hardly ever seen on insects. A little ways down the trail, I caught another one in flight, and it was nearly all white, see below (and yes, it looks like I need lotion on my knuckles).

White is also an uncommon color for insects. The larvae of these leaf beetles enjoy feeding on tree roots, and the adults like the leaves of fruit trees. The only reference to an infestation of them that was problematic for fruit production was from 1925. Of course, it may be that various insecticides or other measures are used in orchards these days.

This crane fly had a neon-green abdomen, a color I’ve never seen before on an insect. I have a request in to BugGuide for identification. The only green crane flies I’ve found online live in the eastern U.S. and the heads and thoraxes are also green. I wonder what this one would look like under a black light?!

I’ll end with another silver / gray beetle. This one is a soft-winged flower beetle in the genus Listrus. According to one source, the beetles in this sub-family (Dasytinae) are important pollinators of food crops, plants on which animals forage, and other flowering plants. The dense hairs on the beetle collect pollen, which they deliver from one plant to another as they fly around. I saw many of these beetles on white Baby Blue Eyes flowers.

Enjoy spring!

New for Spring

I had a couple of great days outside with my camera this week, and I saw at least five species that were new to me. I’ll share three today.

Above is a longhorn beetle living up to its name: Its antennae (“horns”) are longer than its body. I think this is Hybodera tuberculata, which is a west coast wood-boring beetle. It’s the larvae that eat wood and, in this case, according to one source, they enjoy maple trees.

I saw a couple of these beetles and they made me think about the phrase “coming out of the woodwork.” I’d wondered whether there would be more beetles emerging this spring because we had a significant winter storm that took down a lot of trees. Does tree loss speed up the metamorphosis of insects that have larval stages under tree bark? And, back when people would have used those downed trees to build structures or furniture nearby, would they see beetles and other insects emerging … coming out of the woodwork?

I found two of these delicate, yellow insects near a creek, on the underside of a leaf. They didn’t like my camera and kept ducking away when I came close. This is a stonefly and I think it’s in the Chloroperlidae family. According to BugGuide, the nymphs of these yellow and green stoneflies live in the water and the adults stay in vegetation near the stream.

Last, here’s a Festive Click Beetle. That’s actually its common name. I’ll write more about it in this week’s blog post for Mount Pisgah Arboretum. Many click beetles are solid brown or black, but this one has red marks on its thorax and interrupted yellow racing stripes on its abdomen.

I hope you’re able to get outside and pay attention to nature. It’s an inspiring time of year!

Great Grape

It’s definitely feeling spring-like these days. There were many more flowers blooming yesterday (including trillium, camas, and shooting star), and I saw three interesting insects on Oregon grape.

Above is an Andrena genus bee with impressive pollen pants. And yes, entomologists really call them that, when bees pack pollen onto the hairs on their back legs. The bees in this genus are also called “mining” bees, because the solitary females make nests in the ground. They’re among the earliest bees to emerge in the spring.

I’ve featured honeysuckle sawflies before, but this was the first one I’ve seen this year, and I think they’re fantastic. Abia americana are the only Abia species of honeysuckle sawfly found in the western U.S. This one was intently feeding on the pollen of the Oregon grape. I love the clubbed antennae, and the coppery abdomen. I hadn’t noticed the yellow lower legs before, but they blend in quite well with the flower.

I wish I had a better photo for this last Oregon grape visitor. At first, I thought it was a piece of forest debris, then I thought it was a tiny moth, which is a decent guess, even at this magnification. But it’s a fly in the Psychodidae family. These “moth flies” are also known as drain flies, and you may have seen them in bathrooms or showers. But there are many more species (and genera) that live in the wild, including this one, which has a nice pattern on its fluffy wings. It moved across the leaf strangely, with its wings hunched up over its head.

I actually saw several (two or three) of these flies on the same clump of Oregon grape. And although I checked a dozen more clumps on my way back to the parking lot, I didn’t see any more moth flies. Maybe it was because the area where they were was more shaded and damp, which Psychodidae prefer, but for whatever reason, that particular location suited them. It’s astounding, and interesting, how micro a micro-habitat can be sometimes.

Enjoy the emerging spring life!

Hello yellow!

You know the Robert Frost poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay“? I sometimes think that the first line (“Nature’s first green is gold”) has yet another meaning, because so many of nature’s first blooms are yellow. Yesterday, I saw two interesting insects on yellow flowers and another insect with yellow legs. (I actually saw a nice-looking black soldier beetle on a daffodil, too, but those photos weren’t sharp enough to publish).

Above are several pairs of rove beetles on a skunk cabbage flower. According to the Oregon Historical Society, skunk cabbage roots are valuable food and medicine for native people (and bears). For the Pelecomalium genus rove beetles, the pollen serves as food, and the “spadex,” or club-like structure in the flower, is their mating ground.

The reason my photo isn’t better is that I didn’t want to step deep into the mucky area where the skunk cabbage was growing. That’s not my footprint to the upper right of the flower, but maybe it was where another animal stepped. Anyway, I feel very lucky that this unique, native plant grows on the Oregon coast.

Dandelions are not special or native, but dandelion pollen can feed some native bees, like this Halictidae sweat bee. Because it was a relatively cool day, the bee sat still for its portrait.

I love sawflies.

I love that until a couple years ago, I didn’t know that this member of the bee-wasp-ant order existed. I love that they look like caterpillars when they’re larvae. I love that the adults can have branched, feathery, or knobbed antennae, and I love the rainbow of colors they can be.

I saw this black sawfly with pale, straw-yellow legs this week. I know it’s in the Tenthredinidae family, but I’m waiting for a more specific determination from BugGuide. (Where “specific” won’t necessarily be to the species, but maybe to the genus … Tenthredinidae is the largest sawfly family, with more than 7,500 species).

I hope you get out to enjoy the first week of spring!

Clicks and likes

The last couple of days have finally felt spring-like, with the sun out and temperatures in the 60s by the afternoon. On a walk around some ponds yesterday, I found this tiny click beetle on the end of a willow catkin. It’s in a genus I’ve seen before, Gambrinus, and my earlier photo looks like it may be the same species.

This is one diminutive beetle. Above, you can see its size on the willow bloom, which is itself small.

On that same walk, I saw this alderfly on a bridge across a stream. These aquatic insects in the Megaloptera order (=”big wing”) live just a tiny part of their lives as adults, spending one to five years in the silt as larvae and adulting for only two weeks or so, in order to reproduce. They never go very far from the water, because they’re not greatly skilled fliers.

Mourning cloak butterflies, on the other hand, spend a relatively long time as adults: up to a year. They are often the first butterflies to emerge in the spring, because they spend the winter as adults, even in very cold climates (it’s the state butterfly of Montana). This one stayed still for quite some time, sunning itself. The deep, red-brown wings probably do a great job as solar panels. I’ll have more information on mourning cloaks in my column for Mount Pisgah Arboretum next week.

Cheers!

The day the cats came out to play

Over the past several days, it’s been unseasonably warm, but cloudy. On my walks to local trails I found several types of insects, but they were all quite small, and dark colored. Today, it’s not as warm, but the sun is out, and as a result, I’ve seen a variety of more colorful insects. I’m going to focus on three caterpillars. I think they’re all in different genuses, if not families.

Above is the caterpillar of (I’m fairly certain) a Yellow Underwing. It’s the largest of the three larval moths in today’s post. The adults have colorful lower wings–but I’d label them more orange than yellow. The pattern of dashes on the side you see here is mirrored on the other.

This straw-colored cat blended in with the yellowed grass it was sitting on. iNaturalist tags it as a Rununculus moth larva. The adults are brown, and have some attractive light brown, gray and even burnt orange patterning.

By the way, I was curious about the derivation of the word “caterpillar.” Most sources agree it comes from the old French for “hairy cat.” Nowhere have I found why the domestic feline is associated with a wormy larva, but I’m going to make a guess that it has to do with the cat’s tail.

Consider the catkin, the dangling flower cluster on many birches, alders and willows this time of year. The word “catkin” is understood to come from its resemblance to a cat or kitten tail. Why don’t sources make the link between a cat’s tail and a caterpillar? (Slight left turn for a tangent here: I saw a bird with a catkin in its mouth the other day, and originally took it, the catkin, for a caterpillar).

This last caterpillar was tough to photograph. It’s the smallest of the three, it was squished down into the grass blade, and was in dappled lighting. I believe it’s some sort of armyworm, but I don’t have a reliable i.d.

Happy February!

	Scorpionfly! And a f… on A New York minute
	TickleHead on Hello yellow!
	murphyjb6af2f20ba on Hello yellow!
	Clicks and likes \| T… on New Cards Available
	TickleHead on Red, Green and Blue

Ticklehead

micro adventures with a macro lens

insects

Moth trap mania

Scorpionfly! And a few words about names

Eastern Easter eggs

Alder and Elder

Unlikely colors

New for Spring

Great Grape

Hello yellow!

Clicks and likes

The day the cats came out to play