Bugfolks

I’ve included one non-bug – a snail. I don’t know anything about snails, and this is the first one I’ve found on our property. MJ thinks it's in the Succineidae - Amber Snails, because of the amber color of many of their shells. She thinks it's probably Succinea sp. I found it in a wet area under some Alder shrubs, crawling on a leaf of Bittersweet Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara).

In the same area I found a bright colored Katydid.  Mike Reese identified it as a Black-sided Meadow Katydid (Conocephalus nigropleurum).

I found several bright blue beetles on our willow trees. I found out that it’s an introduced pest on willow trees called an Imported Willow Leaf Beetle. (Plagiodera versicolora) They eat both willow and poplar leaves, but don’t seem to be causing too many problems in the Midwest because they’re sensitive to our cold winters, and because there’s an imported pupal parasite that helps to keep them in check.

Here’s a Tussock Moth caterpillar on willow. MJ identified this as a Banded Tussock Moth Caterpillar (Halysidota tessellaris).  They eat many different kinds of tree leaves, and are quite common.  I think it's the same species as the one I found a few weeks ago eating lilac leaves.

I’ve been seeing lots of wooly bear caterpillars in the last few weeks. Wooly Bear Caterpillars are the larvae of Isabella Tiger Moths but I’ve never seen one of the adults. The late instar caterpillars overwinter under leaf litter and logs. They emerge from their hiding places on warm winter days, and I find them crawling across the snow along the driveway.

Wagner says that Wooly Bear caterpillars will eat almost anything, and I’ve seen several on Blazing Star (Liatris aspera). This one was chewing away on the flowers.

This is another one eating Blazing Star flowers – the little pink hairs on the caterpillar are the pappus bristles from the flowers.

The flowers that weren’t being eaten were being visited by some Green Metallic Bees.  I think they're Agapostemon sp.  They're in the subfamily Halictinae, the bees that are called sweat bees.

Here’s a bumble bee on New England Aster - covered with pollen.

I took a picture of this Stink Bug and realized later that it had just molted, and was sitting next to its old skin.

This is a Baltimore Checkerspot (Euphydryas phaeton) caterpillar nest on Turtlehead (Chelone glabra), with a few caterpillars crawling around the outside. The caterpillars will spend the winter together in their nest, and then wander off in the spring to feed independently on a much wider range of foods.

Here’s one of my Cecropia caterpillars - the biggest one I’ve ever seen. It looks ready to make it’s cocoon any second.

Marcie

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 13th, 2008 at 5:20 pm and is filed under Bugs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.