Rove Beetle
S. found this one climbing the wall of the garage. Despite appearances, it is not related to earwigs. It’s actually a beetle[1]. No, really!
Net-Winged Beetle
This is a beetle, not a moth. No, really!
This poor fellow had an unfortunate encounter with a car on September 23, and I found it dead on the side of the road.
Even though it looks like a moth at first glance, it has some very un-moth-like characteristics. The orange-and-black forewings are thick and leathery, while the hindwings are membranous and transparent.
Lygaeid Seed Bug Nymph
This one is actually over a year old, it was found on the kitchen floor in early August of 2007. It’s a little guy, only a couple of millimeters long. It was hard to see details with the naked eye, and I thought at the time that it was some kind of beetle. But, when magnified we can see that it doesn’t quite look right to be a beetle::
Bumblebee mimic scarab beetle
S_ spotted this one buzzing across the kitchen in late July. It was moving pretty fast, and was hard to see clearly, but it sure looked and acted like a small bumblebee. But then, it landed on the window where I was able to catch it, and it turned out to be this:
Goldenrod crab spider - female and hatchling
So, once again, I was pushing my bike up the hill to home, looking at what was beside the road. And in the middle of a “Queen Anne’s Lace”[1] blossom, I saw something that looked odd. There was this black wasp that appeared to be trying to stand on its head. So I looked closer, and saw that part of the flower wasn’t actually a flower - it was a crab spider that had grabbed him by the face! Unfortunately, she dropped the wasp before I could get the blossom home to get a picture, but here she is:
Continue reading ‘Goldenrod crab spider - female and hatchling’ »
Male European Earwig - Dermaptera
We had quite a plague of these European Earwigs (Forficula auricularia)[1] back in July, when there was still some moisture about. Now that it has been very dry for a few months their numbers have plummeted, but for a while there we were literally finding heaps of them every time we turned over a rock or picked up a board.
Harvestmen
These are actually two different harvestmen[1]. The first one was photographed without the macro lens on a wall last year, and while it shows the spread of the legs nicely, there isn’t much detail on the body.
Hermit Beetle (and relative)
We’d all just come into the house after going for a walk, and I heard Sam shouting from the kitchen “Mom, Mom, a beetle! A beetle!”, and then I heard S_ reply, “A beetle? Where is . . . Holy Cow!” So I come over to look, and they’ve got this huge scarab beetle, just about two inches long[1].
Ctenucha virginica caterpillar
Last year I had a picture of an adult Ctenucha virginica, a striking black-and-orange tiger moth with an unpronounceable name. Well, this spring (on May 10), I found the caterpillar of the same species, climbing up a grass stem.
.
Velvet Mite
I put out what was supposed to be a cricket trap[1] a few days ago, but didn’t catch any crickets. What I did catch were some woodlice, something that looks like a carrion beetle larva, but I keep finding them scampering around where there is no evidence of any carrion, a stone centipede, and a few tiny things that included this little orange mite:
