Hello fellow Fediverse travelers, I hope your day is going well. While on break I took a cicada pic, they are increasing daily. 🪲 🐛 When they're all out it will be an impressive sight.
Ok, here's an update on the Verbena bonariensis situation from my post yesterday. Less than 12 hours later and the two plants have been almost totally skeletonized by something I cannot see. There is a healthy Verbena less than 6 inches to the left of the picture that is totally untouched. Any thoughts? #gardening #allotment #zone6b #NewEngland #insects #entomology @gardening
A long time ago I made a little pond in our back yard. Ostensibly for the indoor fish (Koi, Comets) to spend Summer outside, but then the scope (and pond) got bigger. Waterfall, rocks for frogs to sunbathe, and deep sections so fish could survive Winter. May 19, 2004 I got the idea to add local fauna to the pond in the form of a couple scoops of plants and bugs from a nearby vernal pool (i.e. roadside ditch). Enjoying water bugs and tadpoles noodling around I spotted a small clump of sticks ... moving.
Posted about it on my blog and a reader ID’d it as a Caddisfly Larva.
Flash forward to yesterday, checking out the frogs in our messy little pond, when a bundle of sticks walked by underwater.
Here's a photo of the caddisfly larva from 2004. Also some photos of the pond from its initial expansion to when the plants really started taking off. Years later the liner got a slow leak. It's one of those things where I don't want to dismantle the whole thing to fix it when it's full of tadpoles, but at the end of the season it's too cold.
Crimson-speckled flunkey (Utetheisa pulchella) crimson-speckled footman, or crimson-speckled moth. Birds don’t like them as the caterpillars accumulate a large amount of alkaloids, toxic & unpalatable to birds. Which probably accounts for the colors, a warning sign. #moth#insects#biology#photo#nature#wildlife#science#ecology
Another unusual insect: Tenthredo baetica (ssp. dominiquei), with only 118 observations world wide, of which 29 for this particular subspecies. It's a wasp – sort of: a sawfly.
The rear limbs are rather large, and I wonder why. For carrying prey?
Wikipedia points out an interesting reversal: in the Tenthredo genus, the larvae eat plants while the adults prey on other insects. Whereas many typical wasps do the opposite: the adults sip nectar but hunt insects to feed their young. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenthredo One wonders then what is this adult doing on a flower, engaging in motion patterns characteristic of foraging on nectar and pollen.
An unusual fly: red-belted hoverfly, Brachypalpoides lentus – a sawfly mimic. The larva is yet to be described. About 20 observations in the whole UK; 172 globally.
From Hyde Park, London (June 2023). Standing right next to Peter Pan's statue.
Hello little friend! This ladybug investigated my giant swiss chard quite thoroughly before settling in a leaf curl. #gardening#insects#ladybug@gardening
Ich habe mal wieder etwas für den #Insektensamstag. Diesmal zwei Vertreter der Familie der Feuerkäfer. Nummer 1 ist der Rotköpfige Feuerkäfer. Nummer 2 ist der Scharlachrote Feuerkäfer. Beide Aufnahmen sind im Abstand weniger Tage entstanden.