Greetings, BugFans,
The BugLady loves finding an insect she’s never seen before. When she saw it walking along a cordwalk (boardwalk on sand) in the dunes at Kohler-Andrae State Park, she knew that this guy/gal was in the stink bug family (Pentatomidae), but it’s more spindle-shaped and lacks the “shoulder pads” of a generic stink bug (younger BugFans may have to Google “shoulder pads”).
01.24.24
Greetings, BugFans,
Everybody likes butterflies (the BugLady would not like to meet the person who dislikes butterflies). But, in the order Lepidoptera, butterflies are just the tip of the iceberg – the heavy lifting is done by moths. There are in the neighborhood of 180,000 species of Lepidoptera worldwide (“10% of the total described species of living organisms,” says Wikipedia), and about nine-tenths of them are moths. Only around 700 of North America’s 12,000 species of Lepidoptera are butterflies.
Moths often languish in the BugLady’s picture files because: A) They can be tough to identify; and B) Most are not notorious enough to have drawn much attention to themselves, so their biographies are hard to find and are more like short stories.
01.19.24
Greetings, BugFans,
Today’s bug, the extraordinary-looking and aptly-named Saddle-backed caterpillar, is the 5th in our on-going Snowbird Special series about bugs you might see if you decide to tear yourself away from God’s Country in the winter. The BugLady doesn’t know why one might consider that – except she’s posting this before dark because there’s a massive storm that’s raining all over her, accompanied by 20-plus mph north winds, and is delivering many inches of snow inland. She suspects that the power will fail eventually.
Thanks to BugFan Tom in the Deep South for his pictures of this amazing caterpillar.
01.16.24
Salutations, BugFans,
It’s the trough between Christmas and New Year’s – nothing but reruns. This one, from 2009, has a few new words and pictures. Party on!
Occasionally, one of the BugLady’s wee dust bunnies becomes a little more animated than the rest of them – a situation that is startling, momentarily, until she remembers the Masked Hunter (Reduvius personatus), an alien bug from Europe and Africa that is now found throughout the US.
01.04.24
Salutations, BugFans,
It’s the trough between Christmas and New Year’s – nothing but reruns. This one, from 2009, has a few new words and pictures. Party on!
Occasionally, one of the BugLady’s wee dust bunnies becomes a little more animated than the rest of them – a situation that is startling, momentarily, until she remembers the Masked Hunter (Reduvius personatus), an alien bug from Europe and Africa that is now found throughout the US.
12.27.23
Greetings of the Season, BugFans,
(13 bugs, because once she’s got her selection down to 13, the BugLady just can’t cut one more!)
A Cheery Thought for the Holidays, the average home contains between 32 and 211 species of arthropods (with the lower numbers at higher Latitudes and higher numbers as you head south past the Mason-Dixon Line). So, while the BugLady is celebrating The 12 (or 13) Bugs of Christmas, most BugFans could rustle up at least that many under their own roofs. Whether you see them or not, all kinds of invertebrates coexist with us daily, mostly staying under our radar until we surprise each other with a quick glimpse.
Here are a baker’s dozen of the bugs that the BugLady saw in 2023.
12.20.23
Greetings, BugFans,
Zale moths (thank goodness) are not small and grayish (the moth equivalent of LBJ’s – “little brown jobs” – the birding acronym for the sparrow group), and thus they are not destined to languish unidentified in the BugLady’s “X-files” for too long They’re in the moth family Erebidae (from the Latin “erebus,” meaning “from the darkness”), which contains lots of colorful and familiar groups, like the Underwings, Tiger moths, Tussock and Lichen moths, and Zales.
12.13.23
Greetings, BugFans,
The Ground beetle family (Carabidae) contains some large and spectacular species , but today’s beetle is neither large nor flashy. It’s pretty fast, though.
The BugLady was moseying around on the beach one August day when she spied an impossibly small beetle zipping over the sand. So (of course) she aimed her camera at it as it ran around her and between her feet.
12.12.23
Salutations, BugFans,
The BugLady has been busy – here’s a slightly-spruced-up version of an episode that she posted 10 years ago. The Jumping bristletail that inspired it remains the only one she’s ever seen.
11.29.23
Greetings, BugFans,
The BugLady loves finding species she’s never spotted before – there are many thousands of insects she has yet to photograph, but that’s a matter of “right time; wrong habitat; more road trips.” This year’s new bugs were mostly wasps, flies, and katydids – stay tuned. And, as vintage BugFans know, the combination of the BugLady’s hyperopia (farsightedness) and her camera lenses (first a 50mm macro lens, then a 70, and now a 100mm) lure her into the world of little stuff.
They are in different families, but (besides size), what today’s two flies have in common is a very limited on-line presence.
11.22.23