It’s that time of year again—time to put our feet up, sip adult beverages by the light of the tree, hum “The Twelve Bugs Days of Christmas,” and dream of spring. (The days are getting longer, you know.) Here are a Baker’s Dozen from 2025.

Polyphemus Moth Caterpillar

This glorious polyphemus moth caterpillar, in the giant silk moth family Saturniidae (not the same family as the moths that produce silk for textiles), is huge! And it’s going to grow up to be .    

American Rubyspot

One of the lovely River damsels.��, but this female is pretty spectacular in her own right. (The BugLady wishes she knew how she got that halo effect—probably a random sparkle off the Milwaukee River beyond—she’d employ it in more pictures.)

Ambush Bug

Seasoned BugFans can attest to the BugLady’s fascination with Ambush bugs, which lay in wait on flowers until lunch arrives.��When she took this shot, the Ambush bug reminded her of another fascinating insect, . Read here for .

Dogbane Leaf Beetles

They are – except when they aren’t.��The beetle’s color and incandescence are the result of the play of light on exceedingly small, tilted plates that overlay its pigment layer. As you walk around it, the light bouncing off both the pigment and the plates causes the colors to change with your angle (and sometimes bring up Christmas colors).��Life is physics. .��

Oblong-Winged Katydid

A splendid katydid, splendidly in tune with its surroundings!

Bee Fly

This Bee fly deposits her eggs in the egg tunnels of solitary wasps that live in sandy/bare areas, though “deposit” doesn’t quite describe the process.��She  and lobs an egg down into the opening.��But, there’s a secret sauce.��She dips her rear end into the sand in order to take up some sand grains which she will store in a special receptacle. As an egg emerges, it gets a gritty coating that may help camouflage it and may also make it heavier so that her” throw” will be more accurate.

Bumble Bee

The BugLady has pictures of a number of insects nectaring on the spiny center of Purple coneflower (Echinacea sp.), and it always looks like an iffy proposition.��The name “Echinacea” comes from the Greek word for hedgehog.

Crab Spider

Crab spiders like orchids. This one is on a Small Yellow Lady’s Slipper! They don’t spin trap webs, and orchids give them a nice platform on which to wait for pollinators, though some might have a long wait because not all orchids are pollinated by insects.��The BugLady has a color slide of a Bog candle orchid with a white crab spider fitting neatly onto a horizontal flower.��Just as there is an orchid-mimic mantis, .

Tufted Bird Lime/Bird-Dropping Moths

Tufted Bird Lime/Bird-Dropping Moths look marbled to the BugLady.��Jim Sogarrd, author of Moths and Caterpillars of the North Woods, tells a story about attempting to collect a bird-dropping moth from the side of a building, only to discover that it actually was a bird dropping.

Robber Fly

Robber flies are carnivorous flies that come in quite .��Larger species, , can gather bees, butterflies, grasshoppers, dragonflies, and even cicadas for lunch.��Others are great , and still others, like this small fly sitting on a daisy fleabane, capture mosquitoes and gnats.

Hackberry Emperor Butterflies

Some kinds of caterpillars feed on a variety of plants, but Hackberry Emperor caterpillars eat only one thing and so can live only where Hackberry trees grow—.��This one was posing under the roof overhang of the Barn, at Riveredge.��Adults rarely feed on flowers, preferring tree sap, rotting fruit, carrion, and dung, and they collect minerals from damp/muddy soil with their proboscis. . They’re not pollinators. When they do visit flowers, they don’t touch down with their feet, and they avoid putting their antennae on the flower. They only extend their proboscis into the flower, and so do not pick up nor spread pollen.  

Jumping Spider

Even people who don’t like spiders like Jumping spiders, and some keep them as pets. This one looks like the Bold jumper, Phidippus audax.

Blue Dasher

When the BugLady was a kid, Angie the Christmas Tree Angel (BugFans who are old enough can hum a few bars here) used to smile benignly from the top of the tree.��That was before the BugLady knew about dragonflies.��This guy makes an excellent substitute for Angie or for the Partridge in the Pear Tree.

May your days be merry and bright,

The BugLady

The post The Twelve Bugs of Christmas appeared first on Field Station.

Greetings, BugFans,

This striking little moth was mentioned briefly a few years ago among an array of visitors to water hemlock flowers. Here’s the rest of the story. 

It belongs in the Clear-winged moth family Sesiidae, but it’s not related to the Clear-winged/Hummingbird moths (Sphinx moths in the genus Hemaris) that play peek-a-boo with the BugLady each summer around the wild bergamot, hovering prettily next to a flower and . It’s not uncommon for common names to be shared – in this case, shared because both groups have scaleless – clear – areas on their wings. There are more than 1500 species in the family Sesiidae worldwide, mostly in the tropics, and we have visited the family once before.     

The Peachtree borer moth is a member of a colorful genus 

,

,

, in a colorful family

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of waspy-looking, day-flying moths (some species fly for only a few specific hours of each day).�� They have long, waspy legs and they can hover like wasps, too.��It’s called Batesian mimicry – a harmless species is protected by its resemblance to a harmful one – in the case of the Sesiids, adopting the aposematic (warning color) signals of a wasp.��

Some adult Sesiids feed on nectar, and the larvae of most species bore into vines or into the branches, trunks, bark, or roots of woody plants. Some species are big pests of orchard crops and landscaping shrubs and trees.

Females send out chemical signals (pheromones) to attract males. They “call” daily, and these calls may be sensed by males a half-mile away. They lay eggs on various parts of their host plants; the newly-hatched larvae dig in and feed, and many eventually pupate within their plant, but not before excavating an exit and concealing it with silk. Some species are larvae for two seasons or even longer, but adults live only for a few weeks – some for much less. Adult Peachtree borer moths live less than a week and do not eat. 

PEACHTREE/GREATER PEACHTREE BORER MOTHS (Synanthedon exitisoa) can be found in much of North America excepting parts of the Great Plains and desert Southwest and a few Eastern states (there’s also a Lesser Peachtree borer moth that’s mostly Eastern).

Their host plants are peach trees and other members of the genus Prunus, all sun-loving members of the rose family, and they’re considered the most destructive of the clear-winged borers – persona non grata wherever they’re found. In the wild, they use wild cherry, wild plum, and shadbush (Amelanchier sp.). 

As one website said, “I can’t believe they’re not wasps!” They are sexually dimorphic (two forms), and although , the . Their wingspans are 1 ¼”-ish (females are larger than males), and . Although they’re not aggressive, spider wasp stings can pack quite a wallop, but the moths, of course, don’t sting.  

The natural history of Peachtree borers is pretty-well documented. Adults emerge from their pupal cases between 8:00 AM and 1:00 PM and mating commences immediately – females lay more than half of their eggs on their first day as an adult. Eggs are deposited in cracks and crevices in the bark near the base of the tree or on the ground nearby, and her fertility is her Super Power – of the 400 to 900 (or more) eggs she lays, 97% to 100% will hatch! 

The larvae tunnel in and feed on the cambium (growth layer) of the roots and trunk just below ground level (a zone called the “root crown”), and the tunnels they leave behind intersect the plumbing of the tree, disrupting the flow of nutrients up and down the trunk and causing twigs and branches to die. They leave piles of frass (bug poop) at the entrances of their tunnel, and they may cause a thick, gooey sap to ooze from their holes in the trunk. While the tree damage is mechanical, the larval tunneling may introduce fungi and bacteria.

The larvae overwinter within the tree and resume eating in spring, doing more damage because they’re larger. They pupate within inches of the base of the host tree in a . After the adults emerge, . 

A PEACH OF A RABBIT HOLE

So – before peaches, Peachtree borers, a native species, hummed along in harmony with their universe, eating wild Prunus species. When, exactly, did they encounter their first peach? 

According to the lore of some Puebloan tribes, there have always been peaches in the Southwest – the Anasazi, who walked away in the early 1300’s AD, were said to enjoy them. 

Others say that they originated in China 2.6 million years ago and have been under cultivation there for 6,000 to 8,000 years. Peaches were grown in Persia (Iran) 2000 years ago (which explains the scientific name, Prunus persica), were spread west into Europe by Alexander the Great, and were brought by French/Spanish explorers/conquistadores to Mexico/Florida in the first half of the 1500’s (but there’s always a chance that they came over with Columbus, too). It’s likely that the peach wasn’t embraced by the Indians until a decade or so after its introduction, when the missionaries that followed the explorers arrived to set up shop. Once adopted, though, it spread like wildfire along native trading routes and became an important food. Indians who were forced to travel the Trail of Tears from the Southeast to Oklahoma (1830 to 1850) carried peach pits with them. Fifty years earlier, Washington had ordered his troops to destroy massive, mixed fruit orchards in Upstate New York in order to crush the Indians there.

Not only did they embrace it and incorporate it into their agricultural and land management systems, those consummate Indigenous plant geneticists developed many varieties that were quite different from European peaches. In the right soil and with lots of sunlight, peaches grow easily and can plant themselves, but it takes human intervention – pruning – to develop good fruit. Peaches grew so readily that several sources called them, along with the hogs that were also introduced by the Spanish, the first American weeds.

The bottom line – the Europeans who arrived to settle the Atlantic Coast in the 1600’s reported peaches among the bounty that the New World offered and assumed that the peaches were native. “Here are also Peaches, and very good, and in great quantities, not an Indian Plantation without them … one may have them by Bushels for little; they make a pleasant Drink and I think not inferior to any Peach you have in England…….” said William Penn in 1683. A few years later, early Naturalist John Banister wrote “…for the Indians have, and ever had greater variety and finer sorts of them than we… I have seen those they call the yellow plum-peach that have been 12 or 13 inches in girth.”   

A team of researchers located what they believe to be the earliest North American peaches at an archaeological dig between Atlanta and Augusta, Georgia, when they dated to 1520 to 1550 AD some peach pits that were found at the bottom of post holes (blowing out of the water the notion that peaches were introduced by the Spanish to St. Augustine, Florida in 1565 or to Mexico in 1562).  

Peachtree borers responded to the massive increase of host plants with a population boom of their own and were recognized as pests by the early 1800’s.

Yeah, yeah – the BugLady is a history geek, too.

The BugLady

The post Peachtree Borer Moth appeared first on Field Station.

It’s time to celebrate a dozen (or so) of the beautiful bugs that posed for the BugLady this year (and that have already graced their own episodes). 

Click on each photo to read more.

Great Spangled Fritillary

A butterfly on the aptly-named butterfly weed.

European Mantis

The BugLady intercepted this mantis as it was attempting to cross the road and moved it to a friendlier spot.��The tiny bulls-eye in its tiny armpit tells us that it’s a European, not a Chinese mantis.��Both are non-native, invited to God’s Country by gardeners who buy them and release them as pest control. (Alas, to a mantis, a honey bee looks as tasty as a cabbage worm).��

When fall freezes come, they die, leaving behind �ǴDZ�ٳ�𳦲�����(egg cases) that .��Eggs in ooethecae can survive a mild winter here but not a Polar Vortex; . Every fall, The BugLady gets asked if it’s possible to keep a pet mantis alive in a terrarium over the winter.��Short answer—no. Its biological clock is ticking pretty loud.

Gray Field Slug

It was an unusually hot and muggy day, a day when the cooler air above the Lake did not quite reach inland (15 yards) to the BugLady’s front door.��She glanced out and saw a gray field slug extended at least six inches on the storm door. Read here for more info on gray field slugs.��     

Candy-Striped Leafhopper

When a spectacular insect picks an equally spectacular perch. What a treat!

Brown-Marmorated Stink Bug

This stink bug shared the hawk tower with the BugLady on a cool day in late October.��They’re a huge pest in the East because they eat orchard crops in summer and hole up/stink up in your house/closets/attics/coat pockets/boots in winter, and they’re becoming more numerous here.�� Remember, not every brown stink bug is a BMS. Look for the pale stripes on the antennae and on the legs.

Orange Sulfurs

They are very common, and they don’t put on airs, they’re just quietly beautiful.

Tachinid Fly

When the BugLady thinks about Tachinid flies, she pictures the bristly, house-fly-on-steroids species that frequent the prairie flowers in late summer, but tachinid flies also come in “tubular.” The larvae of this one, in the genus Cylindromyia, make a living by parasitizing some moths and grasshoppers and a few species of predatory stink bugs (for which efforts they are not appreciated, because the predatory stink bugs are busy preying on plant pests).��The adults, which are considered wasp mimics, feed on nectar.��

Ebony Jewelwings

They are frequent flyers on these pages.��The spectacular males usually have a metallic, Kelly-green body, but some individuals, in some light, appear royal blue.

Shamrock Orbweaver

The BugLady loves the big Argiope�����Ի���Araneus���ǰ����ɱ𲹱������., they grow slowly throughout the summer until they reach a startling size.��Most go through the winter in egg cases. Some hatch early but stay inside and ride out the winter in the case, eating yolk material and their siblings, while others hatch in spring.��They emerge from the egg sac, and after a few days, balloon away in the breezes. and see why, like the Marbled orbweaver, they’re sometimes called Pumpkin orbweavers.  

Skimming Bluet

Note to self: ask insects to pose on the very photogenic leaves of Arrow Arum.��

Red-Velvet Mite

The BugLady is frequently struck by the fact that the weather data we rely on was measured by instruments inside a louvered box that sits five feet above the ground, but the vast majority of animals — vertebrate and invertebrate alike — never get five feet off the ground in their lives.��The weather they experience depends on microclimates created by the vegetation and topography in the small area where they live.��Red velvet mites search for tiny animals and insect eggs to eat; their young form temporary tick-ish attachments to other invertebrates as they go through a dizzying array of life stages (OK — prelarva, larva, protonymph, deutonymph, tritonymph, adult). Read more about them here.

Bush Katydid

What child is this? A nymph of a bush katydid (Scudderia).��

Ants with Aphids

While shepherds watched their flocks at night…… Some kinds of ants “farm” aphids and tree hoppers, guarding them from predators, guiding them to succulent spots to feed, and “milking” them — harvesting the sweet honeydew that the aphids exude from their stern while overindulging in plant sap.

Eastern Pondhawk

And an pondhawk in a pear tree.

Whatever Holidays you celebrate, may they be merry and bright and filled with laughter.

The BugLady

The post The Twelve (or so) Bugs of Christmas appeared first on Field Station.

Greetings, BugFans,

The BugLady has been scouring the landscape and aiming her camera at anything that will sit still (and some that won’t). And without going too overboard on dragonflies and damselflies, here are some of her bug adventures.  

Leafcutter Bee

Ah, the one that got away.  The BugLady saw a lump on a boardwalk in front of her and automatically aimed her camera at it (a long lens is a good substitute for a pair of binoculars). The lump – a leafcutter bee – flew off after one, out-of-focus shot. The bee had paused while she was cutting and collecting pieces of vegetation to line the tunnel and chambers where she’ll lay her eggs.   

Japanese Beetle

Lots of the vegetation that the BugLady sees these days is pockmarked with small holes — evidence of feeding by Japanese beetles. (Of course, she’s also been seeing conspicuous, beetle ménages a trois on the tops of those leaves, too.) Japanese beetles made their North American debut in New Jersey in 1916, and their menu now includes more than 350 plant species. But, they are a handsome beetle!   

Water Striders

They create art wherever they go.  

Appalachian Brown Butterfly (probably)

The part of the hindwing that has the squiggly line that helps distinguish the Eyed Brown from the Appalachian Brown is gone. Life in the wild isn’t all beer and skittles. The chunks missing from this butterfly’s wings suggest that a bird chased it and that most of the butterfly got away.

Powdered Dancer

In an episode a month ago, the BugLady lamented that the river was so high and fast that Powdered Dancers couldn’t find any aquatic vegetation to oviposit in.�� A dry spell revealed some weed patches, and the dancers hopped right onboard.��

Eastern Pondhawk Dragonfly

This male Eastern Pondhawk was hugging the cattail stalk, a posture that’s not characteristic of this usually-horizontal species. Turns out that it had captured a Violet/Variable Dancer damselfly and was holding it closely between its body and the cattail.  

Crab Spider

What would a summer summary be without one of the BugLady’s favorite spiders, the Crab spider? Where’s Waldo? Bonus points if you know the name of the plant.  

Honey Bee with Aphids

It’s not surprising to see yellowjackets browsing among herds of water lily aphids. Adult yellowjackets are (mostly) vegetarians, but they collect, masticate, and regurgitate small insects for their larvae. Honey bees are hard-core vegans, so what’s going on here?  

Aphids overeat — they have to. The plant sap they suck in has very low concentrations of sugars and proteins, so they need to process a lot of it in order to get enough calories. Sap comes out of the plant under pressure, which forces the sap through the aphid smartly, and the extra liquids (in the form of a sweet substance called honeydew), exit to the rear of the aphid (or it would explode). Honeydew drops onto the surrounding leaves and attracts other insects that harvest it. The bee is no threat to the aphids, she’s just collecting honeydew.  

Fun Fact: According to Master beekeeper Rusty Burlew, writing in her blog “Honey Bee Suite,” The bees treat the substance like nectar so it is often mixed together with the nectar from flowers. As such, it is not really noticeable in the finished honey. Honey made almost exclusively from honeydew is known as honeydew honey, forest honey, bug honey, flea honey, or tree honey. Sometimes it is named after its primary component, such as pine honey, fir honey, oak honey, etc. It is generally dark, strongly flavored, less acidic, and less sweet than floral honey.

Eastern Amberwing

At barely an inch long, this improbably-colored dragonfly is one of our flashiest. 

Mosquitoes

Mosquito Control 101: “Get rid of standing water in your yard!” Check. But, the BugLady has a bird bath (her “vintage” childhood saucer sled) that she washes out and refills at least once a week… or so she thought. She was surprised the other day to see a whole mess of mosquito “wigglers” (larvae) in the water.  Worse, they probably were the small-but-mighty Floodwater mosquitoes that can make August miserable because they emerge in Biblical numbers and because they seem to be biting with one end even before the other end has fully landed. They develop at warp speed — a week from egg to wiggler, and another week from wiggler to adult. Get rid of standing water in your yard. Check. 

Scorpionflies

These are odd-looking insects from a whole order of odd-looking insects (Mecoptera). This guy is in the Common scorpionfly family Panorpidae and in the genus Panorpa — a corruption of the Greek word for locust. The appendage at the end of the male’s abdomen explains its name, but these are harmless insects, fore and aft. One site mentioned they are wary and hard to photograph. Amen! 

Panorpa uses chewing mouthparts at the tip of its elongated rostrum/snout to eat dead and dying insects, and it may liberate insects from spider webs (and sometimes the spider, too). It is also said to eat some nectar and rotting fruits. 

He courts by releasing pheromones to attract her, quivering his wings when she comes near, and then offering a gift — a dead insect, or maybe some gelatinous goo manufactured in his salivary gland. He shares bodily fluids with her as she eats.

Carolina Locust

What a lovely, chunky little nymph!  

Autumn Meadowhawk

The dragonfly scene changes after mid-summer, with the early clubtails, emeralds, corporals, whitefaces, and skimmers being replaced by darners, saddlebags, and a handful of meadowhawk species. This newly-minted (teneral) Autumn Meadowhawk has just left its watery nursery on its way to becoming — for the next six weeks or so — a creature of the air.  

Katydid Nymph

The BugLady was photographing leafcutter bees that were visiting birdsfoot trefoil flowers. (Birdsfoot trefoil is a non-native member of the pea family that was introduced for animal fodder and erosion control and that can become invasive in grasslands. There’s probably some blooming along a road edge near you). She noticed that when the bees approached one particular flower, they reversed course and didn’t land, and when she checked, she found the tiniest katydid nymph she has ever seen. This one will grow up considerably to be a 1½” to 2” long Fork-tailed bush katydid… .  How do you find bush katydids? The “Listening to Insects” website advises us to “Watch for a leaf that moves on its own, or a leaf with antennae.” They are a favorite of Great golden digger wasps, which collect and cache them for their eventual larvae, and another website said “This is what bird food looks like.”&�Բ�����;&�Բ�����;

The BugLady found a recording of their call. They don’t say “Katy-did, Katy-didn’t” they say “tsp” or “pffft,” and they don’t say it very loudly. Bush Katydids are busiest at night, when their long, highly sensory antennae help them to find their way around. Although adult females are equipped with a wicked-looking ovipositor, they don’t sting, but they do nip if you handle them wrong. Memorably, it’s said.   

Go outside, look at bugs!

The BugLady

The post Summer Sights appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy, BugFans,

OK – the last of the Water Hemlock series (unless/until the BugLady discovers the ID of a really smashing ichneumon wasp that was also working the flowers).

The BugLady was stumped by this one.�� It didn’t spend much time in her vicinity; when it first landed, she thought it might be a moth, then a wasp. When she got home and put it up on the screen, it looked like it had been put together by the proverbial committee. She looked into family called the Mydas flies (Mydidae), which have , but the antennae were wrong, and she finally sent it to an real entomologist (thanks, BugFan PJ).

Syrphid/Hover/Flower flies are often (but not always) delicately-etched bee and wasp mimics that nectar at flowers. They come in a large variety of flavors, from svelte to chunky, and from smooth to hairy, and not all of them are yellow and black:

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Short review because we haven’t for a long time. In the names of members of the fly order, Diptera, the word “fly” is separate. Flower fly, house fly, bee fly, etc. In other orders – dragonfly, mayfly, dobsonfly, stonefly, etc. – it’s part of a single word (a “closed compound word,” to grammarians).

Anyway, Syrphidae is a large family with more than 6,000 species distributed globally (except Antarctica); 813 in North America. The adults are vegetarians, feeding on nectar and pollen, and the larvae (maggots) have an array of palates.�� Some eat decaying organic material, plant or animal, in soil or in wetlands or rot holes (the breathing tube that protrudes from the rear of wetland species has given them the ). Others live on plants and prey on small invertebrates, including aphids. Many are wasp mimics, both visually and sometimes aurally, and all are harmless.

It’s not surprising that insects as ubiquitous as Syrphid flies have picked up a bunch of common names along the way. Besides Hover flies, various species/genera are called Streaktails. Swamp flies, Sapeaters, Catkin flies,Wasp/Yellow jacket/Hornet flies, Blacklets, Wrinkleheads, Meadow flies, Bumbleflies, Smoothtails, Conifer flies, Aphideaters, Quicksilvers, Deltawings, Mimics, Ant flies, Fen flies, Spikelegs, Grass skimmers, Bristlesides, Muck suckers, Sedgesitters, Calligraphers, and more.

The Black-winged/Violet leafwalker (Chalcosyrphus chalybeus) is a wasp mimic whose scientific name also seems to have been made up by a committee – Chalcosyrphus means “coppery-colored syrphid,” and “chalybeus” means “steel-colored.” Here are some shots of it that are better than the BugLady’s: and . Black-winged leafwalkers may not have a stinger, but (Chalybion californicum) and (Chlorion aerarium) do. To seal the deal, the Leafwalker flicks its wings like the twitchy wasps. Batesian mimicry.

Genus members are usually found in wetlands, where their maggots are saproxylic, feeding on decaying wood or maybe on decaying sap within the decaying wood. Most sources said that the adults eat nectar (which is basically sugar-water) and pollen (the extra-nutritious pollen provides sugars, fats, fiber and protein that aid in ovarian development). Syrphids from two genera, Chalcosyrphus (aka Xylotomima) and Xylota, are called leafwalkers. The BugLady found one source which said that adults of these genera feed on deposits of aphid honeydew and pollen on the surfaces of leaves, rather than on flowers – hence “leaf walker.”

The wonderful Minnesota Seasons website speculated on how common the Black-winged leafwalker is, saying that “It is found in North America east of the Great Plains. It is said to be common but there are relatively few reported observations. This may be due to the appearance and behavior, both of which mimic blue mud wasps.”

Well, it’s Groundhog Day (and the bottom is about to drop out of the thermometer), and as we here in the Midwest like to say, if the groundhog sees his shadow, we have six more weeks of winter; and if he doesn’t, it’s a month-and-a-half until spring.

The BugLady

The post Black-Winged Leafwalker (a syrphid fly) appeared first on Field Station.

The BugLady can tell that the Christmas Season has rolled around because the Dr. Who marathon is about to start, and once again, Paul and Mary are showing us how easy it is to concoct showstopper desserts on the Great British Baking Show Master Class series (no calories in just looking). It’s time to turn on a seasonal CD, raise a glass, and celebrate the Twelve Bugs of Christmas – a baker’s dozen, actually – a selection that, as always, is either a little dragonfly-heavy or a little dragonfly-light, depending on who you ask.

PREDATOR
Look closely. The long, skinny tube is the abdomen of an Eastern Forktail damselfly. At the right end of the tube is a small, green bug, a Water treader named Mesovelia, of former BOTW fame. Water treaders are carnivores, and Mesovelia preys on dead and injured insects and spiders. This one undoubtedly moved in after a larger predator was finished.

DAMSELFLY TENERAL
The BugLady loves finding newly-emerged damselfly tenerals like this Spreadwing, in the moments between water and air, stretching and gathering strength next to the skins they just vacated.

PYGMY GRASSHOPPER
Though she spends lots of time in wetlands, the BugLady rarely runs into these tiny (half-inch or less), dark grasshoppers (aka grouse locusts) that apparently failed to read the grasshopper handbook. They are good flyers, but when at rest, their folded second pair of wings is protected, not by their stubby forewings, but by an extended pronotum (back end of the thoracic shield) that may be as long as the abdomen. They are silent, and so also lack hearing organs. They are creatures of damp grasslands and wetland edges, where they eat mosses, lichens, algae, diatoms, and bits of organic material and spend the winter as adults. An alarmed pygmy grasshopper may take to the water and swim away (some species swim away underwater!), and some lay their eggs in the water.

PAINTED LADY BUTTERFLY
The BugLady’s camera never met a yellow it didn’t love (for “love,” read “”magnify”). To the BugLady’s eye, a little yellow goes a long way, so she spends a fair amount of time editing the “extra” yellow out of pictures.�� =Sometimes, though, in the golden days of late summer, she just has to embrace it.

AMERICAN RUBYSPOT
And speaking of color, bright red is a bold color choice for any animal.�� Unfortunately for the Rubyspots, while they are effective signals during courtship, the male’s brilliant wing spots not only reveal the damselfly’s whereabouts to its predators, but they also alert potential prey.�� Bonus points if you know what plant they’re on.

MARSH FLIES
The BugLady caught these flies out of the corner of her eye as she passed a stand of Equisetum/scouring rush at the Land Trust’s CESA site. Was it just dry vegetation hanging off the fertile cone of the Equisetum? Nope. It was a pair of Marsh flies in flagrante delicto. Nothing to see here, folks, just move along.

ORANGE BLUET
An oxymoronic name for these lovely damselflies.

EASTERN TIGER SWALLOWTAILS
The Swallowtails come in two color forms, the standard, tiger colors and a dark morph. Dark individuals, always females, are mimicking the Pipevine Swallowtail of the South.�� Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillars and adults are off-limits to predators because the caterpillars feed on the toxic pipevine plant. They are rare in Wisconsin (so is pipevine plant), so the BugLady isn’t sure whether this deception is buying our Tiger Swallowtails anything.

LOCUST NYMPH
The BugLady’s car drowned this summer. Seven inches of rain came down in the wee hours, and she woke up in time to see her neighbor’s trash bins floating down the road (when she could finally get to her car, she found that the stuff in the center console was wet). As she was prowling around taking pictures after the rain let up, she came across a small toad and this locust nymph, confirmation that the event had, indeed, been Biblical.

ROBBER FLY
This female is ovipositing in knapweed, but her offspring are by no means vegetarians. After the eggs hatch, the legless larvae will drop down and live in the soil for a year or longer, eating small insects, and the eggs and larvae of other invertebrates. Many robber flies lay their eggs directly into the soil.

BLACK SADDLEBAGS
The BugLady takes a lot of “Hail Mary shots” of dragonflies, and most end up on the cutting room floor (she’ll hang onto this one until she does better). She came upon a pond at Riveredge on a sunny, summer day when several pairs of saddlebags were ovipositing. They fly in tandem over the surface (he’s in front); he releases her and she dips down, releases some eggs into the water, and then flies up to rejoin him and repeat the performance in another part of the pond.

RED-SPOTTED PURPLES
These members of the brush-footed butterfly family, are another Pipevine Swallowtail mimic. They’re named for the spots on the underside of their wings, but the top side isn’t too shabby, either. Limenitis arthemis has two subspecies – in the southern part of its range, and here in southern Wisconsin we generally see the Red-spotted Purple (Limenitis arthemis astyanax).�� Farther north, the White Admiral (Limenitis arthemis arthemis) replaces it. In the middle, of course, they hybridize, sometimes spectacularly.

RACKET-TAILED EMERALD
And that’s why they’re called Emeralds.

Whatever feast you celebrate, may it be happy and renewing and merry and bright.

The BugLady

The post The Twelve Bugs of Christmas appeared first on Field Station.

It’s High Summer, and a lot has been going on out there. Many species have already peaked and disappeared from the scene, assuming, until next year, whatever form they spend the majority of their lives in. Others are coming into their own. Here are some of the sights the BugLady has seen in local prairies and wetlands.

ANTS are everywhere, foraging for proteins and carbs, including milkweed nectar to take home to their families. Some species of ants have workers that are essentially tanker trucks.�� Ants are no great shakes as pollinators, due to their slippery little bodies and fastidious grooming habits, and besides that, they’re pedestrians, so the pollen doesn’t travel far. (Family Formicidae)

BLUE MUD DAUBER WASP – Cup plants have “perfoliate” leaves that look like two “conjoined leaves” but are actually a single leaf whose base is joined around the stem, making it look like the stem is piercing it. For a few days after a rain, reservoirs made by the cup plant’s leaves hold water that’s appreciated by all sorts of small animals. The wasp uses mud to construct chambers for her eggs, but she doesn’t carry water to dirt, spit on it, and stir. She may just be thirsty. (Family Sphecidae)

STRIPED HAIRSTREAK – The BugLady found this small butterfly of dappled woods and edges while she was surveying water hemlock plants for an up-coming episode. Adults nectar on available flowers, and Butterflies of the Great Lakes Region tells us that “Early in the morning, they will sip dew from leaves as they bask.” They’re not-very-common – “scattered lightly over our landscape,” says “The Butterflies of Massachusetts” website, “widely distributed although nowhere abundant.” The theory is that the eyespots on the hind wing confuse predators. (Family Lycaenidae)

HORSEFLY – Just a glamour shot of a horse fly, that’s all. (Family Tabanidae)

PARASITIZED – This dangling caterpillar was discovered in its infancy by a small, parasitic wasp that laid an egg in it. The wasp larva hatched, and then it ate and grew within the caterpillar, which was trying to do the same, but whose existence had been repurposed. When it was ready to pupate, the wasp dealt the coup de grace to its unfortunate host, exited, and spun a cocoon on the outside. As Darwin once said of parasitoids, “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.”

AMERICAN CARRION BEETLE – The BugLady has seen a number of adult carrion beetles flying around –black and yellow and big and buzzy – trying to convince her that they’re bumble bees, but she rarely sees the larvae. Adults lay their eggs on dead animals, and then stick around on the carcass doing “pest control” (eating the competition) before their well-armored larvae hatch and for a while afterward.�� The larvae will also eat other larvae they find on “their” carrion. (Family Silphidae)

EASTERN AMBERWING – The BugLady’s favorite insect is the Tiger Swallowtail, but the Eastern Amberwing is on her long list of second-favorites. This feisty 0.9” dragonfly has an attitude way bigger than its size. (Family Libellulidae)

A JUMPING SPIDER in the genus Pelegrina (thanks as always for the ID, BugFan Mike) is another critter with attitude. You can see why jumping spiders have fan clubs. (Family Salticidae)

COMMON BUCKEYE – The BugLady has way more shots of this beautiful butterfly sitting on the ground than on flowers (when it sits on flowers, it prefers composites); it typically flits along 6’ ahead of her on mowed paths. It’s a Southern migrant to God’s Country, arriving in early summer, but the migrants produce a brood once they’re here. The and theare different – if you’re lucky enough to see one with its wings closed. If the Striped Hairstreak’s eyespots are meant to confuse, the Buckeye’s are meant to intimidate. (Family Nymphalidae)

CINNAMON CLEARWING MOTH – So cool!  So speedy! Clearwing moths are in the Sphinx moth family Sphingidae; we have two species around here, and the BugLady has plenty of out-of-focus shots of each. Like chasing sprites.

ROBBER FLY – Some robber flies are small and shy, but Promachus vertebratus is neither. At about an inch long, it was almost the same size as the Halloween Pennant dragonflies the BugLady was photographing at the same time. It makes “annoyed” sounds when you kick it up in the fields (attitude again). These flies prey on anything they can catch – the BugLady has a shot of one holding a Clouded Sulphur butterfly. (Family Asilidae)

WHITEFACE AND BLUET – The BugLady was stalking dragonflies at Spruce Lake Bog when a Dot-tailed Whiteface dragonfly grabbed a Marsh Bluet damselfly and sat down beside her. Something buzzed the duo loudly – maybe a robber fly – and the startled dragonfly released its prey. As the whiteface moved to a different perch, the damselfly shook it off and flew away. No damselflies were harmed to make this picture. (Families Libellulidae and Coenagrionidae)

Go outside – look at bugs!

The BugLady

The post Summer Scenes appeared first on Field Station.

Here’s a slightly enhanced episode from 2012.

Nobody’s on the fence about black flies.

Black flies are also called turkey gnats and buffalo gnats, and people who live in black fly country have a whole bunch of other names for them that can’t be repeated here. Entomologists call them true flies (order Diptera) in the family Simuliidae. There are more than 1,800 species in the family worldwide (100 in North America; 30 in Wisconsin), and most of them belong in the huge genus Simulium. . BFs are tiny (5 to 10 mm) and dark, with clear wings, many-segmented antennae, and big eyes (and teeth, just kidding).

If you don’t have cool/cold rivers and streams, you don’t have black flies, and if you do have black flies, it’s a compliment to the quality of those running waters. Black fly larvae like lots of oxygen and are not tolerant of warmer waters or pollution, a fact that was lamented in an Ohio Cooperative Extension Fact Sheet. In the No-Good-Deed-Goes-Unpunished category, the black fly populations increased when Ohio streams were cleaned up.

Adult BFs live for about three weeks, laying 150 to 500 eggs either individually on the water’s surface or in clumps attached to rocks, branches, etc. in/above the water (larvae that hatch above the water line immediately drop into the stream). BF larvae are superbly adapted for staying in place and feeding underwater without being swept away by the current. The nether end of their bowling-pin-shaped body is equipped with little hooks that they sink into the surface of whatever they are sitting on https://bugguide.net/node/view/1673475/bgimage. They can also make silk web that helps them to stick tight or to move slowly to another spot. There usually are several generations per summer, with the final generation overwintering as eggs or as mature larvae that are poised to complete their transformation in spring. The summertime larval period takes a month or so, but the pupal stage is only a few days long, spent . Emerging adults float up to the water’s surface on bubbles of air.

BF larvae are passive feeders who expand a fringe/fan around their mouth in order to grab/filter out tiny critters and organic (living or once-living) bits that float past them. It’s the adults’ feeding habits that provoke profanity (“Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.” Mark Twain).

Like other biting flies, males are blameless nectar feeders. Females may also consume nectar, but they need that all-important blood meal in order to reproduce. Using her sharp, piercing (sometimes described as “blade-like”) mouthparts, . Injecting a local anesthetic and an anticoagulant allows her to get the job done efficiently (and causes the subsequent itching and swelling).

Different species of BFs target different kinds of warm-blooded animals, including humans, and some travel a great distance to do so. Purdue University’s Medical Entomology Department reports that only about six species of BF cause grief for humans in the eastern US (and not all species are prolific biters), though other species annoy simply by their clingy presence. Dense populations of BFs may cause livestock to lose weight and milk production to falter, and here in Wisconsin, a project to reintroduce the endangered Whooping Crane as a breeding species hit a snag when swarms of bird-biting BFs prevented the cranes from bringing off young.

Adult BFs feed by day; they are strong fliers that dislike wind; they love the thin skin on your ears and neck, and your clothing is no barrier; they have temperature receptors on their antennae (the better to find you with, my dear); and they seem to like the color blue. Your personal mix of CO2, sweat, shampoo, etc. may make you more – or less – apt to draw flies.

Much as she loves and practices irony and understatement, even the BugLady feels a little guilty for saying that BFs are a big pest. BFs in the tropics are capable of spreading diseases and parasites, but in the North Country, they are the biting fly that drives people inside when they want to be out – gardening, fishing, canoeing, hiking, camping, or just walking leisurely from the car to the house with a bag of groceries. Getting a few BF bites is irritating; getting a whole bunch can cause “Black fly Fever,” a flu-like reaction to the BF saliva, and people with BF allergies may end up in the hospital. Even dense swarms of non-biting BFs are annoying, because they fly into ears, eyes, noses and mouths. An article about BFs in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1993 quoted a clergyman who traveled through the “northlands” (probably French Canada) in 1624 as saying that BFs inflicted “the worst martyrdom I suffered in this country.”

Lots of brain power has been devoted to BF control over the years, and websites, brochures and papers about control measures read like war games manuals. It’s hard to zap the adults because they disperse away from their natal streams, and many pesticides should not be used in the watery habitats of the larvae because they kill other species indiscriminately. Some folks feel that the common repellent DEET may actually attract BFs, but tar oil spread on exposed skin is supposed to be pretty good….. One site recommends wearing an unpainted, aluminum hardhat coated with oil – the hardhat attracts BFs and the oil traps them. A strain of Bt (Bacteria thuringiensis israelensis) has been successful on the larvae but is expensive and labor-intensive. Mechanical methods include brush control and temporary damming of streams (still water carries less oxygen). Fogging provides only temporary relief on small properties. Out-foxing them by limiting outside activities to fly-free periods is best (they are said not to bite indoors), and a good antihistamine to treat the inevitable bites is a great Plan B.

As (a dynamite publication) points out, black flies are valuable native pollinators of wild blueberries, but black flies’ biggest fans are their predators. BF’s are an important fish food, and trout often intercept the emerging adults as they float to the surface. Birds, amphibians, and fellow-insects like dragonflies also eat their share of the BFs that escape into the air.

Some folks embrace the BF. Several towns in New England host Annual Black Fly Festivals (BFs are the unofficial State Bird of Maine). Although Vermont’s Adamant Co-Op Black Fly Festival seems to have fallen by the wayside this year, its motto has been “More fun than is thought humanly possible.” Press releases tell us to “Forget about fiddleheads, peepers, and maple sugaring. Black flies are the real harbinger of spring in central Vermont” and past festivals have featured “Black fly balloons, Black fly Jeopardy, a Black fly fashion show (antennae optional), the Black fly parade, mugs, T-shirts, and live music by the Fly Swatters.” Because, “after a long, cold winter here in Adamant, we need something to celebrate, and God only knows we have plenty of black flies.” The schedule of events for the day concludes with: “4:00 – Grill closes. Festival ends. Blackflies all die.”

Milo, Maine hosts a festival, as do several Canadian towns. The Adirondack town of Inlet, NY features an Annual Black Fly Challenge bike race. Many tourist-related businesses in the Adirondacks close for a month during the peak BF season, which they call “the Fifth Season.”

Go outside – feed the black flies.

On a related pandemic note – apparently, the pandemic has been keeping people off the trails that the BugLady walked today, because when she arrived, the mosquitoes had a noisy celebration.
 

 
The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
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The post Black fly – The Bug. The Legend. appeared first on Field Station.

Let’s celebrate the (almost bugless) Season with a dozen bugs that were photographed this year. Down through the centuries, various regional versions of the classic Christmas carol have included hares a-running, ducks quacking, badgers baiting, bulls a-roaring, biting cows, bears a-beating, cocks a-crowing, asses racing, starlings, plovers, goldspinks (goldfinches), sides of meat, ponies, deer, stalks of corn, cheese, windmills, and an Arabian Baboon. Never any bugs, though, so it’s up to us.

The BugLady wondered (innocently) if this BUMBLE BEE TRIO was sharing body heat one afternoon in mid-October, but BugFan Thelma explained the facts of life. Even though the air was cool and their season was winding down, the two, smaller male bees still had hopes of a final tryst. We can all help track the range of bumble bees in Wisconsin by sending our bumble bee pictures, ID’d or not, .

WHITE SLANT-LINE MOTH – Moccasin-flowers/Pink lady’s-slipper orchids are typically pollinated by native bumble bees that, lured to the flower by color and odor, push their way into a slit in the slipper, hoping (in vain) for a tasty reward. The moth may be biting off more than it can chew.

GOLD-BACKED SNIPE FLY – Is there a more elegant fly than this one?

NURSERY WEB SPIDER on tiptoe. The Nursery web spider family (Pisauridae) includes the fishing spiders, but not all Pisaurids hang around the water’s edge (the BugLady once found a nursery web spider in her rhubarb). They don’t spin trap webs; they find prey as they move across the landscape. Their name comes from the shelters females make (and guard) for their egg cases.

The BugLady stalks SIX-SPOTTED TIGER BEETLES – small, emerald sparks on dirt trails – as they stalk spiders and small insects. Some beetles don’t get the memo; there are two, four, six, and eight-spotted SSTBs. The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders says that they fly ahead on the trail and then turn to face us, but the BugLady has an awful lot of pictures of the rear ends of SSTBs.

FORKTAIL AND LESTES – the first Spreadwing (Lestes) damselfly that the BugLady saw this spring was a Slender Spreadwing dangling in the clutches of a mature female Eastern Forktail (the slate-blue damsel on the right). Forktails are tough – a few days later, the BugLady photographed another forktail holding a Powdered Dancer, also larger than she was.

ROBBER FLY – Isn’t she spectacular!! A fly this spectacular should really have a common name, but she doesn’t (although one photographer calls her an Orange robber fly). She’s Asilus sericeus, an inch long robber fly that’s found in the eastern half of the country, often dining on butterflies and moths that have come in to nectar on flowers. The BugLady is always blown away by those long, angular legs. Starting soon – a three-year Citizen Science project designed to find out more about the distribution of robber fly species in Wisconsin. The BugLady will post more info later.

Every fall the BugLady gets questions about the large, flightless, slow-moving MELOE BEETLE, a.k.a. Oil beetle or Short-winged Blister Beetle. Look but don’t touch – they’re named “blister beetle” for a reason. When they’re alarmed, Meloe beetles flop over and play dead, but they also ooze caustic stuff from their leg joints, so don’t touch the “dead” ones, either.

COMMON WOOD NYMPHS emerge in early July and fly around the grasslands into September. We can’t appreciate their nuanced coloration as they pass (there’s some variation , and ), but they really are monochromatic marvels, painted with shadow and texture.

SCORPIONFLIES are not in the fly order Diptera but in the order Mecoptera and the family Panorpidae. The BugLady often finds these jumpy little insects on leaves that have bird poop on them – they are mostly scavengers that feed on droppings and dead/dying animal matter (they’ll even rob spider webs) as well as pollen and nectar. This is a CSI bug – they will visit corpses, and their presence indicates that the body is fresh. Both ends are interesting – the face has a conspicuous elongation called a rostrum, and although the males’ reproductive structures look , they’re harmless.

At just under an inch in length, EASTERN AMBERWINGS are the smallest commonly-occurring dragonfly in Wisconsin (there are scattered populations of the even-smaller Elfin Skimmer, ). Many of our damselflies are longer, but they are far slimmer than the amberwing. The BugLady finds it extraordinarily easy to take out-of-focus shots of amberwings.

GREEN STINK BUG: Note that the BugLady said that this is an “almost bugless” season. Every year at about this time, the BugLady is visited by some insect, usually a mosquito, that should have been dead weeks ago. Oh, the BugLady gets that the small, cold-tolerant Chironomid midges will dance in the air deep into fall, but it’s been snowy and extra-cold around here, folks, since the beginning of November (a week ago, right after the BugLady’s alarm went off, the TV weather guy announced that it was 3 degrees out. She reacted appropriately). So where had this Green stink bug, photographed outside the front door on November 27, been hanging out? Or the spectacular Herald moth () that landed near her computer on November 23? Or the crane fly that she found on December 12 in the sink? Or the spider whose web descended from the conifers to her windshield wiper on the balmy (37 degree) morning of December 21? A Christmas Mystery.

Best Wishes for the New Year.

The BugLady

The post The Twelve Bugs of Christmas 2019 appeared first on Field Station.

The first rule of finding insects is “Look on flowers.” Flowers provide a place to rest, as well as a place to eat and be eaten. The second rule is “if you see an insect that’s really still (or in an odd position), look for a predator nearby.” So, when the BugLady spotted a horizontal horse fly, she knew that something was afoot, and she soon located the ambush bug above and to the left of the fly (the fly’s eyes were a bonus).

Back in November of ‘aught-eight,’ the BugLady wrote briefly about horse flies in a survey of biting flies, click here to learn more. It’s a group that we love to hate, but hey, it’s December, and we can consider them cerebrally rather than emotionally.

Horse flies are in the fly family Tabanidae, which also includes the deer flies. One source noted that while both horse and deer flies buzz on approach (deer flies’ whine is higher-pitched), horse flies aim at bare skin below the knees, and deer flies like the back of your neck. The BugLady, whose field clothes are long pants and short sleeves, is going to have to mull that one over a bit. According to , colloquial names include “Bulldog Flies, Clegs, Yellow Flies of the Dismal Swamp, Greenheads, Gad Flies, and Copper Heads.” And undoubtedly other names that wouldn’t make it past the NBC censor.

There are about 4,500 Tabanid species worldwide – 350 in North America. They’re found around the globe except for Hawaii, Greenland, Iceland, and the Polar Regions. Our most familiar horse flies are in the genus Tabanus (pronounced Ta-BAY-nus), which has about 100 representatives in North America. They’re often encountered around permanent wet/moist-lands because that’s where their somewhat aquatic offspring live, but they can be found from deserts to mountaintops.

Tabanids tend to be chunky flies, and some of them, at an inch-plus in length with a two-inch wingspan, are sizable. Their eyes are sometimes described as “bulging” (male flies have those huge, wrap-around eyes; females’ eyes are separated). Deer flies tend to be more colorful than the usually-drab horseflies (but read on).

Male horse flies feed on nectar and pollen and don’t have the equipment to bite. Females drink nectar, too, but they also need a blood meal (mostly from a mammal) to help them produce eggs. So they ambush passers-by, zeroing in on large, dark-colored, moving objects that give off a cloud of CO2 (including motor vehicles, says Eric Eaton, in The Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America) (clouds of deer flies around the side mirrors of slowly-moving cars are a common sight in July in the habitats where the BugLady hangs out).

Wikipedia describes their mouthparts as “a stout stabbing organ with two pairs of sharp cutting blades, and a spongelike part used to lap up the blood that flows from the wound.” Anticoagulant saliva keeps the blood flowing, sometimes long after the fly has departed. Some females may need a second meal or are disturbed during the first meal, and it’s in biting a second victim that she may transmit diseases (the list of pathogens isn’t long, and human infection is rare here in Wisconsin). Some people are allergic to the bites, though, and cows that are under attack by Tabanids are not contented – both weight gain and milk production suffer.

Horse flies are not without predators – birds eat both adults and larvae; nematodes and wasps parasitize the larvae, and adults are captured by solitary wasps to provision their egg caches and by spiders.

We swat at them without really looking at them, but if we didn’t know what they do for a living, we might notice that they’re pretty a handsome and diverse bunch of flies…… , and
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…and that they have eyes that macro photographers love,
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(Why? Click here to read more.)

Males chase females aerially after spotting them with those magnificent eyes. She lays her eggs in clumps that may contain as many as 1,000 eggs in several layers. Egg masses are glued to vegetation, rocks, twigs, etc. over the water; the BugLady usually finds them on cattail and blue flag leaves. The tiny larvae are equipped with a spine that helps them exit the egg, and when they hatch, the larvae fall into the water (deer flies) or onto moist ground (horse flies). There they stay, sometimes for several summers, especially in the north, feeding on small, soft-bodied insects and crustaceans, subduing them by biting them and injecting a venom. .��(and like their elders, they’re capable of delivering quite a bite, themselves, when handled carelessly).

Horse flies have been bothering people since there have been people, and if you’re on board with the idea that some of the dinosaurs were actually warm-blooded, ancestral horse flies may have fed on them, too. Aeschylus, a Greek playwright who died around 456 BC, wrote that horse flies drove people to madness.

The BugLady indulged in some picture-keying, which is unreliable but is so much fun when done responsibly. She thinks that the ambush bug’s victim may be Tabanus marginalis, which calls “the most common biting fly throughout the world” (but has only three pictures of). It’s a mostly-northern species with disjunct populations along the Appalachians, and it likes cool, wooded swamps.

The horse fly on the gravel path could be Tabanus nigripes, whose larvae are at home in wet areas that contain lots of organic material, like drainage ditches. The Tabanidae of Florida, by Jones and Anthony, tells us that “in recreational areas adjacent to lakes where livestock is not present, this species is reported to be a serious threat of man.”

The horse fly on the green leaf is (possibly) Tabanus vivax. One source says the larvae like boggy habitats, but a 1905 publication calls it the River horsefly and says that the larvae have been found in riffles.

The robust little, bullet-shaped fly with the dark stripe on its abdomen, sitting on a wood boardwalk, is probably Hybomitra illota, a horse fly of more northern orientation (mid-America, north). The BugLady found an interesting paper by P.D. Taylor and S.M. Smith in Medical and Veterinary Entomology about the breeding behavior of males. Under certain weather conditions, males aggregate in large groups at “mating areas.” Their behavior is somewhat similar to the lek behavior of some birds. Hybomitra illota is known to bother humans.

But not in God’s Country in December.

The BugLady

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