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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nAUTUMN MEADOWHAWK \u2013 Were there dragonflies? Indeed, there were! The last of the migrating darners and saddlebags passed the tower during a spell of Florida weather in September. Starting in early July, six species of meadowhawks occupy the second half of the dragonfly season, but they drop out, one by one until, in early October, only the White-faced and the Autumn (formerly Yellow-legged) meadowhawks remain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n STRIPED SADDLEBAGS \u2013 And there was one very special dragonfly. Striped Saddlebags live south \u2013 way south. About their range, bugguide says, \u201cNormal range from Northern Argentina to northern Mexico with regular movement into Arizona and Texas and more rare movement north and east as far as MN, WI, MI in the US and NS in Canada.<\/em>\u201d So it\u2019s pretty exciting to find one! <\/p>\n\n\n\n The WESTERN CONIFER SEED BUG is a large (\u00be\u201d) and dapper member of the Leaf-footed bug family (Coreidae). People mistake it for the invasive Brown marmorated stink bug Brown Marmorated Stink Bug – Dorsal – Halyomorpha halys – BugGuide.Net<\/a>, but it\u2019s slimmer than the chunky stink bug. WCSBs are typically found on conifers – when they\u2019re not gracing the BugLady\u2019s porch rail or trying to get into the house in fall (according to the Mass Audubon website, \u201cThey can also be easily captured and returned to the outdoors\u2014bluebirds love them!\u202fThere is no need to resort to insecticides.\u202fChemicals are dangerous\u2014Western Conifer Seed Bugs\u202fare not<\/em>.\u201d They don\u2019t eat your furniture or house plants, but they do suck sap from and damage conifer cones, seeds, twigs, and sometimes needles. Originally a resident of the Pacific Coast, they have moved east (and have been exported (accidentally) to Europe). If your goal is natural forest regeneration, WCSBs are unwelcome guests. They may deploy a smelly chemical when alarmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MONARCHS \u2013 There\u2019s a time, as the Blazing star (Liatris<\/em>) is fading and before the New England aster starts up, when the prairie is yellow, and goldenrod nectar fuels migrating Gen 5 Monarchs on their journey south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MOURNING CLOAK \u2013 The migratory\/Super generation of Monarchs lives a long time \u2013 emerging here in late August, overwintering in the mountains west of Mexico City, and getting at least part of the way back to Wisconsin in spring.\u00a0Mourning Cloaks live even longer. A graph at the\u00a0Home \u2014 wisconsinbutterflies.org<\/a>\u00a0website shows that sightings start in early March and run through the start of November, but unlike other species that produce several generations to span each season, there\u2019s only one generation of Mourning Cloaks per year.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Mourning Cloaks of spring have overwintered as adults, and as their caterpillar host plants (mainly willow, elm and birch) green up, they feed, breed, lay eggs, and die. Their eggs hatch and their caterpillars feed and pupate, and the butterflies emerge around the summer solstice. They feed for a while and then tuck themselves into a sheltered place to aestivate (become dormant) through the heat of summer. Yes \u2013 they start flying before the parade of spring flowers has begun, and yes, the next generation sleeps through the flowers of summer, but Mourning Cloaks are mostly indifferent to flowers. They get minerals from mud; they feed at sap drips (they\u2019re often seen in the sugar bush in early spring, but they can become dormant again if winter revisits); they like rotting fruit, dung, and the honeydew produced by aphids, and they check the feeding holes created by Sapsuckers. By the time they lay eggs the next spring, they\u2019re about 11 months old. <\/p>\n\n\n\n FIERY SKIPPER \u2013 Good things come in small packages \u2013 this dynamite little butterfly is about an inch long, with an inch-and-a-half wingspread. Fiery Skippers are a mainly-Southern species that filters north into Wisconsin by mid-summer \u2013 a long haul on those short wings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LARGE MILKWEED BUGS (these are nymphs) come in Large, Small, and False. They\u2019re in the Seed bug family Lygaeidae; they make their living by inserting their beak into the seeds within a milkweed pod, pumping saliva in to soften them, and sucking out the juices. They\u2019re very social and don\u2019t mind sharing a good food source, and it\u2019s possible that adults send out some kind of chemical signal to attract other adults. Adult Large milkweed bugs can survive on non-milkweed seeds, but their nymphs can\u2019t. They aren\u2019t considered a pest unless you\u2019re growing milkweed for seed, and they make a spectacular splash of aposematic\/warning color Large Milkweed Bug – Oncopeltus fasciatus – Oncopeltus fasciatus – BugGuide.Net<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Birds migrate, Monarchs and Common Green Darner dragonflies migrate, and so do Large milkweed bugs! It\u2019s too cold here in God\u2019s Country for them to overwinter in any form, so they repopulate the state in spring, after the milkweed is up. As with some birds, northern populations are long-distance migrants (and have longer wings to prove it) and southern populations don\u2019t stray far from home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A BUMBLE BEE busy collecting pollen for a brood that will not survive the winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The FALSE MILKWEED BUG looks<\/em> like a Small milkweed bug (Small Milkweed Bug – Lygaeus kalmii – BugGuide.Net<\/a>), and it\u2019s even in the same genus, but it\u2019s not sitting on milkweed. The BugLady usually finds them excavating the seeds of Ox-eye sunflower, aka the False sunflower. One note at Welcome to BugGuide.Net! – BugGuide.Net<\/a> says that if they checked their collection of Small milkweed bug pictures, they\u2019d probably find a bunch of misidentified False milkweed bugs. Nice video of False milkweed bugs multi-tasking at the original BOTW, here False Milkweed Bug, a.k.a. False Sunflower bug: Lygaeus turcicus \u2014 Bug of the Week<\/a>. Their doppelgangers are poisonous\/distasteful due to the toxic milkweed sap they ingest. False milkweed bugs are adorned in aposematic coloration, but as far as the BugLady knows, they are not poisonous\/distasteful. Are they cashing in on predators\u2019 predisposition to avoid red\/orange and black? <\/p>\n\n\n\n ANT FLIGHT \u2013 A hatch of royal ants emerged from their digs in the pressure-treated wood at the edge of the hawk tower\u2019s deck (not reassuring). The royal dance attracted to the deck three tree frogs that usually live around the base of the tower and perch on prairie flowers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n This FORK-TAILED BUSH KATYDID joined the BugLady on the tower and lingered for a portrait. The large curved structure, aft, is her ovipositor (the male has the \u201cforked tail\u201d). She inserts her eggs into a leaf edge, between the upper and lower surface of the leaf, or lays them on twigs or leaves. And there\u2019s nothing out on the prairie that\u2019s cuter than her jaunty, little nymph Insect on Rose – Scudderia furcata – BugGuide.Net<\/a>, Immature Katydid maybe – Scudderia furcata – BugGuide.Net<\/a>. The BugLady is far more likely to see a Fork-tailed bush katydid than to hear one \u2013 as this site says, \u201cPffftt!\u201d That\u2019s all it is. There can be a lengthy pause between songs<\/em>\u201d Fork-tailed Bush Katydid | Listening to Insects<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BLACK AND YELLOW ARGIOPES, like some of the other orbweavers, get pretty hefty by the end of summer, alarming some folks. \u201cWhere did those huge spiders come from<\/em>?\u201d they ask. Answer \u2013 they\u2019ve been here all along. They were smaller than the brightly-colored heads of push pins when they emerged from their egg sac in spring, and they\u2019ve been eating ever since. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n This TREEHOPPER\u2019s thorn disguise would be more effective if it were sitting in vegetation. Just sayin\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n BUCKEYE BUTTERFLY \u2013 Buckeye caterpillars Common Buckeye larva – Junonia coenia – BugGuide.Net<\/a> pick up a group of chemicals called iridoid glycosides from their foodplants. These chemicals stimulate their appetites so they eat and grow fast, but have the opposite effect on their predators, stunting their growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Buckeyes are migratory, too, moving along coastlines and rivers, flying to the Deep South with a tailwind in fall and returning to us (a few generations later) in spring, with males arriving first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fun Fact about Buckeyes: flowers may change in appearance after being pollinated \u2013 maybe a clue as small as a localized color change. Researcher Martha R. Weiss did an experiment that demonstrated that a wide variety of wasp, bee, fly, and butterfly pollinators (including Buckeyes) can discriminate between \u201cpre-change\u201d and \u201cpost-change\u201d flowers, and so can see which flowers will be more rewarding to visit \u2013 a win for both flowers and butterflies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Bonus points if you know where the Ben\u00e9t quote came from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Go outside \u2013 look (and listen) for bugs!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The BugLady<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n Note: All links are to an external site. Howdy, BugFans, The BugLady spends the spring and summer combing natural areas for bugs and flowers and other stuff to photograph, but in fall, she sits on a 10-foot-tall tower, counting migrating …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38860,"featured_media":16578,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[8],"tags":[967,909,589,968],"class_list":["post-16565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bug-of-the-week","tag-autumn-bugs","tag-bug","tag-monarch-butterfly","tag-tree-hopper"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n