bugs – Page 17

Grasshopper season

Late summer is grasshopper season for me. Even though grasshoppers are around from the first hint of spring to the last days of autumn, it seems like it’s in the hot, dry days of late August and early September that grasshoppers are most notable. Here at our new house, we wander back through fields of long grass when we go for a walk. Each step scatters a half a dozen grasshoppers from before us. They bound away, some just a foot or two, some four or five, and the odd one spreads its wings and flies off much farther.

Many of the non-fliers may still be nymphs, lacking full-grown wings, but all are very proficient jumpers. They owe this to their thick hind legs which contain strong muscles. There are two phases to the grasshopper’s jump: a crouch, and a thrust. As the grasshopper crouches, it contracts its flexor muscle to pull the lower leg tight to the upper leg. In doing so, it also flexes a bit of cartilage that acts like a spring, storing energy. Just before it releases the flexor muscle it contracts the extensor muscle, so that force is already being applied. When it releases the flexor, the “spring” snaps back, the extensor muscle contracts, and the leg kicks out rapidly and with great force. An analogy might be a catapult. As the catapult arm is winched back, it stores up considerable energy. When the winch is released, the catapult arm snaps back. If the body of the catapult was extremely light, and the catapult arm was braced against the ground instead of pointed at the sky, the mechanism would be capable of thrusting the catapult great distance (instead, they put a cup on the end and it thrusts other objects great distances).

If we could jump the same distance relative to our body length that a grasshopper can, we would be able to throw ourselves around 40 meters/yards in one leap from a standstill. At peak acceleration the grasshopper is experiencing about 20 G’s of force – a grasshopper is built to withstand this, but the same force would probably smush a human flat.

I thought I would try to see how many species I could spot amongst our grasses in the meadows. I took photos of everything that seemed to look different, with the intention of identifying them all when I got back inside. It seemed that the vast majority of the individuals I was seeing were of the above species. It was so boldly marked, I didn’t figure I would have any trouble at all identifying it, but I never did find a name. Of the dozen or so photos I cropped and edited, though, I was only able to place labels on four. Four, that’s all!

I pulled out my Kaufman Insects, but for all its fabulousness in other departments, it seems to be lacking in the orthopterans. So I next turned to my Marshall Insects, which helped me to identify (with confirmation provided by BugGuide.net) three of the photos. Then I ran out of print references, and tried browsing BugGuide.net. I was astounded at how many species there were, virtually all of them looking similar to the others. Finally, I searched for a list of Ontario grasshoppers, and found one for the Ojibway Nature Center in Windsor that I was able to identify one more species from. But whew. I hadn’t expected it to require such effort!

I get the impression that identification of grasshoppers from photos can be a tricky thing. For many the field marks are subtle, or you don’t know to look for them when taking the photo (such as with the tree cricket). Of course, as with all insects, there are always some that can only be identified by careful examination of their genitalia or other features requiring a microscope. And then, just to throw an extra wrench in the works, nymphs don’t always have the same pattern as their parents. I had originally thought that the grasshoppers might not be too hard to figure out, but now I’m thinking perhaps they’re a group best left to the experts, like flies or ants.

That said, here’s a couple of the more distinctive species I had. This one was the easiest to ID. It’s a Roesel’s Katydid, also called Shield-backed Grasshopper, Metrioptera roeselii. Its thorax has that yellow-edged flap that seems to fold down over the sides of the body. It’s a recent import from Europe, first found in North America in 1953, in Montreal. It’s now found throughout much of the northeast. Apparently there are both long- and short-winged forms, with the long-winged more common here. This one is a short-winged.

I believe this one is a Red-legged Grasshopper, Melanoplus femurrubrum, although there are a couple of Melanoplus species that share this feature, and I’m not clear on how to differentiate them. Migratory Grasshopper, Melanoplus sanguinipes, would be another possibility, although it seemed like they generally had more pigment in the herringbone pattern of the hind legs. Both Red-legged and Migratory are fairly widespread species, with BugGuide.net having records from coast to coast.

Another Melanoplus species (I think) that I’ve labeled Red-legged but could be something else. This one has more black markings in the wings, and a different pattern to the face. Individual variation? Separate species? I don’t know.

This might be a nymph of yet another Melanoplus species, M. differentialis, Differential Grasshopper. I stumbled across one in the nymphs section of the BugGuide.net Melanoplus page that looked very similar. It stood out from most of the others that I saw in its bright greenish-yellow colour. The majority of the grasshoppers I encountered were primarily brown.

Speaking of nymphs, I came across a couple of these in the grass. They’re the shed exoskeletons of grasshopper nymphs as they molted from one instar to the next. Based on poking around the nymphs page I think that these (as well as the second photo in the post) were late-instar (either fourth or fifth) nymphs of Red-legged Grasshoppers. I gather the black and white arches across the shoulder of the nymph are typical of many Melanoplus species.

Another exoskeleton. Like dragonflies or cicadas, grasshoppers have incomplete metamorphoses, hatching into adults directly out of their last-instar skins, without going through a pupal stage. As nymphs they have wing “buds” but their full-grown wings and full-length antennae don’t appear until the adult stage.

This last one isn’t actually a grasshopper, but another tree cricket, a different species from the one I posted about a few weeks ago. I found this one tucked in the leaves of a milkweed. It seems to be a Black-horned Tree Cricket, Oecanthus nigricornis, identifiable by the dark antennae, dark legs, and markings on the thorax. This species tends not to spend much time in trees, instead preferring raised vegetation in meadow habitat, giving it the alternative common name of Prairie Tree Cricket.

Monday Miscellany

I haven’t done a Monday Miscellany in a little while, my schedule over the last month or so being a little disordered. I’m actually able not only to do a miscellany this week, but do it on the proper day (at least, it’s the proper day when I’m writing this; by the time most readers will see it, it will be Tuesday, but hey. I do my best.).

Today’s header image is of an American Copper, Lycaena phlaeas. With such extensive meadow habitat at our new home, I’ve been seeing quite a few species of butterfly that I hadn’t encountered before; this is one of them. It’s actually not an uncommon species, I just haven’t spent enough time in appropriate habitats. It’s an interesting species in that it’s got two very distinct populations, separated from each other by great distance. The eastern population ranges through much of the northeast from Nova Scotia to Missouri. The northwestern population is found mainly through the arctic, from Baffin Island to Alaska, and south through the Rocky Mountains as far as Wyoming. A few disjointed populations are also found in other alpine areas. It has been hypothesized that the eastern population was actually introduced, and only the northwestern population is native.

Here’s something else I’d never seen: a Monarch caterpillar. I’m not sure why these guys have eluded me, as there has always been milkweed around the areas I’ve frequented. When we moved in and saw the expanse of milkweed by the house, I figured it would be a Monarch butterfly haven. I expected to see dozens of Monarch caterpillars chowing down on the plants. I was therefore surprised to see very few adult butterflies, and no caterpillars at all, despite dedicated regular checks of the meadow. Dan located this one right at the edge of the pack as he was chaperoning Olly during the cat’s daily outdoor walk (which the cat has come to demand rather vociferously). He was thoughtful enough to come get me. The caterpillar was gone when I looked for him the next day.

The rainy, cool weather that we had for all of June and July now seems to be a thing of the past. The last couple of weeks have been hot and humid. We have no air conditioning in the house, so to try to combat the heat of the afternoon we open all the windows wide at night and close them again when we get up in the morning. As I was opening the windows one evening, I discovered this little guy clinging to the outside of the window. It’s a Gray Treefrog, although you can’t see much of his upperside. The yellow of the inner thighs is diagnostic of this species, as are the thick toe-pads that he’s using to cling to the window. I’m not sure why he was on the window, except perhaps to eat the insects that were drawn to the light. I turned the lights off when I went to bed; he was gone in the morning when I got up.

We’ve had Black-eyed Susans blooming all summer in our meadows. It’s funny that they’re so common here in eastern Ontario, where they were relatively scarce where I grew up in the Toronto area. I’ve enjoyed admiring them each time I go for a walk, and made an effort to capture them in the panorama I used in the new header image for the blog. This week I’ve noticed some are starting to fade. What interested me about this observation was the fact that the outer portion of the petals seemed to go first. Many flowers, including Black-eyed Susans, appear differently under UV light, and through eyes that can detect UV rays, such as those of insects. Most of the time the UV patterns aren’t obvious to our non-UV-detecting eyes. However, on these fading flowers you can see where the two areas of different UV reflectance are, with the central circle mostly intact, but the outer one well worn. Check out this photo over at Flickr for an example of how bees see Black-eyed Susans – the petals are actually bi-tone.

Back in the spring I bought myself a Cardinal Flower for my garden with a birthday gift certificate. They’re a native species usually associated with wet or damp areas. We had seen the occasional Cardinal Flower along the lakeshore near our previous house, and I’d become quite enamoured with them, so I snatched one up when I happened across them in a garden centre. I usually browse through the pots until I find one with multiple stems, if possible; the one I bought had four. I wasn’t expecting it to bloom this year, but to my surprise all four stems put up inflorescences. I guess all the rain we’ve had has really appealed to them. Three of the four stems were the gorgeous bright red that I had specifically bought them for, but when the fourth set of inflorescences began to open I was delighted to find that they were pinkish-white. Some research on the web suggests this is an uncommon, though not unusual, colour form. One website I found was selling the white form for twice the price of the usual red. Another website commented, with regards to the common name, “Flowers are very attractive to butterflies and hummingbirds, but not cardinals.” The “Cardinal” in the name, of course, refers to the colour, not the species it attracts.

Alongside our driveway I have noticed a few of these plants. They grow with several broad leaves sprouting from the stem at the base, and a tall spike with small flowers up its entire length. I knew it was an orchid, but not what species; poking around online it appears it’s Helleborine, Epipactis helleborine. When we think orchid we tend to think of the flashy big-flowered things you can buy in pots in the grocery store. If we think of native orchids out in our woods, we usually think of ladyslippers. In actuality, though, there are dozens of native orchid species in North America. Ontario alone has more than 50 species of orchid growing wild. Many of them have smaller flowers and are less showy than their larger cousins the ladyslippers, but are nonetheless delightful. Helleborine is a non-native orchid. Its genus, Epipactis, is originally native to Europe, with no representatives native to North America. The first Helleborine was found in New York in 1879, likely spread from a parent plant planted outdoors somewhere some years earlier.

While visiting my parents this weekend, my mom commented that she’d observed some black beetles on a few of her daylily plants. When I investigated the plants myself I discovered that not only were there beetles on her daylilies, but the dead flower heads were absolutely crawling with them. The collapsed petals were so filled with the beetles that they were physically moving. I had seen these beetles before, once: while camping at a state park in Minnesota. I had sat down to eat my lunch (a sandwich from Subway) at a picnic table, and was very rapidly assaulted by a barrage of little black beetles wanting to get in on the action. I ate quickly. The beetles are, appropriately, called “picnic beetles”, and belong to the genus Glischrochilus. They’re attracted to sap and decaying fruit. I presume these flowers would fall in the latter category; with the temperatures so high, and the sun beating down on them, the dead flowers smelled strongly of fermentation.

These final beetles were found on some goldenrod in our meadows. I didn’t have to look hard to find them, though – both of these species appear to be particularly abundant right now. The orange ones are Pennsylvania Leatherwing, Chauliognathus pennsylvanicus, found commonly on goldenrod throughout the east. The members of this genus are all important in pollination and biological pest control, as many will eat aphids and other insects.

The black one is Black Blister Beetle (say that five times fast!), Epicauta pennsylvanica. It’s also frequently encountered on goldenrod in the autumn in eastern North America. Like all blister beetles, they exude chemicals that can burn and blister the skin. Apparently some species of Epicauta feed on grasses and crops as adults, and if baled with hay have been known to actually kill horses that ingest them.

Tay Meadows Tidbit – Tree cricket

Edit: I actually wrote this last night, but apparently when I hit “Publish”, WordPress didn’t actually publish it, or something went wrong, or I hit the wrong button but thought I’d hit the right one… who knows. Here it is now, in any case.

I’ve been having some technical difficulties with my camera the last couple of days, and as I sort them out I’ve been relying on photos I’ve already got on my hard drive. Fortunately, there are plenty, some 30,000 image files, in fact (I think I should be back to shooting new stuff again tomorrow anyway, though). Today’s photo is actually going waaaay back. I took these pictures last October, while visiting my parents’ old house for Thanksgiving. I found this intriguing insect sitting on the railing of the front entry porch.

When most of us think of crickets, what probably come to mind are field crickets, those chunky-bodied black insects that we’ll often see in the lawn or gardens. A few reptile owners might think of the brown sort you buy from the pet store, which are called house crickets. However, there are some 115 cricket species to be found in North America, in 25 genera. These encompass a broad range of shapes and sizes. Crickets share the thick, strong hind legs and long antennae with their cousins the grasshoppers and katydids. They can be told apart from these other two groups by a pair of long, thin tail projections extending from the rear of the abdomen.

Tree crickets are a very slender group compared to most other crickets, and more resemble grasshoppers than crickets. They belong to the genus Oecanthus, and most members are primarily identified based on the pattern of black markings at the base of their antennae. I neglected to get a good photo of the face of this one, but did find one that showed the base of the antenna, and cropped it in closely. Based on this photo, I believe this to be a Narrow-winged Tree Cricket, Oecanthus niveus, which have J-shaped lower markings. They hatch in early summer, and are grown and mate in the fall. It’s possible this one was out looking for a partner.

My Kaufman Insects guide indicates that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about the song of tree crickets that “If moonlight could be heard, it would sound like that.” Rather than the repetitious “chirp chirp chirp” that we think of as filler in uncomfortable silences, tree crickets sing in long trills. You can hear a male of this species at this YouTube video (links to YouTubes of other species are there as well).

Females can be told apart from males by their long, thick ovipositor. This one is a female. I’m not certain what she’s doing in this photo; she bent her abdomen forward underneath her and appeared to be cleaning it. You can see her two “tail” projections folded against the ground underneath her.

Typically, tree crickets eat aphids and other soft insects, though they’ll occasionally forage on fruits and foliage. It appears that most of their leaf-munching is tied to creating song posts from which the males sing to females. They cut a small hole in the leaf, and sit in it while they call, I guess using the leaf as a parabola.

You can read a bit more about the life history of tree crickets at the website http://oecanthinae.com/ – the tree crickets have their own web domain even!

White-blooded plants

The part of the meadow immediately around our house is filled with Common Milkweed, Asclepias syriaca. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a large patch of milkweed before. Ordinarily I would find single plants, maybe a few loosely clustered together, but I’d never found any area where they were the dominant wildflower. They’re a plant, like lilacs in the spring, that I love to walk among because of the heady sweet fragrance that rises from their blossoms. Such an incredibly large patch gives off an incredibly delightful scent. The smell is likely a byproduct of the plant’s nectar-rich flowers, which have an unusually high proportion of sugar in their nectar. Native Americans would actually use it as a sweetener, like honey, though I can’t imagine how painstaking it must have been to harvest.

There are more than 140 species in the genus Asclepias, the milkweeds. Around here we only have a handful, of which the Common Milkweed is probably the most common and well-known. Others include Swamp Milkweed, A. incarnata, and Butterfly Weed, A. tuberosa. Butterfly Weed isn’t that common, but it’s certainly eye-catching, with vibrant bright-orange flowers that, as the name implies, are especially attractive to butterflies and other insects. Asclepias are also known as Butterfly Flower and many cultivars can be commonly found in nurseries and garden centres.

The name milkweed, of course, comes from the white sap that oozes from the plant’s veins when its leaves or stem are broken. The sap contains a type of latex, similar to that collected from rubber trees, but for which attempts to process it have been largely unsuccessful. The actual function the latex serves to the plant is still up for debate, although it may be either an additional defense against predators due to its bitter nature, or possibly a coagulating agent in cases of wounds. Anyone who has broken a milkweed leaf knows how sticky the sap is.

The plant can also be harvested for silk fiber, which is taken from the downy seed puffs in the fall and winter, as well as bast fiber, which is the stringy inner “bark” of the plant. The latter much resembles hemp in its properties and uses. Interestingly, oil from the seeds can be converted and used as a very effective sunscreen. Even though at maturity the plant is toxic and could make you ill if eaten, these toxins are found in minimal quantities when the plant is young, and can be destroyed through cooking, allowing young leaves and sprouts to be consumed.

The vast majority of Common Milkweed flowers are purple – either a dark purple, as in the previous photo, or a lighter purple as shown in the foreground of the second photo. However, while out walking with Raven one afternoon I came across three plants, all clustered together, that had peachy-orange flowers. I can’t find any mention of this unusual colour online. At first I just assumed they were older, but they were still in good shape, and fading flowers typically go yellowish-white, rather than peachy-orange. I’d be curious to know if anyone else has observed this colour morph.

I suspect that milkweed is probably best known for its role as a host plant for monarch butterfly caterpillars. I have seen a few monarchs in our patch this summer, but I’m not sure whether the rain has affected numbers or they’re just not as common around here, as there haven’t been nearly as many as I would expect for a patch this size. I’ve been watching for caterpillars, but haven’t spotted any yet.

Monarchs aren’t the only insect that milkweed appeals to. Ants are attracted to the sweet nectar of the flowers, and many of the plants I looked at had ants crawling all over their flowers.

These Red Milkweed Beetles, Tetraopes tetrophthalmus were recently emerged and crawling about the milkweed plants. They were fairly abundant, with many plants hiding at least a couple. Classified with the long-horned beetles, this species uses the milkweed as a host plant, much like the monarchs. Their larvae bore into the stems of the plant, feeding on the plant tissue there, and then overwinter in the roots. They emerge as adults in the early summer to mate and lay eggs. These two, and many of the others I saw, may have been crawling around looking for a mate. Most species that feed on the plants as larvae end up being either toxic or distasteful (or both) to potential predators, and sport bright warning (aposomatic) colouration. In the case of these beetles, it’s a bright red with black spots.

This one is an Orange-spotted Lady Beetle, Brachiacantha ursina, a native species that is often associated with milkweed. I’m not sure whether its larvae likewise use it as a host plant, or if the adults are there for another reason. I saw several of these guys on the plants when I poked around looking to see what I could find.

This final species is Three-banded Lady Beetle, Coccinella trifasciata, another native. There appear to be two subspecies, one that occurs across most of the continent east of the Rockies (C. t. perplexa), and the other that is found west of the Rockies, along the coast.

The Large Milkweed Bug, Oncopeltus fasciatus, is another species I’ve recently been seeing a number of on the plants, but for whatever reason I don’t seem to have taken a photo of them at any point.

Tuesday Miscellany

The month of July has been one thing after another, it seems, and I’m not just talking about nature observations. Between moving at the start of the month, internet downtime immediately following the move that stretched into a few weeks, unpacking and settling into the new home, housesitting for my parents a couple of times, and a trip back to Halton for a funeral, I’ve had lots of distractions that have kept my mind from blog. As a result, I have a pile of photos that I’ve taken but not posted that I thought I’d gather together and put into a miscellany post.

The first photo is from a couple of weeks ago. I’d taken Raven for a walk at the 100 acres that adjoin our main piece of property, to scout out the trails and get the lay of the land. As I was following the path through a field lined with milkweed, I spotted this little guy curled up in the leaf of one of the milkweed plants. It was a smaller Gray Treefrog than I usually see, and the facial markings were particularly well-defined. I wrote about treefrogs last spring when I found one calling from my parents’ water garden.

Another amphibian, this one an American Toad. This guy turned up at one of our MAPS stations. I’d just taken off my rainpants (which I consider a vital piece of clothing in the early morning hours when everything is still covered in dew) and had sat back down on the rock when I was startled to discover a toad only a couple of inches from where I’d just flopped down. I’d missed squishing him by less than a hand’s breadth. You can read more on toads from a post I did last fall.

Another near miss, this Eastern Milksnake was sunning itself on a patch of moss when I very nearly stepped on it. It may even have been the same day. I haven’t seen too many milksnakes about; even though they’re common, they’re not frequently encountered, being less numerous I guess than the abundant garter snakes. I’ve done a post on milksnakes, too. It happens to be my number one top most visited post that I’ve written so far, no doubt because they are often kept as pets.

I found this caterpillar in the grass at Rock Ridge a couple of visits ago. It stayed in the same spot for half the morning. It was a fairly chunky caterpillar, as these things go, and being brightly coloured I figured it would be easy to look up when I got home. I searched through all of my caterpillar references, and then did a Google image search for yellow caterpillars, and wasn’t able to find it. So I turned to my usual fallback, BugGuide.net. Within hours of posting the photo, it was identified for me as an Elm Sawfly – not a lepidoptera at all! Which would explain why it wasn’t in my caterpillar books. (It is actually in the Kaufman insect guide, but looks white there, not yellow, so I may not have noticed it). Sawflies are actually a type of stingless wasp that deposit their eggs in the twigs or leaves of plants. The “saw” in their name refers to the structure of the ovipositor, which resembles a saw.

This one really is a caterpillar. I believe that it’s a species of moth in the genus Furcula. However, when you look at caterpillar guides or online at BugGuide.net, all of the Furcula caterpillars are green with brownish saddle patches. None are completely brown. A Google image search turned up only one other brown Furcula caterpillar, which was taken by Bev of Burning Silo, who happened to have taken the photo just up the road (relatively speaking) from mine.

I found this nifty fly resting on a dried flower head among the patch of sunflowers when I was searching for insects. It didn’t move when I plucked the deadhead and twisted it around for a better photo. I wondered if it might be dead or possibly parasitized, but when I put the stem back down and it brushed against a leaf the fly took off. It’s a Tachinid fly, possibly in the genus Cylindromyia. Tachinid flies are nearly all internal parasitoids of caterpillars and other insects. Whereas parasites will feed off their host but let them live, parasitoids nearly always kill their host in the end. You can really see well the “halteres”, the vestiges of the second set of wings, which look like round knobs behind the main wings here.

In banding you often have the opportunity to see some strange things you may not have noticed or been able to observe while the bird was perched up in a tree. This is one of those things. This bird’s foot has been infected with a type of bird pox that gets under the scales of the foot and causes mutated growth of the cells. This one is an especially “hairy” looking one, many just grow thick and lumpy. These growths are especially tender and prone to bleeding if they get caught up in netting or the like, and you can just imagine how uncomfortable they must be for the poor birds. I let this guy go as soon as I’d removed him from the net, without taking him back for processing. Occasionally the pox can spread up their leg, and if it does it can become a nasty situation, causing the normally loose bracelet-like band to squeeze and constrict the leg. Some birds will never suffer that, but better safe than sorry.

The new home has many bluebird boxes scattered out in the meadows behind the house. When I was walking through the meadows near one of these last week I could hear constant chittering coming from one of the boxes. As I drew nearer, I could see faces frequently popping up to the hole to peek out at the world. Clearly these were fledglings that would be departing the nest either later that day or the next. They had lots to say, and weren’t too concerned about me. however, when Raven came near to the box, panting loudly and conspicuously, they all shut up and sat tight. Too late, little birdies, you’ve already given away your location!

And finally, this box belonged to some actual bluebirds. Dan discovered the nest, tipped off by a couple of upset adults when he walked by the general vicinity of one of the boxes. Very young, only a few days old at most, these babies are most likely a second brood for the bluebirds. Baby birds grow fast to begin with, but second broods are especially fast, and these babies were probably out of the nest by a week and a half old, two at the most. The boxes that are currently in place are old, weathered, and some are starting to rot. Also, they all require a screwdriver to open. Dan and I will probably replace a few over the winter/spring with new ones that can just be flipped open to check and clean. They’re all currently above head height, too – hard to see what’s inside without a stepstool! I got this photo by holding the camera above my head and hoping for the best.