bugs – Page 19

Monday Miscellany

I never did get around to posting any photos from our most recent visit to Rock Ridge, with the exception of the unboring beetles. That’s not for lack of any, however. I’ll probably recycle some of last visit’s photos into the post on our next visit (tentatively scheduled for Thursday, weather permitting). However, I’ll also post a couple here. This first one is a posed self-portrait (about the only sort of photo I get of myself, since I’m usually the one holding the camera) looking out over the main lake at Rock Ridge about an hour after sunrise. I’m not aware of a name for the lake, and in fact many of the lakes in the park are nameless, or at least lack any sort of official designation. The same was true of Hemlock Lake over at the first MAPS site (we gave the lake that name). Given that this site is Rock Ridge, perhaps I should start calling it Rock Lake? We’ll have to ponder that on the next visit…

This photo was taken on Big Clear Lake, one of the larger “perimeter lakes” that border the edge of the park. True to its name, the lake is both big and clear. On sunny days it’s easy to see the bottom even ten feet down. The clear waters imply it’s an oligotrophic lake – “oligo” meaning few, and “trophic” referring to the food chain. There’s not a lot of nutrients in this lake, possibly as a result of a granite bottom, and so there isn’t a lot of algae growing in the water column. Lack of algae means lack of plankton, lack of plankton means lack of aquatic insects, and all the way up. That’s not to say that there’s no life in the lake, just that compared to lakes with lots of nutrients this one is relatively depauperate.

I came across this beaver jawbone at the site, nestled in a bed of pine needles. The yellow teeth are characteristic of rodents, and their relative length and the overall size of the bone identifies it as a beaver. Beavers have sharp, strong teeth that grow through their entire lives. They need to be constantly chewing on trees and branches in order to keep them worn down. If they stopped chewing, the teeth would eventually grow into the roof of their mouth and make it impossible for the animal to eat. It’s possible that this bone was the kill of one of the wolf/coyote packs in the park, or it may simply have been a beaver that died of natural causes.

These Olympia Marble caterpillars were found crawling about the tip of a stem of woodland phlox that had gone to seed. The long, thin projection in the foreground, and the one that the little caterpillar is on, are both seed pods. I’m not sure if they were actually eating the seed pods or stem, or if they were there looking for a place to pupate; probably the latter, as the hostplant for the species is given as rockcress, not phlox. I mentioned the adults in another post a few weeks ago, found in similar habitat.

As we were leaving the site we noticed a couple of fish in the short, shallow creek that joins Big Clear Lake with “Rock Lake”. They were close enough, and the water clear enough, to get a passable photo. This one is a Pumpkinseed, identifiable both by the red crescent at the back of the black “ear flap”, and the red and blue striping on the cheek. They look considerably different when out of the water, however, the blue fins don’t really show up and the fish’s body looks green, not brownish red. They’re a common species that I’ve encountered in all of the lakes of the area, or at least those that I’ve looked in.

And a few steps further up the path (okay, so this post ended up being mostly about unposted photos from Rock Ridge), this fishfly flew in front of me and landed on the underside of this branch, where he obligingly stayed put so I could photograph him. I’ve talked about fishflies before, but the ones I’d seen were in the other fishfly genus, Chauliodes. This one is in the genus Nigronia, which have white patches on their wings, and is probably N. serricornis.

We’re starting to pack up the house in preparation for our move, now only a week away. Merlin and Oliver try to help, though I’m not sure they really lend much to the operation. There’s just something about an empty box that a cat can’t resist. We’ll have lots of packing to do, more than the last time we moved – at the time, back in Toronto, half my stuff was already boxed and in storage, which made it a bit quicker. We’re renting a truck and hopefully will be able to do it all in one day, if we’re prepared ahead of time.

And finally, this is a screenshot taken of the front page of the Nature Blog Network toplist. For the first time since I signed up, I’ve made the front page! I’m listed right behind one of my favourite blogs, too. I post this not to gloat, but because I’m proud to see something do so well that I’ve put so much time and effort and devotion into over the last year and a half. Of course, ultimately it’s my readers, all of you folks, that I really have to thank. Without you, I would still just be blogging away to myself. I know that I often fall behind on comments in trying to keep juggling all the balls of my life, but know that I read them all and I really appreciate hearing from everyone! And I do hope to eventually reply to them all (if I get organized, maybe I’ll even start keeping on top of it…).

Unboring boring beetles

A few days ago I had a great string of beetle sightings within about 24 hours. It began with the beetle shown above. We had a couple of friends from back in Toronto for a visit, dropping in en route to their cottage north of here. We’d set up some chairs on the deck, a nicer place to sit at this time of year than indoors, and were chatting when Dan noticed a large beetle walking along the deck railing. He pointed it out to me and I hurried to get my camera. It didn’t sit still, but I was still able to run off a few passable shots of it before it paused, spread its elytra, and flew away.

I was quite enamoured with it, as it was the first long-horned beetle I can recall seeing (that’s not to say there weren’t perhaps earlier ones, just that I don’t remember them if there were). These beetles are quite large, by beetle standards. This one was probably over an inch long in body, with the antennae being the same length again, perhaps 2.5″ (5cm) long overall. It was interestingly patterned, patchy black and white. I didn’t get a chance to look it up right away, so I didn’t know its name or any of its ecology.

The following day we were out at Rock Ridge. The morning had been rather slow as far as the birds went, and we were feeling tempted to call it a bust. Nine birds captured in six hours wasn’t much to keep one stimulated, particularly when your alarm had gone off at 3:15 am after just 4.5 hours of sleep. On my penultimate net check, an hour left to go in the morning, I discovered this beetle in one of the nets. Another longhorn! Well, considering that was the only thing I’d pulled out of the net over the past couple of hours I was feeling somewhat buoyed by the discovery. I carefully tucked the beetle into a cloth bag and took it back with me to photograph. I wasn’t sure if this one was the same species as the previous day’s or not – on the one hand, it looked more mottled and brownish than the first, but on the other, some species of insect can be quite variable. Only one way to know – photograph it and look it up.

On the final net round, as I was starting to close up the nets, I discovered this third longhorn hanging from the fine mesh. Was I stoked! This one looked like it was a different species, too, all black with a bold white spot at the base of the elytra and a bold red thorax. Its antenna were markedly longer than the first couple I’d found; in this photo the spread from one tip to the other might be as long as my open palm. It was quickly slipped into another cloth bag and secured to my belt while I finished closing. Interestingly, this one squeaked in protest at its confinement, a noise one doesn’t often associate with beetles.

I took photos of them both and brought them home to compare to the previous day’s beetle and look up an identification. It didn’t take long to find it in my Kaufman Insects: White-spotted Sawyer, Monochamus scutellatus. I was a bit disappointed to learn that they weren’t three species after all but just one. However, the difference in appearance, it turned out, was due to the sex of the beetles. The first two I’d got, with the shorter antennae and mottled patterning, were both females. The shiny black one with the extra long antennae was a male. The white spot referred to in the name is actually present on all of them, but blends in with the other mottling on the females.

The red collar on the male turned out not to be part of his colouration at all, but was in fact a thick band of mites. I only saw one other reference to this online, another photo of a White-spotted Sawyer, its thorax thick with mites, posted to BugGuide.net. No explanation of what the mites were doing was present, and it’s possible that it’s not really known.

The species is a borer of dead and dying conifers. Around here it would primarily target White Pine, though spruce and balsam fir are also favourites where they’re present. At Rock Ridge there is plenty of White Pine, it’s one of the dominant tree species, but around our home there’s virtually none except for a bit on the far side of the lake from us. They spend about ten days to two weeks feeding on the soft new growth of conifer twigs before mating. Then the female beetles will search out some appropriate wood (they’re decent fliers, which explains their presence in the nets) and lay her eggs in the crevices of the bark. When the eggs hatch, the larvae bore through the outer layers of the bark into the softer inner layer, the cambium. There they spend the rest of the summer feeding, then gradually tunnel in to the heartwood to spend the winter. The following spring they return to the surface layers where they finish their growing. In warmer climates the larvae may pupate and emerge as adults that summer. In cooler climates, such as ours, they may require a second winter as a larvae, finally emerging as an adult two years after the egg was laid.

(The squeaking, it turns out, is made by the beetles as they rock their head from side to side, rubbing tiny ridges on the inside surfaces of their thorax. I’m not sure if this is a behaviour evolved for the purpose of startling predators, or if its production when captured is a secondary purpose to the evolutionary reason for the noise.)

It was also on that closing round that I ran into this flashy beetle. Or rather, he ran into me. I had paused to disentangle my shoulder bag so that I could set it along our exit trail and avoid carrying it all the way back to our banding site, and then all the way back out. As I was standing there, something flew into my forehead at high speed and pinged off, falling to the ground at my feet. It was easy to spot, as it practically glowed in the sunlight. As soon as it had hit my head it had folded its feet to its body and played dead. It was sitting on the ground on its back, a compact nugget of bronze. It was a metallic wood-boring beetle, another group of beetles that I knew right away but couldn’t remember having ever seen before.

I took photos of both sides and then left it for a bit as I photographed one of the longhorns. As I was doing so, it came back to life, putting its feet out and taking a few tentative steps. It caught the attention of a couple of ants who came over to check it out (or maybe the beetle was sitting in the middle of their pheromone trail; in any case, it gives the beetle some scale). I had photos that better showed the metallic sheen, but I liked the species interaction in this one. (The ant, incidentally, I believe is a species in the genus Formica, but there are 86 species in this genus in North America, many of which look very similar, so I can’t say much beyond that.)

Upon returning home, I found an approximate match in my Kaufman Insects and followed it up on BugGuide.net. Some poking around on the latter suggested that this might be Dicerca divaricata, a fairly common species in the east that targets the heartwood of dead hardwoods such as maples, oaks, and others. Most records for this species on BugGuide.net are from June. However, there are a number of Dicerca species that all look somewhat similar, and I couldn’t definitively rule out the possibility of another species.

Tuesday Miscellany

An assorted collection of photos this week. Getting out to do the MAPS fieldwork with Dan has been a great opportunity for me to see things I wouldn’t normally encounter; not just birds, but bugs and flowers and such as well. It’s almost too good – I come home at the end of the day with a couple hundred photos, and enough blog fodder to last me a couple of weeks. I’ve been hoarding some photos that I hope to put into a full-length post, and hopefully I actually get around to doing that.

This week’s first photo is of a Scarlet Tanager we banded at one of the MAPS sites over the weekend. He’s fine, don’t worry – some birds, if you open your hand slowly, don’t realize they’re free at first, and will just sit on your open palm for a few moments before flying away. Male Scarlet Tanagers are striking birds, and their red can sometimes be so bright and vibrant as to overwhelm the camera. This was a particularly spiffy bird, an after-second-year, meaning it was hatched in at least 2007 or earlier. Birds in their first summer as a breeding adult (second-year birds) can look a little ratty because their wing feathers, which are the same ones they grew in the nest, wear and fade more than seasoned adults.

It was a toss-up over which photo I wanted to use for my headliner image. This Luna Moth was in such pristine condition, unusual for larger moths. I’ve been getting quite a number of these coming to the trap the last few times I’ve set it out – sometimes up to three or four in a night. Yesterday night we accidentally left the porch light on when we went to bed, and when we arose in the wee hours of this morning, in among the great numbers of smaller moths were two Lunas hanging on to the nearby wall. Most people are probably familiar with this species from a number of sleep-aid commercials and other advertising. However, it is a common moth of the east, flying in early summer at northern latitudes, a wider window farther south as it’s able to raise multiple broods. However, because adults live for only about a week, they may not be regularly encountered. Like with so many characteristics of animals, the purpose of the long, showy tails isn’t definitively known, but is believed to be a form of protection by focusing a predator’s attention away from vital body parts.

This was probably third runner-up for header photo. This is a nest stuffed full of Veery chicks. The nest itself is one from Maplewood Bog that Dan profiled on his Frontenac Birds blog. On our last visit the female was still incubating the eggs. Although only nine days elapsed between our first and second visit, already the chicks – who weren’t even hatched last time – are alert, eyes open, and begging for food as you carefully lift the overhanging branch to peer in. It’s amazing how fast chicks grow. For most songbird species, it only takes two weeks or so for the young to grow from naked, blind hatchling to feathered fledgling, and leave the nest. This nest will be empty on our next visit.

Back over at Hemlock Lake, we spotted a number of these interesting and colourful fungi growing on the trunks of dead hemlocks. The site is full of dead trees, mostly hemlock though possibly some pine – my dead-bark identification skill is still being refined – so there’s certainly lots of great growing location for this fungus. I believe this to be Ganoderma tsugae, also known as Hemlock Varnish Shelf. These are young specimens; as they grow they’ll lose the bold white outer rim, and will attain a slick gloss, the reason for the word “varnish” in the name. The fruiting bodies themselves, the part you actually see, are annual; they grow anew every year. However, the mycelium, the network of “roots” that exist within the dead tree, is longer-lived and is the source of new brackets each year. It’s a species that can be found across a large portion of North America.

I haven’t noticed these around our home, but there were quite a few at Maplewood Bog, and a handful at Hemlock Lake as well. This is Wood Lily, Lilium philadelphicum. It seems to grow at the edge of clearings in dry deciduous woods, and will grow in loose congregations of a handful of individuals scattered together. It’s very widespread, found just about everywhere in North America east of the Rocky Mountains, except for the Maritimes and Florida. It grows from tuberous bulbs, which Native Americans would gather for eating. I imagine, however, that this would need to be done sustainably, as removing the bulb essentially removes the plant.

I haven’t been able to come up with an ID for this fly. One of the rare instances that my trusty Kaufman Insects wasn’t able to provide me with the answer. There are so many species of flies that flipping through my Stephen Marshall’s Insects leaves me a little overwhelmed, though I think it might be a species of Tachinomyia, a relatively common group that develop as parasites of tent caterpillars – something we have no shortage of around here. I thought the yellow foot pads might be useful, but there are a number of species that have those. This poor fly had got caught up in one of our nets. I was able to untangle the fine mesh and let it go, although often with flies and wasps they get it so tightly wound around their tiny necks that you don’t have much choice but to pop their head off to get them out of the net.

And the last photo, a little bit of rainbow hiding in a juniper shrub. The sites are usually very dewy first thing in the morning, and I wear rainpants just till the sun is up high enough to dry off the vegetation. The dew drops make for some beautiful images. In this case, the dew had lightly coated a spider web, and I walked past it, the sunlight refracting through the millions of tiny water droplets cast a lovely rainbow.

That’s it for this week. There’s so much going on, though, I’ve already started working on next week’s miscellany post!

Monday Miscellany

In the end, I missed doing a Miscellany post last week, so I’ve rolled a few of the photos into this week’s post. The week has been very busy, between our first MAPS visits to all three sites, and some inconveniences related to the sale of our house. The landlord has received an offer, so barring any serious problems with the home inspection later this week, the house is now sold. That means we have until the end of the month to move out (as per a termination of tenancy agreement reached some time earlier). We’re still finalizing the details about where we’ll be in three weeks – more on that once we know more ourselves.

This photo is from a walk with Raven last week. The sky was just so incredibly blue, the most amazing shade of indigo, almost the perfect shade of an Indigo Bunting.

On the same walk, I took her to the water’s edge of the lake that the road butts up against, with the intention of throwing the stick out for her. When I peered in, however, the water was full of minnows. And I mean absolutely chock full. I don’t know how to tell all the little fishies apart – minnows, dace, shiners, etc. They all just look like small, thin fish. Possibly if I was able to catch one (not likely, they move so fast!) it would be easier to pick out identifying features. There had to be some thousand or more of them there in the shallows. After observing them for a bit, I decided to take Raven up the road a bit to a different spot to swim.

I’ve found a lot of six-legged critters this past week, so this post will be a little insect-centric. This first one is, I think, a member of the genus Odonteus, or at least that’s my best guess based on the images in my trusty Kaufman guide to insects. The beetle was found in the upstairs studio by our friends and guests who we had up to visit a couple of weekends ago, as they were preparing to go to bed in same room. I was intrigued, and tucked it away in the fridge for a later photo. The long, thin horn seems to be fairly distinctive, although it’s a feature that only some members of the genus have. Presumably these are used for “fighting” between males, as only the males sport them. They’re part of the taxonomic family Geotrupidae, the Earth-Boring Dung Beetles. As the name implies, the adults build burrows where they lay their eggs and provision them with food (eg. dung).

This jumping spider turned up on Dan’s bag at the end of the morning during one of our MAPS visits. I may not have noticed it at all, it it wasn’t for it vibrant colouring. I believe it’s Phidippus whitmani, but there are so many species of jumping spider I don’t like to label things unless I’m certain. From what I can tell, at least through BugGuide.net records, it seems to be a fairly common species of the eastern continent. Its coloration apparently mimics mutillid wasps, also known as velvet ants, which can give a very painful sting.

The “garden” continues to turn up interesting critters among the foliage. This amazing beetle was found clinging to the underside of one of the leaves of my morning glory. It’s a Goldon Tortoise Beetle, Charidotella sexpunctata, is found through most of the eastern continent and feeds, unsurprisingly, on morning glories. Their striking metallic colours are created through structures in the outer shell. They have the ability to change their colour at will just by pumping in or removing a fluid to microscopic cavities in the shell. When the golden reflective is absent, they are a dull red – you can see that base colour shining through here.

This one was in the leaves of my johnny jump-ups. I believe it’s an assassin beetle of the genus Zelus, possibly Z. luridus. This species is found through eastern North America, feeding on other small insects that happen to cross his path. It has sticky hairs on its forelegs that it uses to keep hold of its prey with.

This final insect turned up in my moth trap one morning. It’s a Maple Callus Borer Moth – yes, a moth! – which is part of a group of moths known as the clearwings. Most, except for this species, don’t come to light. However, for those so inclined, they can be drawn in using pheromones. Like its name says, this one is a pest of maples.

Merlin showing Raven how much he loves her. Raven seems less enthusiastic about the affection.

Leaving behind childhood

Despite living on a lake, I don’t make it down to the water every day, depending on what I’m up to and where I take Raven out for exercise. A few days ago I decided just to take her down to the water to swim, rather than walking her down the road. As I was standing there, waiting for her to retrieve a stick, I noticed the dry husk of a dragonfly nymph’s exoskeleton. In the last few days there’s been dozens upon dozens of dragonflies, skimmers and baskettails and clubtails and even a couple of darners, swirling through the air above our driveway and lawn. It seemed that there was a big emergence just recently, producing all these adults now on the wing. I presumed this exoskeleton to belong to one of them, and looked around to see if I could spot anymore.

Could I ever! At first it was just one, then two. Then a couple more. Then three in one spot. The more I looked, the more I saw. There were dozens upon dozens of exoskeletons clinging to the cattails, the dogwoods, the grasses and tree leaves and shrubs and dock. Dozens and dozens of nymphs creating dozens and dozens of dragonflies. Most were medium-sized and were probably baskettails, but I saw a few larger ones, and also a few small ones that belonged to their cousin species the damselflies.

Dragonflies and damselflies spend anywhere from one month to five years as a nymph, living in the mud and vegetation of lake and pond bottoms, and moulting a dozen or more times as they grow. Once they’re large enough, they climb out of the water and up onto a tall piece of vegetation or other structure. There, they dig in their claws to ensure a firm grip, and then begin shrugging off their skin. Like cicadas, which I watched emerge last summer, they have an incomplete metamorphosis, meaning that the adult insect emerges directly from the exoskeleton of the nymph, without an intermediate stage as a pupa.

As I was poking around the shore, checking out all of the discarded exoskeletons, I heard a rustling. Following the sound, I discovered this dragonfly, still clinging to the reed next to an empty shell. One wing was crimped, and it couldn’t fly. It may have emerged in tight quarters where its wing didn’t have room to expand as it dried, or it may be that its wing got caught in the exoskeleton as it was emerging, and dried at a funny angle. Regardless of the cause, life was done for this unfortunate dragonfly – if it can’t fly, it’s unable to either catch food or mate.