Category: invertebrates

Dan really outdid himself with the gift he brought me this afternoon. He walked into my study holding a large black-and-yellow butterfly and asked, “Is this a Giant Swallowtail?”

It was indeed. He’d caught it while it fluttered lazily at the phlox in our garden. What makes this noteworthy is this:

We’re at the tip of the red arrow, roughly.

The one and only time I’ve ever seen this species was a number of years ago, perhaps 2005. It was visiting my mom’s garden at my parents’ old house in the Greater Toronto Area. The species is very rare in Ontario; it occurs regularly in small numbers in southwestern Ontario, but the farther east you go the rarer it seems to become. Of course, it doesn’t breed out this way, so all occurrences of the butterfly here are immigrants that either traveled here under their own steam or were blown here in a weather system. The Canadian Biodiversity Information Facility has a species page for Giant Swallowtail, on which they note, “In 1992, a stray was recorded in the Ottawa area for the first time following high winds resulting from a hurricane in the southern U.S.” Could today’s visitor have ridden up ahead of Irene?

These are beautiful big butterflies. They fly as if their oversized wings are too big to flap properly, like floppy clowns’ shoes. They float lazily in the air, never traveling very high, cruising from one spot to another with what appears to be hardly any effort at all. Dan said when he first saw it above the garden he initially thought it was a falling leaf.

They also have the distinct habit of fluttering while they visit flowers. I took a couple of photos of it in Dan’s hand then had him release it. It stuck around the garden and I followed it about, camera in hand, trying to get a good photo as it resumed feeding on the phlox, but it wouldn’t stop fluttering. In fact, it seemed to use its wings to push its head deep into the throat of the flower. Judging by the blurred wings I see in many of the photos on Google Image search, this wasn’t unique to our butterfly.

Down south, in its breeding range, this species is considered a pest of citrus orchards, especially oranges which has earned its caterpillars the name of “Orange Dogs”. It’ll also feed on Hop Tree (Ptelea trifoliata) and Prickly-ash (Zanthoxylum americanum) where citrus trees aren’t common, such as up here (though both species actually in the same family as oranges and other citrus). I don’t think we’ve got Hop Trees here, but we certainly have lots of Prickly-ash about. I wonder if their range might expand, or if it’s not the availability of food plants that limits its northern distribution, but rather something like average winter temperatures or snowfall affecting overwintering survival.

My camera’s battery died after I’d run off a dozen shots, and since it seemed to be hanging about the garden and not going anywhere I hurried in to grab my spare. But when I returned, it’d disappeared, presumably off into the meadow somewhere. Safe travels, buddy, and thanks for visiting!

Dan’s been showering me with gifts lately. The baby snake a couple of days ago, and then yesterday he caught me a swallowtail butterfly. I had him hold it for a couple of photos and then asked him to put it on our hydrangeas on the off-chance it might not fly away right away. It didn’t, and I was able to get some nice shots of it.

We have two black swallowtails that occur here: Black Swallowtails (Papilio polyxenes) and black-morph female Canadian Tiger Swallowtails (P. canadensis). From the top, the easiest way to tell the two apart is the orange spot at the corner of the hindwing – in Blacks it’s got a black dot in it, while in Tigers it’s just solid orange. Also, Blacks will show that faded yellow band partly up the wing, while Tigers don’t. The extensive blue in the hindwing makes this a female Black Swallowtail – males will have a bolder mid-wing yellow stripe and much reduced blue.

Black Canadian Tigers are apparently rare, but at least up here in eastern Ontario Black Swallowtails are near the edge of their range and so not a whole lot more common. I would see Black Swallowtails from time to time back in the Toronto area, but I’m not sure if I’ve seen one since moving east. My mom had one at their place farther east from us this summer, though.

Black Swallowtail caterpillars feed on plants in the parsley family, Apiaceae. This includes, of course, parsley, but also a number of other cultivated and native species such as carrot, dill, fennel, parsnip, Queen Anne’s Lace and other plants that bear similar umbrella-shaped inflorescences. I haven’t seen caterpillars on any of my parsley plants, or on the wild parsnip or Queen Anne’s Lace in our area… but I haven’t looked too closely, either. The species overwinters in the pupa stage, which means they’ll be caterpillars through the fall, so I should keep an eye on our plants and see if anything turns up.

I discovered these guys on some yellow flowers in our garden yesterday afternoon. I think the flowers were a type of Rudbeckia, though I admit I’m drawing a blank now, at 9pm, and feel too lazy to go dig up a flashlight and wander out into the garden to check. ;) I can confirm, however, that I also discovered a single individual on a Black-eyed Susan out in our fields the same morning. They’re small – no more than a centimeter / half-inch – and strangely angular. The bright yellow of the lower individual blends in remarkably well with the flower.

These are ambush bugs, a type of assassin bug belonging to the subfamily Phymatinae. I think these are Jagged Ambush Bugs, genus Phymata, for which there are four species listed on BugGuide.net. Although the images for P. fasciata seemed to match these individuals more closely, the only BugGuide records for that species were from the southeastern US. So it may actually be P. americana, which appears to be a northeastern species.

Ambush bugs are predatory. They wait on plants, commonly on flowers, for another insect to stroll by. Flowers make good ambush spots because they’re frequently visited by pollinators. When the unsuspecting insect gets too close, the ambush bug leaps forward to snatch it using its mantis-like hooked forearms (which you can see quite well on the lower individual here). They’re capable of taking prey larger than themselves; like other assassin bugs, they rapidly move to stab captured prey with their sharp ‘beak’ and inject it with a mixture that paralyzes it and dissolves its insides so the predator can then use their straw-like beak to ingest the liquified tissue.

It looks like this is a mating pair, but this BugGuide photo had a comment on it suggesting that the upper individual, the male, is actually just hitching a ride on the lower individual, the female, because she’s larger and stronger and capable of taking down bigger prey than he himself is.

A week or two ago Dan caught this butterfly and brought it to me to show me, and in case I wanted pictures. I forgot to ask him how he caught it, but I’m going to assume it was with my sweep net that’s propped on the front porch (he has caught butterflies by hand before, though, early in the morning while they’re still cool. He’s got an amazing touch for holding these critters; I wouldn’t trust myself to do that).

This one is a Great Spangled Fritillary, Speyeria cybele. I tend not to think of fritillaries as very common because I don’t see them very often compared to other species, though they’re not exactly rare. The Great Spangled is among the most widespread and abundant, found across much of the continent. The name comes from the silvery white spots on the underside of the hindwing, visible when the butterfly folds its wings (see below). All members of the genus lay their eggs on various violet species (Viola spp.), which are certainly in abundance around here.

After I’d taken a couple of photos Dan let the butterfly go, but instead of flying away it turned and fluttered back to his body for a few moments. It’s possible it was attracted to the salts of the sweat on his skin, something that I’ve had happen on rare occasion.

Last summer I discovered a wasp-mimic mantisfly at Maplewood Bog, one of our MAPS stations. I’d never seen one of these strange-looking bugs in person before, but I recognized it from regular browsing of my insect field guide. A few nights ago I encountered another one, only the second I’ve ever seen – interestingly, the same night I got my second-ever Hologram Moth. This individual came to my moth sheet and was just resting there in front of the light.

This one’s a different species than last year’s, and in fact a different genus. Last year’s was a wasp mimic of the genus Climaciella. This individual is Dicromantispa interrupta. The second part of the name refers to the dark band that runs along the outer edge of the wing and is interrupted near its tip. As I noted last year, these insects are predatory and use their front legs just like praying mantises do. My Kaufman Guide to Insects makes the note that a sister species, D. sayi may come to lights and prey on other insects that are also attracted to them. This one showed little interest in the other bugs at the light, so far as I could tell. Perhaps it was simply content to sit and people-watch.