This little guy is a major agricultural pest affecting more than just cucumbers. I should have squashed’em after the photo… but I didn’t.
Spotted Cucumber Beetle
Clouded Sulphur
Doesn’t look very orange to you? Well maybe it’s orange on the inside. I submitted this photo to BAMONA, and they (eventually) classified it as Clouded Sulphur. (I assumed it was Orange Sulphur.) So I’ve updated this post with the new id.
Pearl Crescents
Dorsal view and ventral view of the Pearl Crescent butterfly (Phyciodes tharos) in a single photograph.
The Many Shades of the Spangled Fritillary
The silvery spots (or “spangles”) of the Great Spangled Fritillary are just like shiny little mirrors. With the right angle, they will reflect the colors around them. These pictures are all of the same butterfly as he sampled the many flavors of zinnia in our garden.
Tiger Bee Fly
Large and exotic, this fly is actually harmless to humans with neither a bite nor a sting. The female lays its eggs in carpenter bee nests, where the fly larvae seek out and devour carpenter bee larvae before they can mature and escape.
Tiger Swallowtail
Everything butterfly-related is a running a little late this year because of the cold spring. Normally I would see these in July, but now they are here in August. I’m not going to complain.
What do you see?
Is this just a normal tree trunk? Or Is there something unusual?
A closer look…
Zabulon Skipper
Ahh, skippers. So many, so very hard to tell apart. In this case, I feel confident in my id.
Physocephala tibialis or Thick-headed Fly
Identification is tentative but probably correct or very close. It’s a wasp-mimic, but the eyes are distinctly those of a fly. It was strikingly beautiful in the field. It’s not a great photo, but its one of only two I got before it flew away. The colloquial name, while amusing, is not a pejorative but instead originates from the fact that the heads of these flies are always wider than the thorax.
Hunchback Bee Fly
An interesting fly in both appearance and behavior. Something like the “Brown Cowbird” of insects, it will lay its eggs in the nest of wasps. The unsuspecting wasp stocks the nest with provisions for its own larva, but this fly’s larva gets fed instead.
