northeast-flora-and-fauna

I saw small insects scurrying around on some flowers that I believe are Black Diabroticas . At least they look similar, and iNaturalist shows no similar insects with which they're easily confused. This is a better look at them than you'd get from the naked eye; I used the magnification lens I add to my camera. I'm not sure I would have noticed a single one, but when a bunch of them are on a flower they can get your attention. I didn't see articles about them out on the web, so I don't have a lot of information about them. They're considered leaf beetles. I assume most of their relatives eat leaves, and while these guys seemed to be eating flower petals, petals are considered modified leaves. (Don't confused these guys with pollinators that help plants; these insects were eating it.) Plants in the aster (aka daisy aka sunflower) family are on their menu. Their closest relatives (same genus) is a larger, more colorful beetle generally considered to be agricul

 Here's a Red-banded Hairstreak . No other butterfly in our area has - wait for it - this particular red band . The hairstreak butterflies have a clean, crisp overall appearance. Most hairstreaks are brown or gray, though some are primarily green. The only other hairstreak that I spot a lot is the Gray Hairstreak. Their are other butterflies in the hairstreak subfamily, many named "elfins". Though related, the elfins don't generally give off the same crisp ambiance. Like the rest of the moths/butterflies, Red-banded Hairstreaks basically only eat as kids (caterpillars); apparently decaying sumac leaves are something they consider a delicacy. As adults they drink heavily instead; nectar is a popular choice. August 15, 2020 at Negri Nepote Native Grassland Preserve

Here's a Red-footed Cannibalfly . At least I'm pretty sure that's what it is; a few years ago I went through a list of robberflies and couldn't find anything that looked like these guys  and  lives in New Jersey. It's hard to see, but I believe the cannibalfly is eating a smaller insect. My best guess would be a honeybee, which would be somewhat appropriate given that another colloquial name for the Red-footed Cannibalfly is the Bee Panther. (Maybe I should have included Bee Panther in my post about New Jersey Leopards . They also have yellow-and-black stripes on the tail; maybe Bee Tiger would have been a better name.) If you're this guy or a close relative, you get dinner by flying over to (usually) an arthropod, jab it with your proboscis, inject digestive juices into your prey, then suck the fluids out of it. (Maybe it's like an arthropod slurpee.) Apparently they will sometimes eat smaller cannibalflies, giving legitimacy to the "cannibal" pa

Here's a Hummingbird Clearwing Moth . They are sphinx moths aka hawkmoths , and are considered to mimic both hummingbirds and bees. I can easily understand a moth (which has relatively little defensive options) mimicking a bee since bees can sting. I can only assume that their resemblance to hummingbirds is due to: Very similar feeding habits, since both hover in flight while drinking nectar from flowers. Hummingbirds are occasionally preyed upon by robberflies and mantises, though they're not the primary prey of such predators. Hummingbird Clearwing Moths might get a free pass from predators that consider them to be weird food that tastes funny, like hummingbirds. They have a fairly close relative (same genus) that looks similar, the Snowberry Clearwing Moth . They'd be black where the Hummingbird Clearwing has a chestnut-red color. Though the Snowberry Clearwing isn't truly rare, the Hummingbird Clearwing is clearly more common in my area. August 15, 2020 at Negri Nep

I've seen in movies where a character is given a Rorschach test and wants to give a harmless interpretation for the image, they'll claim it looks like "two butterflies mating". But how many people know what mating butterflies even look like? I've seen butterflies (and other insects) mating on a fair number of occasions, and below is a pair of Cabbage Whites mating. During mating, their abdomens are attached though their wings usually cover this up. Typically if it looks like two butterflies are standing back-to-back and touching, there's a pretty good chance they're mating. (More info here .) It's neat to see but difficult to photograph, but sometimes one will fly off while they're still attached. (I suspect I may have spooked some of them into flight myself.) August 15, 2020 at Negri Nepote Native Grassland Preserve August 15, 2020 at Negri Nepote Native Grassland Preserve

Here's a Monarch Butterfly picture I took with a photobombing insect. August 15, 2020 at Negri Nepote Native Grassland Preserve What is the 2nd insect? It's hard to say. The wings are moving too fast to tell much from them. The face doesn't look bee-like to me; I thought the face looked a little like a dragonfly, though when I posted it online someone else nominated a hoverfly . Both these theories make a certain amount of sense. I definitely saw dragonflies nearby, and they could be looking to make a meal out of one of the smaller pollinators hanging around flowers. (I suspect that a Monarch would be a little large for most dragonflies to attack.) As for hoverflies, they're also called "flower flies", and would be interested in some of the same flowers that attract Monarchs. We all recognize bees as important pollinators, and many also recognize butterflies as pollinators, but some flies and wasps are also important in getting plants pollinated. I tried expa

Meet a Common Wood-nymph Butterfly . Though they're less flamboyant than many others, these guys are also in the large brush-footed family of butterflies. In my area they tend to be pretty easy to identify. They're smallish brown with yellow patches where you can usually see at least one of a pair of dark eyespots. In a spreadwing view like below, you can see the pair of eyespots easily, but when their wings are up you may only see the frontmost spot. When I saw my first Common Wood-nymphs, I was excited to have found a butterfly that I hadn't noticed before. But when I found it in my field guides, I realized that this wasn't a big/interesting discovery after all; they described this species as "common and widespread". (Unless you're an expert already, a lot of your discoveries are likely to be plants/animals that are among the most common.) It sounds like they're a harder ID in some areas of the country where the yellow patch doesn't happen, thou

Yesterday you heard about the "tigers" of New Jersey; today I'll talk about its "leopards". Here's a Leopard Slug , a clearly spotted and relatively large slug. Apparently they can get up to 8" in length. Slugs and snails are both types of mollusk , and so are distantly related to animals like clams or octopuses. They eat lots of stuff, plants/fungi/invertebrates both alive and dead, and is sometimes considered an agricultural pest. August 26, 2017 at Duke Farms Here's a Wood Leopard Moth , a primarily European moth considered invasive here in the US. I'm sure those spots inspired them acquiring "leopard" as part of their name. Like many successful invaders, they (as caterpillars) aren't picky eaters, willing to eat a variety of tree and bush vegetation. June 18, 2018 at Murray Hill Although I don't have a picture of one, we also have Giant Leopard Moths in New Jersey. That moth isn't very closely related to the Wood Leopa

Okay, New Jersey doesn't have wild tigers running around. But a surprising number of other animals are at least partly named after the tiger. First, our Monarch butterflies are in the subtribe Danaini, which are colloquially known as tiger butterflies . There are other similar looking tiger butterflies, and they're mostly orange and sometimes with black lines. I'm suspicious that this coloring is how they acquired the tiger moniker. One relative in India is actually using the common name of Tiger Butterfly . August 15, 2020 at Negri Nepote Native Grassland Preserve As I've  mentioned before , there are also "tiger swallowtail" butterflies. They aren't in the same family as the "tiger" butterflies, but are a group (glaucus) inside one of the swallowtail genera ( Papileo ). I'm assuming that the black stripes on yellow (a color that's a little like orange) inspired this name. August 15, 2020 at Negri Nepote Native Grassland Preserve Next,

Here's a Twelve-spotted Skimmer . As you probably guessed, they are another dragonfly species in the skimmer family . They're named after their twelve black spots (3 black spots per wing). Coupled with the 2 white spots on each wing plus some basal white on the back wings, no other dragonfly around here looks like this, making the males one of the easiest dragonfly identifications around. The females look similar to this except the white spots aren't there; the wings are clear there instead. Since both males and females have the 12 black spots, you could argue that this is one of the few dragonfly common names influenced by the appearance of the female. (Based solely on the male, you could call it a Twenty-two-spotted Skimmer.) Though the white spots indicate this is a male, I see no pruinose on the tail, so I believe this is a young male. August 15, 2020 at Negri Nepote Native Grassland Preserve

Here's a female Blue Dasher Dragonfly , following up yesterday's male Blue Dasher Dragonfly. As you might notice, the species common name comes from the pruinose on the male. Other than a little blue on the head, the female doesn't have a heck of a lot of blue. They also like to perch with a pair of their wings held ahead of their head. This isn't unique to Blue Dashers, but it's a little irregular. Before they're adults, dragonflies live as small aquatic predatory nymphs called naiads. Nymphs and larva are two common ways for insects to grow into adults. Unlike larva, nymphs never go through a pupa metamorphosis stage like moths/caterpillars do. Instead nymphs are structurally similar to adults, and get more similar as they go through their instars .  The naming convention comes from Greek mythology. Nymphs are minor female deities, and naiads are basically water nymphs . August 15, 2020 at Negri Nepote Native Grassland Preserve

Meet a male  Blue Dasher Dragonfly . Tomorrow I'll show you a female. Like many other dragonflies in my area, they are also in the skimmer family . (Remember that this includes dragonflies like the pondhawks and meadowhawks in addition to ones actually named skimmers. At the Skimmer Family reunion, little nametags would no doubt be helpful because there's too many of these guys to remember them all.) On the other hand, there's no other dragonfly species in their genus, so the Blue Dasher has no really close relatives. The turquoise eyes and light blue tail make these guys fairly distinctive-looking. Like with many male dragonflies, the tail starts out a different color but develops a pruinescent waxy coating as they age. In Blue Dashers (and Eastern Pondhawks), the pruinescence is light blue, but in Common Whitetails and Widow Skimmers it is white. You can still see some of the original dark-blue tail color at the end of the tail of this individual. The other name for thi

Here's a Citrus Flatid Planthopper . Planthoppers are an intfaorder (higher than a family) of true bugs . Though planthoppers do occasionally jump (approximately as well as grasshoppers), they generally prefer a slow, under-the-radar walk to get around. This is a native insect here in North America (where it generally does no environmental damage), though apparently it's an invasive insect in Europe (where it can be a bad actor). Like many insects that can be invasive, they are not picky eaters. (It's hard to establish yourself in another environment if you're heavily dependent on species that you've left behind.) August 12, 2020 at Sunny Slope Road

Here's a Brown Marmorated Stink Bug . It's in the family of true bugs called shield bugs or stink bugs . And it was yet another arthropod hanging out outside my door this summer. There's not a lot to like about these guys. They're invasive, can damage crops and native plants, and stink if you kill/move them. They prefer the fruits of plants to eat, though it sounds like almost any part of a plant will do in a pinch for these guys. They're native to places like Japan and Korea, though they've established a fairly thriving population in my area (New Jersey and Pennsylvania). August 5, 2020 at Sunny Slope Road

I haven't shown an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail in a while; below is one encountered at the Duke Farms butterfly count.  This is one of the larger and most distinctive butterflies in my area; the only butterfly it looks like on close observation is the Canadian Tiger Swallowtail , and we probably only get the occasional stray down here. Another relative, the Western Tiger Swallowtail , is also very similar but even less likely to be seen this far east. Though these are recognized as separate species, it's obvious they're closely related to the extent they can interbreed. There is even a hybrid population between the Eastern and Canadian Tiger Swallowtails that's now recognized as a separate species, the Appalachian Tiger Swallowtail . It's a little unclear to me whether they should be different species or different subspecies . July 25 at Duke Farms

Here's a Hackberry Emperor Butterfly , one of our brush-footed/four-footed butterflies . This is a big, visually diverse butterfly family that includes many I've discussed before, like the Eastern Comma, Question Mark, Red Admiral, and Monarch. I will confess that I usually don't get a good look at their feet, so their tendency to walk on only 4 of their legs and to have fuzzy legs doesn't typically help me with an ID. But if you've got one in your hand, it could be a good clue. Unlike more versatile butterflies like the Red Admiral, the Hackberry Emperor uses only the Hackberry Tree as a host plant during its caterpillar stage. It's not uncommon for butterflies and moths to be named after their host plants; the Spicebush Swallowtail, Pipevine Swallowtail, and Snowberry Clearwing also come to mind. July 25 at Duke Farms There is a relative to the Hackberry Emperor that looks similar, the Tawny Emperor. Though the colors aren't exactly the same, I've men

Here's a Red Admiral Butterfly we spotted at the 2020 Duke Farms butterfly count. This is a very widespread species of butterfly, living in much of North and South America, Europe, Asia, and some of Africa. Though the British consider them to be large butterflies, I'd put them in more of a medium category. Like most butterflies/moths, they can only be as widespread as their host plant(s), and the Red Admiral uses most plants in the nettle family . In my area, a common (though not entirely popular) nettle is the Stinging Nettle , and a lot of times you'll see them in the vicinity of this skin-irritating plant. This is a butterfly that might land on you. They don't bite, but the salts in your sweat is an important nutrient for these butterflies. Consider letting them drink; you weren't using that sweat anymore anyway. July 25 at Duke Farms

Here's a Sleepy Orange Butterfly I saw as a part of the basically-annual Duke Farms butterfly count. This is a day when some local lepidopterists , some Duke Farms staff, and some Duke Farms volunteers (I'm in this last category) gather at Duke Farms to count butterflies. Generally we split up into 2-3 groups to cover different areas of the property, count the butterflies we're able to identify (sometimes they fly off before we can tell what the butterfly was), and then the results get combined into a report. The butterflies are not collected or even caught - this is a purely observational event. The Sleepy Orange is one of the more interesting stories to come out of the butterfly count. Two years ago the lepidopterists were excited to see a Sleepy Orange Butterfly, and then another one, and then another one. After they got to maybe a dozen of them, they were not as excited by seeing them, though the big story was that it wasn't known that Sleepy Oranges were in Somers

Here's a Peck's Skipper . Though not particularly colorful, Peck's Skipper (and all skippers ) are considered to be butterflies. (The clubbed antenna is usually a good indicator of butterfly-ness.) Peck's Skipper is in the Grass Skipper subfamily ; as caterpillars they eat grasses or sedges. Most of the skippers are small, earth-toned butterflies. The yellow patch where the middle one juts further to the back is considered to be a good way to identify this particular skipper. They were named after the guy considered to be the first native born American entomologist, William Dandridge Peck . July 25 at Duke Farms

Here are a couple more Cloudless Sulphurs .  Both are looking for nectar on teasels; as I mentioned before teasels are invasive plants but are fairly popular with seed-eating birds and pollinators. For that matter, these wildflowers with lots of small flowers on them (like teasels, milkweeds, goldenrods) are frequently quite popular with pollinators since each of those flowers is a potential source of nectar. Remember that these guys are usually noticeably bigger than our our sulphurs (also called yellows), and they usually have little or no markings on the wings. In the first picture you can see they sometimes are a greenish-yellow, while the second picture shows one that's more of a light yellow. While it's tempting to try and use subtle coloring as a primary identification tool, that's probably been the source for most of my misidentifications. Whether it's due to normal color variation or weird lighting, color can mislead you. July 14 at Duke Farms July 14 at Duke F

Here's an Eastern Amberwing Dragonfly . They are pretty small as dragonflies go, though they're still more robust-looking than a lot of damselflies. They get their name from their translucent amber wings of the males; the females have darker patches on otherwise wings. (Many times species are named for the appearance of the flashier sex, which is frequently the male in nature.) Like many of the dragonflies I've discussed, these guys are also considered skimmers , and like many skimmers you can frequently find them perched somewhere. Though they typically catch food on-the-fly, they'll frequently perch to eat that food. The males will stake out a patch of water that they think the females would approve of for egg-laying, and aggressively defend it from other males. If the male has chosen well, the females will show up and they'll mate. Though they're predators in their own right, they have something else going for them. The stripes on their tail is somewhat simil

Yesterday I talked about the Dogbane Leaf Beetle as one of my favorite beetles, but there are other contenders. Here's a firefly, probably in the Photinus genus . And in my area, the most common of these is the Common Eastern Firefly . And yes, despite their common names of "firefly" and "lightning bug", these insects are neither flies nor true bugs but are a type of beetle. Identifying these guys in daylight (at least down to the species) is difficult. My book Fireflies, Glow-worms, and Lightning Bugs (by Lynn Frierson Faust) relies a lot on seeing their flash pattern and color. If this is a Common Eastern Firefly, at night I should see a flash that lasts long enough to look like a Nike swoosh or the letter J, and this should repeat every 6 seconds with a mostly yellow color. Other species may have different colors (green or orange aren't unusual) and a different flash pattern. But seeing one in daylight makes the ID less reliable. My book states "Fra

Here's one of my favorite beetles, the Dogbane Leaf Beetle . If you like shiny things, you're going to love Dogbane Leaf Beetles. They're almost like jewelry for plants. These guys are one of those insects that will feed on both dogbanes and milkweeds; in fact I suspect this little fella is probably on a Common Milkweed. (The leaves look a little large for a dogbane.) Both dogbane and milkweed (two types of plants in the  Apocynaceae family ) have a sticky, poisonous latex-ish substance you can see if you break a leaf. Many insects that eat these plants end up being poisonous, or at least foul-tasting, to eat. And most of these signal their poisonousness to potential predators by flaunting red/orange coloring (e.g. Monarch Butterflies, Large and Small Milkweed Bugs). It's likely that the Dogbane Leaf Beetle accomplishes the same thing with its shininess - predators are able to distinguish them from tastier, more nutritious insects. They do look a little like an invasive

Here's an immature male Common Whitetail Dragonfly . How do you know it's an immature male? It's not like the dragonfly is moody, or is horsing around with his buddies, or wants to drop out of school to join a rock band. It's all in the wings. The body coloring looks very much like an adult female Common Whitetail, but the difference is in the wing pattern. Each wing has some coloring near the base but it mostly consists of a wide complete dark band that goes uninterrupted from front to back. If this were a female, each wing would have a dark path out at the end and then another one in the middle that's at the front of the wing but doesn't extend to the back of the wing. (The link above shows/describes this a little more.) Later on in life, this fella should develop pruinose on its tail, giving it the white tail that more easily distinguishes the males and lends this dragonfly its name. Immature male Common Whitetail at Duke Farms

Here are a pair of Sleepy Orange Butterflies . One seems to be nectaring on a Wild Teasel (an invasive species, though not usually an especially bad one) while other other was either coming in for a landing -or- maybe checking out a potential romantic partner or rival. It's not too surprising to me that a native butterfly is drinking nectar from a non-native plant. Nectar is mostly sugary water, so chemically this nectar is probably fine for our pollinators. And if plants that depend on pollinators (plants that don't pollinate through the wind) weren't acceptable to our pollinators, they simply wouldn't survive here. I'm suspicious that the one on the teasel is a male. If we could see the top view of the wings, the males have a dark border that's sharp while the females have fuzzier dark borders. I think I can see the border through the wing, so I'm assuming that implies the border is pretty sharp. Unfortunately I can't see the borders well at all on th

Here's another Widow Skimmer I met. With no white on the wing or tail ( pruinose ), it's presumably a female. She is a member of the skimmer dragonfly family , considered to be the largest dragonfly family, though some members of the family have surnames like Whitetail, Pondhawk, Meadowhawk, etc. This family generally exhibits sexual dimorphism , frequently due to pruinosity.  Don't be confused by the picture. If that was a bee or butterfly, it's likely that we'd be witnessing a pollinator at work. But for the predatory Widow Skimmer, this is just a place to perch. July 14 at Duke Farms

Here are a couple Eastern Pondhawks I met. I'm posting them together to show the way sexual dimorphism manifests itself in this skimmer dragonfly species. They are about the same size and with mostly transparent but veiny wings. But while the body of the females is bright green other than the black stripes on the tail, the males are a light, powdery blue. Note that I called them skimmer dragonflies; this means they're in the same family as the Widow Skimmers I've shown earlier. The Eastern Pondhawk is considered a fairly aggressive dragonfly in that it will attempt to prey on most insects its own size and smaller, including other odonates (odes for short, and consisting of dragonflies and damselflies). Note that both these pondhawks were found at Duke Farms on the same day, the pictures were taken a while apart, and there's no reason to believe they were a couple. July 14 at Duke Farms July 14 at Duke Farms