Return to Marlborough Forest (part 2)
August 9th, 2016
Because I know you didn't get enough spiders the first time.
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"May. I. help. you?"
A strange trifecta. This Goldenrod Crab Spider has caught dinner (a tiny blue bee or perhaps a fly), and an inchworm is rearing up as if to spectate on the carnage!
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Successful Goldenrod Crab Spider #2, this time holding what looks like a sweat bee. While I was taking photographs, a second sweat bee flew right into the spider's arms and attempted to mate with the first. Dude, seriously?
Darwin Awards: not just for people.
This strange character is called a Hunchback Bee Fly. It sneaks into wasps' nests to lays its eggs; when the larvae hatch, they eat the food that the wasps had provisioned for their larvae, and possibly the wasp larvae themselves! The adults like to nectar on black-eyed susans, which makes it no surprise at all that I saw my first in Marlborough Forest.
(A strange story to go with a strange bug: I was doing Google image searches to try to identify this and another insect (the little blue guy from three posts back, turned out to be a flower weevil.) I decided to start with the other and searched on "tiny blue bug proboscis." A photo of the hunchback bee fly (neither tiny, nor blue, though I admit it has one heck of a proboscis) turned up in the third page of hits. Has Google now achieved a psychic user interface?)
Another of Marlborough Forest's countless tiny mystery bugs. Thanks go to a helpful person at BugGuide for identifying it as a jagged ambush bug nymph, genus phymata, a predator on other small insects. (Marlborough Forest just teems with mini-predators and mini-parasites of all sorts. There must be an incredible abundance at the base of that food chain.)
Maybe a kind of tachina fly? I find its silvery-blue color rather pretty.
I share this moth just to say that, from a distance, it had remarkably effective "bird poop splattered on a leaf" camouflage.
Longhorn beetle, exact species unknown.
August 9th, 2016
Because I know you didn't get enough spiders the first time.
1680x1050 wallpaper
"May. I. help. you?"
A strange trifecta. This Goldenrod Crab Spider has caught dinner (a tiny blue bee or perhaps a fly), and an inchworm is rearing up as if to spectate on the carnage!
1680x1050 wallpaper
Successful Goldenrod Crab Spider #2, this time holding what looks like a sweat bee. While I was taking photographs, a second sweat bee flew right into the spider's arms and attempted to mate with the first. Dude, seriously?
Darwin Awards: not just for people.
This strange character is called a Hunchback Bee Fly. It sneaks into wasps' nests to lays its eggs; when the larvae hatch, they eat the food that the wasps had provisioned for their larvae, and possibly the wasp larvae themselves! The adults like to nectar on black-eyed susans, which makes it no surprise at all that I saw my first in Marlborough Forest.
(A strange story to go with a strange bug: I was doing Google image searches to try to identify this and another insect (the little blue guy from three posts back, turned out to be a flower weevil.) I decided to start with the other and searched on "tiny blue bug proboscis." A photo of the hunchback bee fly (neither tiny, nor blue, though I admit it has one heck of a proboscis) turned up in the third page of hits. Has Google now achieved a psychic user interface?)
Another of Marlborough Forest's countless tiny mystery bugs. Thanks go to a helpful person at BugGuide for identifying it as a jagged ambush bug nymph, genus phymata, a predator on other small insects. (Marlborough Forest just teems with mini-predators and mini-parasites of all sorts. There must be an incredible abundance at the base of that food chain.)
Maybe a kind of tachina fly? I find its silvery-blue color rather pretty.
I share this moth just to say that, from a distance, it had remarkably effective "bird poop splattered on a leaf" camouflage.
Longhorn beetle, exact species unknown.
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mustangsallie
August 9th, 2016 at 8:00 pm
Viewing the insect world through your eyes is very amusing (and informative).
mustangsallie
August 9th, 2016 at 8:01 pm
............and the photos are great as usual!
dagibbs
August 9th, 2016 at 11:40 pm
"Dude, seriously?"
Wow. Yeah... Darwin award material, for sure.
Mike
August 10th, 2016 at 3:01 pm
Some fetishes are best left as fantasies, dude.
That is quite the variety of insects!
Gillian
August 21st, 2016 at 7:11 am
Great series of photos. I was hoping to get out there this weekend to check out the dragonflies (and the crab spiders since I haven't seen any yet this year) but the weather has not been cooperative.