Lightning Beetle Again and Again

Greetings, BugFans, 2025 – The BugLady has been seeing her first firefly around the 4th of July. She stands on the riprap, enjoying the fireworks shows launched by her neighbors and the more distant municipal displays while the fireflies fly around her, putting …

The Mighty Mosquito rerun

Howdy, BugFans, 2025 – almost two decades ago, when the BugLady was working on a phenology project in the Bog, she encountered multitudes of mosquitoes and she made a deal with them – she wouldn’t bite them if they wouldn’t bite …

June Beetle redux

Greetings, BugFans, 2025 – One of the BugLady’s daughters gave her a subscription to Storyworth for her birthday, so she has been working her way through weekly questions. It’s sobering to realize that she and her sisters are the Keepers of the …

Giant Silk Moths Again

Salutations, BugFans, 2025 – The BugLady confesses that she rarely finds these Giant silk moths, either as adults or as caterpillars. So rarely that some of these pictures are scanned slides/transparencies, from the olden days. In the years since this episode was posted, …

Ants 101 Rerun

Howdy, BugFans, 2025: This episode is a Golden Oldie, first/last posted in 2008. Despite her feelings of ambivalence about ants, the BugLady continues to photograph and write about them. See https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/flying-ants/, https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/the-ants-of-cesa/, and https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/western-thatch-ant/, and more. For this rerun, the BugLady added a bunch of random …

Deer Tick again

Note: All links are to an external site. Howdy, BugFans, 2025: The BugLady was out in a wetland today, stalking the wily Pink Lady’s Slipper (aka the Moccasin flower), a large and lovely native orchid. After she got home, she …

Gone Fishin’

Greetings, BugFans,  Here’s a rare glimpse into the BugLady’s “BOTW Future” file, which is packed with pictures of identified insects that she hopes have a good story to tell, with semi-identified insects, and with (mostly) her “X-Files” – the Unidentified. …

Running Crab Spiders

Greetings, BugFans, Long-time BugFans know that the BugLady is infatuated with the lovely, sedentary Flower Crab spiders (family Thomisidae) that she photographs throughout the summer, and she recently posted a BOTW about the chunkier Ground crab spiders (also Thomisidae). Running crab spiders, …

Galls II – Historic Galls Redux

Greetings, BugFans, This week’s episode is a rerun from the very early days of BOTW. The BugLady loves it when the research she is doing makes a sharp turn toward History.  Galls are mentioned by (very) early observers like the …

A Tale of Two Mussels – Eight Years Out

Howdy, BugFans, The BugLady has been curious about the status of Zebra and Quagga mussels since she posted an episode about them in 2016 (“A Tale of Two Mussels – the One-Two Punch”). Here’s the original post (slightly tweaked and clarified), …

UWM Land Acknowledgement: We acknowledge in Milwaukee that we are on traditional Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk and Menominee homeland along the southwest shores of Michigami, North America’s largest system of freshwater lakes, where the Milwaukee, Menominee and Kinnickinnic rivers meet and the people of Wisconsin’s sovereign Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida and Mohican nations remain present.   |   To learn more, visit the Electa Quinney Institute website.