Thread-waisted wasps mostly nest in the ground or build free-standing nests from mud. Although the female is primarily a vegetarian that sips nectar from flowers as she hunts, she provides protein for her young. Most target the caterpillars of moths and a few skipper butterflies and the larvae of their distant sawfly relatives.
Four-lined Plant Bug have mouthparts that allow them to pierce plants and suck out the juices (though the family does include some piercing/sucking predators and omnivores), and the best-known species are those that feed on agricultural crops. Their faces are on Cooperative Extension Wanted Posters everywhere east of the Rockies.
Eight-spotted Forester Moths is a smallish, flashy, day-flying moth that is often mistaken for a butterfly when it’s nectaring on flowers. Their caterpillars graze on leaves of plants in the grape family including wild and domestic grapes, woodbine/Virginia Creeper, peppervine, porcelain berry, and false grape in forest edges and sunny spots, and on vine-covered buildings.
Sphecodes bees are parasitic solitary bees in the large, but mostly-not-parasitic. Sphecodes bees are sometimes called cuckoo bees. Cuckoo bees are kleptoparasites (which may also be spelled with a “c”). Like their avian namesakes, they deposit their eggs in someone else’s nest—in the case of CBs, in the nests of fellow-Halictids.
The BugLady dedicates Bugs without Bios episodes to insects about whom, despite all the words that are floating around out there, she can discover only a little information.
At just under an inch in length, the Eastern Amberwing is the second smallest dragonfly around. Where do you find them? Over most of the U.S. east of the Great Plains and south into Mexico. Look for them near quiet or very slowly-moving waters, or far from water, hunting at grass-top-height over weedy fields or perched on vegetation at a woodland’s edge.
Skipper butterflies are small and hairy and quick. They are brown, brown and orange, or orange and brown, and they look pretty much alike to the BugLady. Skippers are summer strays to Wisconsin, the Fiery Skipper is rated as uncommon and the Common Checkered Skipper as rare. Their ranges lie in the southern half of the U.S. and along the Gulf Coast, but some individuals of each species vacation “Up North” each summer, even reaching Canada.
The Colorado Potato Beetle (aka the Potato bug) is among the 10 insects that everyone should know. Gardeners from California to Florida to Nova Scotia to British Columbia certainly know it. CPB adults and larvae feed on the leaves of plants in the Potato family, which includes potatoes as well as tomatoes, nightshade, peppers, eggplant and other secondary targets.
Underwing Moths can be seen in wooded areas from southern Canada and the Dakotas south to Texas, and thence east to the Atlantic. Adults fly during the second half of the moth season and hide by day in sheltered places. Adult Underwings feed on nectar or sap, and the BugLady sees them on the woodpeckers’ oranges at night. Their caterpillars are food specialists; most eat the leaves of willow, hickory, walnut, oak, locust, hawthorn, and poplar.
Adult Red Milkweed Beetles eat milkweed leaves, buds, and flowers and they can get away with being red and black in a green world because milkweeds are toxic, and so, therefore, are RMBs, and red and black are aposematic (warning) colors. Apparently, there are some “primitive” species of Tetraopes that are not “locked into” toxic host plants and that have less a conspicuous coloration.