The BugLady has been hanging out at her local ephemeral pond again, looking at small things in the water. She loves the cycles of ephemeral ponds and the critters they contain. Ephemeral ponds are (most years) just that—ephemeral. These are here-today-and-gone-tomorrow ponds, gather-ye-rosebuds-while-ye-may wetlands.
The Organ Pipe/Pipe Organ Mud Dauber are smallish wasps with a patent-leather black, purplish wings, and white “ankles” on their back legs. They are not aggressive—males have no stingers, and you really have to man-handle a female to get her to sting. There are about 30 species in the genus across North America (more elsewhere), but the OPMD is found mostly in the eastern U.S.
The Variegated Meadowhawk has a medium size body, patterned abdomen, tinted veins on the leading edge of all four wings, stigmas (pigment dots at the wing tips) that shade from pale to dark to pale, and yellow spots on the sides of the thorax. Adult meadowhawks may be found hunting away from water or hanging around the lake shores and ponds where they will lay their eggs in late summer.
Black flies are tiny and dark, with clear wings, many-segmented antennae, and big eyes. Their larvae like lots of oxygen and are not tolerant of warmer waters or pollution. Adult BFs live for about three weeks, laying 150 to 500 eggs either individually on the water’s surface or in clumps. Like other biting flies, males are blameless nectar feeders. Females may also consume nectar, but they need that all-important blood meal in order to reproduce.
Soldier Flies are mimics who live out in the open by impersonating something that stings. The adults are found nectaring on flowers (or on dung) worldwide (especially in Neotropical haunts), near the wet areas their young require. Larvae of some species are remarkably tolerant to adverse conditions like high temperatures or salinity, and some are found in sewerage outflows.
People get excited when pussy willows whisper the spring. The BugLady thinks it’s more fun to skulk among the pussy willows when they are actually blooming (the gray, fuzzy “bud” is the future female catkin), ogling the diversity of insects that come to visit. Willows are dioecious (separate house), bearing their male and female flowers on different plants
Today’s BOTW moseys out of Arthropod territory once again, back into the realm of the one-footed (novice BugFans please note—for our purposes, the definition of “bug” is a bit—well—nebulous).
The BugLady has always enjoyed mullein plants (Verbascum thapsus). Oh, she knows that they’re sun-slurping aliens whose mission is to blanket the earth at the expense of native vegetation, but they produce cheery yellow flowers, and they stick out of grassy fields like skinny saguaro cacti.
The world is full of well-nigh inscrutable moths, but this trio—the Yellow-collared Scape Moth, the Eyed Paectes Moth, and the Pink-barred Lithacodia Moth—stand out in a crowd. They are distinctive moths, from different moth families, that have one thing in common—their taxonomy is shifting.
“True” Bees have, somewhere on their body (particularly on the thorax), hairs that are branched or feathery, not simple, and the top of the first segment of their thorax looks kind of like a collar. Bees are pollen-eaters, so most species also have some mechanism for collecting it. Honey bees and bumble bees are easily recognized, but distinguishing between the different tribes and families of bees can be sticky.