Short-horned Grasshoppers are found on poor soils, sand prairies, weedy roadsides and forest edges in a range that stretches through the Great Plains and southern Canada from north Texas to Idaho, east through the Great Lakes states and New England. Their populations tend to be “local”—found in small pockets of large areas—and both their numbers and their range may be increasing with recent droughts.
Dance flies get their name from the habit of males of some species to gather in large groups and dance up and down in the air in the hopes of attracting females. They can also be found hunting for small insects on and under vegetation in shady areas and on front porches at night.
Scorpionflies and their relatives the Hangingflies (crane fly look-alikes that eat crane flies and are the only insects known to catch their prey with their hind legs). Secretive scorpionflies are most often seen ducking under leaves in dense, shady, cool vegetation or near wetlands. Adults feed on ripe fruit, fruit juice, nectar, pollen, and on dead and dying insects, and they can snitch insects out of spider webs without getting stuck. The larvae are omnivores.
Lightning bugs float silently (but brilliantly) over the dark fields and wetlands of June and July, inspiring poets and children of all ages. Also called Fireflies, they are neither flies nor true bugs; they are more correctly called Lightning Beetles (LBs). Their path to the skies starts in late summer of the previous year. Mid-summer eggs hatch into carnivorous larvae that eat insects, snails and other small critters.
The Melanoplus grasshopper/locust, in the Spur-throated grasshopper subfamily, is found in fields, cities, suburbs, and open woods. These are insects of open spaces, and are an important food source for birds including kestrels, marsh and red-shouldered hawks. Skunks, snakes, and toads eat the adults; skunks, shrews, mice and moles feed on eggs in soil. Dramatic population explosions experienced by some arid-country species of Melanoplus grasshoppers when unusually high rainfall results in lots of vegetation and in extraordinary numbers of eggs hatching.
Midges hold their wings out to the side a bit when at rest, and mosquitoes tuck theirs over their backs. While either may rest with only four feet on the ground, mosquitoes raise their back pair of feet and midges tend to lift the front pair. Midges can tolerate pretty cold weather, bouncing up and down in the air of early spring and late fall, especially near wetlands. Their larvae/maggots may live for up to three years in habitats that range from damp edges to depths of many fathoms in both salt and fresh water.
Viceroy Butterflies are famous for being mimics of Monarch butterflies. Monarch caterpillars eat only milkweed foliage, and that makes them both bitter and toxic. After their first experience with Monarchs, birds generally leave them—and, by association, Viceroys—alone. There are at least two generations of Viceroys per summer; the early broods live out their life cycles in a few months, but the larvae of the final brood of summer will overwinter as tiny caterpillars, wrapped in leaves of one of their food plants; willow is favored, but they’ll also eat poplar, aspen and some apple/plum/cherry leaves.
Springtails come in both Aquatic and Terrestrial. Aquatic springtails mill around on the surface film of quiet waters (including vernal ponds) in rafts made up of thousands of individuals. Unwettable, they may dive and spend some time under water. The terrestrial species stick to moist habitats, wingless, 3-millimeter-short critters moving through the damp litter of the forest floor. They are vegetarians—eaters of algae and decaying plant and animal material, pollen and leaf mold.
Carolina Locusts belong to the Band-winged Grasshoppers subfamily. Grasses, herbaceous plants, sometimes beans are their preferred diet. Carolina locusts come in tans through rusty browns. As a group, Band-winged grasshoppers are conspicuous in flight due to their color-banded flying wings, but they are awesomely camouflaged at rest.
Silverfish are spindle/carrot-shaped, flat and gray with a metallic “finish.” Your common, household silverfish, lives in cool, damp places, feeding on house dust, bits of dried vegetation, small insect body parts that get restaurants in trouble, sawdust, and starch, which it gleans from wallpaper paste and from the glues used in book-binding. The female lays her eggs in cracks and crevices. If she picks a hospitable microclimate, her eggs will hatch looking like mini adults and grow slowly. Silverfish live several years and molt more than a dozen times.