The BugLady has photographed three beetles this summer that she’s never seen before (well, four, if you count that really out-of-focus long-horned beetle).

The BugLady has been out with her camera, walking non-aerobically and peering into plants. The “peering” has resulted in some interesting (if blurred) sightings (her macro lens is getting a bit cranky). Amazing things have been happening on milkweed, probably spurred by a banner crop of aphids on the leaves.

Waterlily Leaf Beetles can be found in weedy ponds and lakes and very slow streams all over North America. The adults are leggy, up to a half-inch long, often metallic, with antennae about half as long as their body; they are jumpy and can move fast, and they’re a little camera shy.

The Goldenrod Leaf Miner is listed as “common” over most of the U.S. and into southern Canada (the BugLady has apparently been overlooking it all this time). The GLM is a small, rugged-looking beetle with pitted thorax and elytra and flashy red-orange racing stripes. They are found on goldenrods, often nestled in the dense vegetation of the goldenrod bunch galls at the top of the stem.

Prasocuris vitatta habitat needs often involve sunny wetland edges in the eastern half of North America where members of the buttercup family grow, and they’re also found on the introduced Common/meadow/tall buttercup that grows along roadsides and woodland edges.

Imported Willow Leaf Beetles are northern European natives that reached our shores in 1915; they’re common in the eastern half of the U.S. and north into Canada. Adults overwinter in bark crevices or on the ground in leaf litter, and they leap into action when trees begin to leaf out.

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.

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.

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.

In lieu of the usual bug biography, the BugLady presents The Twelve Bugs of Christmas—a tribute to a dozen insects (a Baker’s Dozen, really) that were photographed this year but not featured in a BOTW. Let the singing commence.