Bugs without Bios XX

Note: Links are to external sites. Howdy, BugFans, We’ll ease into 2025 with a few short pieces about bugs for whom there is very little info available — and yet they are lovely. They spend their lives doing their jobs …

Blue Blow Fly

Howdy BugFans, It’s gotten cold here in God’s Country – abruptly – with overnight lows in the high teens/low twenties, and daytime highs below freezing. The water in the birdbath froze solid for a few nights in a row before the …

Zebra Jumping Spider

Greetings, BugFans, The BugLady was moseying around her cottage, photographing doodlebug digs, when she spotted this very small (maybe ¼”) jumping spider with its prey. It was on a sunny, south-facing wall – right where it was supposed to be! Zebra …

Black Horse Fly Redo

Note: All but one of the links below go to external sites. Howdy, BugFans, The BugLady has gotten a few reports of these magnificent flies recently, so here’s an episode from 2018, with some new words and thoughts and links …

Summer Sights

(Note: Links below are to external sites. Click on thumbnail images to see larger versions.) Greetings, BugFans, The BugLady has been scouring the landscape and aiming her camera at anything that will sit still (and some that won’t). And without going too overboard …

Slices of Spring

Howdy, BugFans, The BugLady and her camera have been out scouring the uplands and wetlands for insects that will sit still long enough to have their portrait made. Many of today’s bugs have starred in their own BOTWs over the years, …

Closed for June 3 – More Pollinators

Howdy, BugFans, A pollinator is an animal (not all pollinators are insects) that visits flowers and carries their pollen to other flowers.  Bees, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, and wasps are all practitioners to some degree. Hummingbirds pollinate a few flowers (like …

Caddisfly revisited

Greetings, BugFans, The BugLady is suffering from the February Doldrums in January – this is a massaged version of a BOTW that was originally posted in 2009, with some new words and new pictures. “What’s in a name? A rose by …

The 12 (or 13) Bugs of Christmas

Note: All links leave to external sites. Greetings of the Season, BugFans, (13 bugs, because once she’s got her selection down to 13, the BugLady just can’t cut one more!) A Cheery Thought for the Holidays, the average home contains …

Two Odd Little Flies

Note: All links leave to external sites. Greetings, BugFans, The BugLady loves finding species she’s never spotted before – there are many thousands of insects she has yet to photograph, but that’s a matter of “right time; wrong habitat; more …

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.