From Bug Hunt to Restaurant

Jody's mating mosaic darners

Jody decided to close up her law office for a long weekend and spent Friday at Crystal Lake State Park. I picked her up after school and we came back to my house (one mile away) for more bug hunting. She got some magnificent photos on that iPhone of hers. She found these dragonflies hanging together under a branch of a pine tree. They allowed her to carry them down to where I was inspecting a leafroller larva. And as soon as Jody got to me, they flew away still coupled together. It was a memorable sight.

The darners in the tree.

I was not as fortunate yesterday. I found my leafroller larva, some type of moth, and unrolled it. When touched with a piece of grass, it wriggled very violently. I thought I had a video of that action but I didn't press the right button. I have found more of these larvae and will be sleeving the dogwood branch where they are maturing. 

The tiny caterpillar inside the leaf that it had rolled up.

Outside of the leaf.

Other creatures that we found:

Another Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetle (Labidomera clivicollis)

Tricolored Bumble Bee (Bombus ternarius)

Everyone's favorite crane fly: Eastern Phantom Crane Fly (Bittacomorpha clavipes)

Banded Garden Spider (Argiope trifasciata)
Its zig-zag web is barely visible at the bottom.

Banded Tussock Moth (Halysidota  tessellaris)

Genus Stictocephala
(A buffalo treehopper)

A robber fly for your nightmares:
A Hanging-Thief (Genus Diogmites)

Everyone's favorite caterpillar:
Brown-hooded Owlet (Cucullia convexipennis)

Revisiting our jagged ambush bugs at the end of the season.

They wear different colors now.
Here, the male has the brown face and the female has a yellow face.

But then . . .

😱😱😱 

Jody found bear scat full of cherry pits not 20 feet from my back door. Lucy was calm so we knew that the bear was not close by, but our wanderings were now at an end. Bears scarf down so many cherries it is totally ridiculous. And at this time of year, it seems that all my trees are cherries. They are everywhere. In fact, I have read that my Black cherry trees (Prunus serotina) are the most populous tree in New England forests. Cherry picking time is when Jody and I stay out of the woods.

We retired to Orleans to a restaurant for supper and swapped photos and stories of our day. It was a wonderful day.

_/\_/\_