Longhorn Beetles

Trigonarthris subpubescens
Trigonarthris minnesotana

I have always found that finding beetles is one of my greatest satisfactions. And finding longhorn beetles is even more satisfying. I have managed to find five different species here over the years. Some I have only found once, but the flower beetles seem to be easiest to find. 

Longhorn beetles, like longhorn bees, have antennae lengths that meet or exceed the length of the body of the insect. Some of the longhorns are considered pests, but the flower longhorn beetles are beneficial. Knowing which is a flower longhorn and which is not can be very tricky.

The larvae of flower longhorn beetles live in dead trees in the forests. They bore through the wood and eat it, helping to speed up decomposition. The adult flower longhorns eat pollen from usually species specific flowers, thus helping to pollinate our world. 

In fact, all longhorn beetle larvae, flower longhorns or not, bore through wood. It is the non-flower longhorns that can cause problems because they may bore through live trees and perhaps kill them.

The flower longhorn beetle at the top of this post, Trigonarthris subpubescens, has two scientific names and no common name. "Larvae develop in decaying branches of conifers and hardwoods. Adults found on flowers and leaves of shrubs in summer. Maritime Provinces and Québec to Florida, west to Manitoba, Minnesota, and Missouri." (Evans, Arthur V.. Beetles of Eastern North America (Page 400). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.) I found it on a daylily.

Mottled Longhorned Beetle (Anthophylax attenuatus)

The mottled longhorned beetle "[l]arva develops in wet, decaying logs of maple (Acer), beech (Fagus), and cottonwood (Populus), also in living branches of spruce (Picea); pupates in soil. Adults active late spring through summer, found on male pine (Pinus) strobili (cones). Maritime Provinces to northern Virginia, west to Ontario and Wisconsin." (Evans, Arthur V.. Beetles of Eastern North America (Page 392). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)

Banded Longhorn Beetle (Typocerus velutinus)

The lovely banded longhorn beetle above "visit[s] flowers in late spring and summer. Larvae develop in deciduous hardwoods, including oak (Quercus), hickory (Carya), beech (Fagus), and cottonwood (Populus). Nova Scotia to Florida, west to Saskatchewan, Minnesota, Kansas, and Mississippi." (Evans, Arthur V.. Beetles of Eastern North America (Page 400). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.) I find them most often on goldenrod. It is my second most common longhorn beetle.

Red Milkweed Beetle (Tetraopes tetrophthalmus)

The cute, vivid, and most common of my longhorn beetles is not a flower longhorn. Red milkweed beetle "[l]arvae develop in roots of milkweeds (Asclepias) and dogbane (Apocynum). Adults active late spring and summer, found on host plants. Québec and Ontario to Georgia, west to North Dakota, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas." (Evans, Arthur V.. Beetles of Eastern North America (Page 428). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.)

Round-necked Longhorn Beetle (Clytus ruricola)

The round-necked longhorn beetle also is not a flower longhorn. "Adults are found resting on vegetation in late spring and early summer. Legless larvae develop in decaying hardwoods, especially maple (Acer). Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to South Carolina, west to Manitoba, Wisconsin, and Tennessee." (Evans, Arthur V.. Beetles of Eastern North America (Page 406). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.) I have never been able to find information on what else these adults may enjoy. We found this beetle inside a leaf that had aphids inside, seen in the photo. It seemed disoriented (from honeydew?) so we were able to move it from the leaf for photos until it recovered its senses and flew away. The other little bug inside the leaf besides the longhorn and the aphids is the larva of a lady beetle, which was eating the aphids.

The Round-necked longhorn beetle dangling out of
rolled leaf of aphids, presumably imbibing honeydew.

I hope many of you are fortunate enough to find a longhorn beetle and observe its behavior. 

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Wordless Wednesday: A Daylily

Wordless Wednesday at Comedy Plus

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Tarnished Plant Bugs

Tarnished Plant Bug (Lygus lineolaris) 

This may be the best shot I have ever gotten of a tarnished plant bug (or TPB as entomologists shorthand it). It was on a daylily, which I steadied against the wind with my hand. 

These are true bugs, a real name, in the order Hemiptera. And they are a truly serious threat to food crops in North America. The problem, I read, is that they slowly become impervious to all methods, so far, of killing them, be it chemical pesticides or other means. Scientists are sequencing its DNA to forge more tools against them.

True bugs have piercing and sucking mouthparts, which you can clearly see here. In fact, there is a drop of the lily's juice dripping off of the bug's "beak." Whenever I gaze at this photo, I can imagine a great sci-fi monster movie being made with blood dripping off the beak. 

To me, they are a pretty, tiny, bug that pops up all over in the summer. In a non-agricultural habitat they seem to be under control and are no problem.  

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Longhorn Bees

Longhorn bee, male

After nearly another week of smoke and rain, Lucy and I finally got out for a bug hunt and ran into two male longhorn bees. What the bonanza! It was still cool enough so they were quiet. I know they were males because they had the long antennae. Girls have short antennae. I don't even want to guess as to what genus they belonged to, but they are in the Tribe Eucerini, with about 212 species in North America. Bees in this tribe have, besides long antennae, a lot of hair. They also have the most beautiful eyes. I have seen them in green, as above, and in blue. They are native. They are solitary ground nesters. Their nests go down vertically with chambers for larvae branching off the main tunnel.

And that is about all I know and about all I can figure out from my reading about them. I don't even know what food they prefer. One genus, squash bees, only pollinates Cucurbita, "a genus of annual, warm-season, vining plants in the cucumber family (Cucurbitaceae) native to North and South America. It includes commonly cultivated vegetables (although botanical terms, they are fruit) such as summer and winter squashes, pumpkins, zucchini, and ornamental gourds." (North Carolina State University Extension Gardener)  Honey bees do not pollinate those plants.

I do know that I often find them on cool mornings and after a rain. After getting wet in a rain, it takes them quite awhile to dry off. I also see them nectaring later in the afternoon than most other bees. Hope you spot some!

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More Rain, More Baking, and More Bad Bugs

Ghirardelli dark chocolate chip mix skillet cookie

On Friday, I decided that Saturday would be pizza day. And whenever I make pizza, I make brownies or cookie bars for dessert. My arthritis now affects my baking, so I am taste testing prepared mixes. I got a bunch of Ghirardelli mixes and tried the chocolate chip cookie mix but baked it in a skillet (which relieves me of much standing time on the knees). It was such a success! I love the mix and I can't do better from scratch. There is no boxed mix taste, either. 

I baked Saturday even though the weather was great. I got psyched out by bad bugs on Friday—by ticks again. I hate ticks and this year the tick problem is unbelievable. Lucy, despite her flea and tick treatments, brings in one live tick a day. In the past, it has only been one live tick per season. I need to photograph each one in order to identify the species. Fortunately, Lucy has only had one embedded in her skin and she was fantastic when I took it off under the new guidelines.  Thankfully, all of the ticks have been American dog ticks; not the deer ticks with Lyme disease.

Friday night, after our short bug walk in the gorgeous weather, I found a tick crawling up my leg. That was the final straw for me. Short of Lucy and I dressing in hazmat suits, I decided to never go outside again. Ticks give me bad dreams for nights and creepy crawly skin for days.

Soon after I found the tick, Lucy came in with another deer fly riding on her muzzle. Every year, the time after black flies is deer fly time and they love Lucy's muzzle. She seldom notices them until they bite and leave her with a muzzle dotted with red splotches of blood. One deer fly bite gives me real itches for days.

American dog tick

Deer fly

And that is why I stayed in and baked instead of bug hunting.

Next was the pizza. I decided to try Gemma Stafford's dough and sauce.  The dough was easy to do but somehow resulted in a leathery crust. It was such a disappointment. I don't know what I did wrong. The sauce had the exact taste that I wanted, but was much too salty. I can easily adjust that next time. I tossed out the pizza, and it is expensive to make. It was supposed to be at least two days of meals, including breakfast. I love pizza for breakfast. 

While setting my Google Nest hub display to time the rising for the pizza dough, I found you can do this . . . 

00:17

You get a different show for each different item you ask it to time.  "OK, Google, set the bread timer for 2 hours" gives you a fun bread display.  I smiled when the timer ended:

00:06

Now it is Sunday.

Flash flood warnings, flash flood watches, hazardous weather alerts

The expected rainfall today only is four inches. That is not good. Amy and I are so bored at this point with our indoor lives that we are sending each other rain videos. This is her slow-motion rain drop video.

00:35

I made six videos of the rain from the garage. Lucy won't go out in the rain from the back door but she will from the garage. All of the noise you hear is pure rainfall. It was very, very heavy. I combined all six videos to one video. 

1:28

Being an accomplished and talented obsessive worrier, I am now more concerned about my fairly new and very expensive leach field flooding than I am about flash floods or washed out roads. Perhaps life never will be normal again.

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This Is Not My Summer

Radar last night before all hell broke loose.

It's not been a summer that I am used to. Fires in Quebec kept me indoors for two weeks because of smoke. I checked our AQI nearly every hour during those days. At one point, my Andrew had the dirtiest air in the world in Washington, DC. On another day, it was Anna living in the dirtiest air in New Haven. I kept seeing these alerts on my phone.

A smokey sunset in June.

Then there was heat. Up to 90°F (32°C); extremely difficult for Vermonters to deal with.  

Then the smoke came back; it was not as bad, though, but I did finally get an air conditioner because of it. You can't live in a house closed off from smoke in heat like that without air circulating.

Finally, the rain. It started on Sunday night and continued until Wednesday. You may have heard about the floods in Vermont. Everything closed up on Sunday night because of the forecasts. Our capitol city, Montpelier, an hour south of me, is still under water. 

The worst that happened here was the Barton River, an ancient ox-bow river that quickly floods roads. For two days Amy and I were cut off from everything because Route 5 was flooded from Barton Village to Orleans Village, about 8 miles. There has been no traffic by my house because nobody is out. Business and schools were closed all week.

Rain clouds across from Amy's house in Orleans.

The flood times can be scary for me. I am on the side of Barton Mountain with at least 3 brooks on my property draining into a state mapped wetlands across the road. I am nowhere close to the river. Usually all things are in balance. But in 2011, during the devastating rain of Tropical Storm Irene, my brooks flooded my road. The flash flood took out my driveway. I was anticipating a repeat of those bad days, but it did not happen. I did get some washout of the driveway, but it isn't bad. The worst part of the week was being cooped inside. And last night.

A bit of a washed out driveway.

Yesterday, the entire state watched for incoming thunderstorms from New York that could trigger more devastating floods. The governor even told us to stay home from 4PM to 8PM. And we all did. The storms got to my house around 8PM and they were bad. Lightning struck on the mountain and across the road. The noise was painful and scary. But no fires started from the strikes and the wind did not bring down trees here. The first photo of this post was of radar five minutes before the storm hit.

00:26

Amy caught video of the storm at her house.

She watched the wrong direction, though.

I got out of the house so infrequently this past month, because of heat and smoke, that two swallowtail caterpillars that Jody was saving for me (a male and a female) eclosed without me.  😢  I am really looking forward to a normal life now.

Jody's swallowtails

Lucy and I finally got outside today. It is a perfect summer day, 75°F, sunny, and low humidity. This is what we are used to in summer. It was a long wait for a day like today. We only were able to photograph one bug and one Cessna flying overhead violating my airspace. Today, I'm going to make a skillet cookie and pizza. I should have no power outages—I lost power six times this past week. I hope the worst is over.

Tarnished Plant Bug (Lygus lineolaris)

The plane.

Here is an interesting article from the Washington Post on Vermont's rain.  

The exceedingly low odds of Vermont’s flooding disaster, visualized

By John Muyskens, Scott Dance and Simon Ducroquet. There may be a paywall for you if you read the Post often.

I found this Tik Tok video of the Barton River. My thanks to Cheryl Garcia for making it. I can tell exactly where the shot was taken on High Bridge Hill.

@cherylgarcia76 Rte 5, north of Barton, VT. #vermont #flooding ♬ original sound - Cheryl Garcia

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Review: Drowning

Drowning by T.J. Newman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

From the book's publicity:

Six minutes after takeoff, Flight 1421 crashes into the Pacific Ocean. During the evacuation, an engine explodes and the plane is flooded. Those still alive are forced to close the doors—but it’s too late. The plane sinks to the bottom with twelve passengers trapped inside.

More than two hundred feet below the surface, engineer Will Kent and his eleven-year-old daughter Shannon are waist-deep in water and fighting for their lives.

Their only chance at survival is an elite rescue team on the surface led by professional diver Chris Kent—Shannon’s mother and Will’s soon-to-be ex-wife—who must work together with Will to find a way to save their daughter and rescue the passengers from the sealed airplane, which is now teetering on the edge of an undersea cliff.

There’s not much time.

There’s even less air.

Have you ever seen The Poseidon Adventure (1972)? If you have, there is no need for you to read this book. The same characters are here, updated, and the same plot unfolds deep in the ocean. The dialogue is just as predictable (even derivative) and the ending is the same. 

I was so disappointed in this book. The reviews and promotions are outrageously good, so I quickly grabbed a Kindle copy for my "summer read." That read took less than one day. Now I need a new summer read. 

I never fell in love with the characters because they were not fully developed. But the writing disappointed me the most. I like complicated prose that makes me pause and re-read and appreciate the beauty of a phrase. None of that was here. The book is a straightforward narrative that requires no thought by the reader—which is why it is such a fast read. The repetition and cliches also accelerated my reading. I didn't need to finish the novel because I knew how it ended. I did finish it, though, because I was hoping against hope that something original would happen.

I will give Ms. Newman credit for her research, though. It must have required months of study to learn the physics of the ocean, aircraft, and ships. 

I am absolutely sure this book will become a movie. Ms. Newman's first book, Falling, will be. So bide your time for the movie when it streams. Perhaps they will title it Poseidon 2024.

View all my reviews

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Virginia Ctenucha Moths

Virginia Ctenucha (Ctenucha virginica)
female

I happen to have two cocoons of this moth in the mud room. I'm waiting for them to become adults. And I accidentally raised one last summer after finding a cocoon on some grasses. I brought it in and next thing I knew, I had . . .

female

The Name

First off, I'll pronounce this correctly: "ten-OOCH-ah." I've spent too many years playing this name as a funny word joke, with my moth-er friends, like we all play with Worcestershire sauce. It is time for me to respect the name. As for the Virginia part of the name . . . it is not named after the state. According to bugguide.net, "the type specimen was collected in Nova Scotia and named Ctenucha latreillana by Kirby in 1837, but an earlier specimen named Sphinx virginica by Charpentier in 1830 may have been collected in Virginia." The state of Virginia is the southern boundary of the range of this moth. "The genus name Ctenucha was coined by William Kirby from the Greek meaning 'having a comb', a reference to the showy antennae of some species." (Wikipedia) I'll talk about those combs in the next section.

I learned today that the Virginia Ctenucha is considered a wasp moth. Yet, it does not look like a wasp to me and my other wasp moths actually do look like wasps. This took a lot of digging to discover, but I found (only found today because I had not paid attention to the taxonomy of the moth), that this species is one species in the subtribe Ctenuchina.

And the subtribe Ctenuchina belongs to the tribe Arctiini. Those are the tiger moths, yet our moth here does not have the underwings of tiger moths. so I became more curious. And then I fell down the rabbit hole of taxonomy and entomology history. 

The name Arctiini is "From the type genus Arctia, from Greek meaning 'bear', for the appearance of the hairy larvae." (bugguide.net) We all know woolly bears (the larvae of Isabella tiger moths). And many of us know yellow bears, the Virginia tiger moth larvae. (And we're back to Virginia!)

So my common and widespread Virginia Ctenucha moth is both a wasp moth that does not look like a wasp and a tiger moth that does not look like a tiger moth. And it should have bear larvae . . . but I'll talk about that in a third section.

I found the answer. This is a tough paragraph to wade through, and I had to read it three times . . . slower and slower each time . . . to begin to grasp it all. But by studying taxonomy and wading through history, you can learn more supplemental information on a species than you can see outdoors. It is enrichment. I get a deeper understanding of the insect, our insect lore and fables, and our human culture that has interacted with these creatures for thousands of years.

Here, from Moths of Belize, is the paragraph that tells us about wasp moths, Ctenuchinae, and bears (I added emphasis):

The Ctenuchinae ('Wasp Moths') have long been suspected to be an 'unnatural' group, made up of unrelated species which have evolved to appear similar due to similar evolutionary selection pressures - in this case to mimic various species of wasps and other noxious insects. Recent cladistic work by Jacobson & Weller (2002) has concluded that the former 'Ctenuchinae' consist of two closely related new world tribes of the subfamily Arctiinae - the Ctenuchini and the Euchromiini - and that the mostly tropical old world 'Ctenuchines' are members of the tribe Syntomini of another Arctiid subfamily, the Syntominae. The vast majority of the former 'Ctenuchinae' (ie Ctenuchini and Euchromiini) are confined to the new world tropics, with about a dozen species ranging into North America. Most are between 20 and 40 mm in wingspan: their wings are characteristically long and thin and often possess large transparent patches in mimicry of various species of wasps and bees. Larvae are difficult to distinguish from those of other Arctiids, but feed upon grasses, lichens, mosses and various members of the plant family Apocynaceae (Scoble 1992). This group has not been catalogued or revised in detail since the major work by Hampson (1898, 1914) but the recent work by Jacobson & Weller (2002) has revised the higher classification of the Arctiidae including the former 'Ctenuchinae'. 

from Butterflies and Moths of North America (BaMoNA)

The Comb

Males have beautiful comb antennae (called unipectinate), as you can see in the two photos I took below. The first was taken last season as it nectared on milkweed. The second had a tragic fate. When I let Lucy out the other night, it flew in the house before Lucy could get her nose out the door. I turned around and found Poppy the Cat bouncing up to the bathroom sink to catch the moth. I got my photos but was unable to capture the moth because Poppy aggressively got it before I could. 

Males have the bigger antennae in order to detect female pheromones. 

male

male

The Bears

Last year when I found my first Ctenucha cocoon, I thought it was a ball of spider eggs.

My first Ctenucha cocoon

Ctenucha caterpillar

Another Ctenucha caterpillar

One of the 2 caterpillars this year.

One of the two cocooned

The cocoon broke and the pupa fell out

Our answer about the Tiger moth bear larvae is that yes, these do look like bears. Ctenucha moth larvae have two colors depending on the time: spring and early summer caterpillars are yellow and mid summer ones are dark. But they all have red feet. All of the identifications of my caterpillar photographs are confirmed. 

I became so confused when the dark pupa was visible. I had no idea where it came from. Today I learned that it came from inside the cocoon. 

The cocoon itself is made of the hair from the caterpillar. It pulls the hairs out of itself and weaves the cocoon. Sharon Perrault, of Ottawa, documented this in a series of four photos over 30 hours. It is a series that you cannot miss, so click here.

The End

Those were my burning Ctenucha questions for this year. It took the better part of a rainy summer day to read, write, collect my photos and link and format them all. I'm glad I did it. Humans saw fuzzy caterpillars and called them bears. Scientists later used that, in Latin, to name the tribe. It's amazing. My two pupae should eclose within a week or two.

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A Saltie Lifer

Habronattus decorus

One of the little boys presented the class with a jumping spider. For some reason, they had all quickly, perhaps instantaneously, retained information on the jumping spiders. Perhaps it is because of their tiny flea-size, or their jumping about like fleas, or their comical, endearing faces. But the boys spot them quickly and have learned how to safely capture and hold them.  In these photos, the spider is on the student's hand.

male

I have never documented this species before, making him a lifer for me. The species is common, though. Nobody in Vermont had reported finding them at bugguide.net, so I did. Many Vermonters have documented them at iNaturalist, though.

They are affectionately called salties because jumping spiders are in the Family Salticidae. H. decorus is everywhere from Nova Scotia to Florida and west to British Columbia and Oregon. They don't show up in dry places like deserts or in the dry parts of the west. 

His ruby-colored abdomen tells us he's male.

There isn't much information to be found on the internet about this species. But there is a marvelous one and a half minute video made by Dick Walton here. I really urge you to watch it. There is a female H. decorus in the video, also. This spider has no common name.

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A Smokey Day

Barton Mountain ridgeline about 3 PM

We had a vicious outbreak of wildfire smoke from Quebec yesterday. The air quality index rose throughout the day to a high of 219 around 3 AM this morning. The forecast said that it would improve at 9 AM today, but it has not been as quick a scouring as I had hoped. The air alert is now extended to 12 noon today. The AQI at 9:30 AM today is still at 169. I have opened one door and one window because it has been suffocating inside the house, even with a fan upstairs and down. Sleep was fitful and interrupted often. Lucy panted in the heat, but she and the cats remained in bed throughout the night.

The road to Lyndonville about 4 PM

This outbreak of smoke is not as bad as it was for Connecticut and Washington, DC in May, when their AQI went over 300 for days. But this doesn't happen here, and it was scary. I also have my end-of-school cold, so I was anxious and coughing and miserable.

Northern Vermont State University, Lyndonville

Leaving Orleans County to Caledonia County

Amy's neighborhood about 6 PM

I am, though, counting my blessings and more aware of the danger of forest fires. There almost was one here in the 1990s but it was doused before it was big. It could happen, and we have to be aware of our actions to avoid any fires. I also don't have to live in a fire area like the Canadians. I can't imagine what it is like to live close to it and see the land and wildlife that you love destroyed. 

Sunset in Barton

This was a high AQI at 9:30 PM but it only got worse

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Moths, Beetles, Spiders and Ticks

One-eyed Sphinx (Smerinthus cerisyi)

On Tuesday, June 20, we had an unscheduled bug hunt. I had sort of run out of lessons for the kids, so we went outside. I thought it would be to play, but they grabbed their bug containers and hunted. And they found some beauties!

I finally did my sphinx moth photos properly, with finger and head shots. I wish I had audio taped the student reactions when they saw me lift the moth on my finger the first time. The gasps were just huge. The little kids barely moved. When the moth began to shake as it warmed its wings, they warned me. Those little pre-K and K kids learn!

We had time to have other children hold the moth and they passed it finger to finger and quietly gasped and "aww-ed" as the moth walked on their hands. They had never experienced such a sensation before. I quickly took as many shots as possible.

The next moth they found was a hickory tussock moth. This is a fuzzy caterpillar moth that you do not want to touch. But the adult is gorgeous. Once again, we held it and passed it from child to child. By this time they had become old hands at moth handling. The boys were enchanted by the green eyes.

Hickory Tussock Moth (Lophocampa caryae)

Another moth, though, was my favorite of the day: the Splendid Dagger. I had never seen this one before, so it was a lifer for me. I have a fondness for black and white moths, just as I do for black and white cats.  😉

Splendid Dagger (Acronicta superans)

One boy, our youngest, has a passion for spiders. He even uses "arachnid" properly at his young age. He wants spider movies all the time, not insect videos. On the last day of school, I granted his wish and we watched the PBS Nature "The Spider Hunter" video. This sheet-weaver spider was his find. They actually do make webs that look like messy sheets.

Sheet-Weaver Spider (Subfamily Linyphiinae)

Blackclock Ground Beetle (Genus Pterostichus)

There seem to be a lot of ground beetles at school. Actually, there are a lot of ground beetles everywhere, but the kids at school always find them. In the fall, when the days and nights are warm, I will teach them how to make pitfall traps to capture them overnight.

When we released our bugs, the moths went straight for the shirt of Steve, the classroom counselor. That was fun for the kids and great for the camera.

American Dog Tick (Dermacentor variabilis)

Alas, when we came inside again, my little spider boy spied a tick on his sneaker. How he saw it baffles me. I could barely, barely see the dot on his shoe. I love my bug camera that zooms in so well. I now carry my tick kit (tweezers, identifying card and alcohol wipe) with me all the time because of Lucy and ticks this year. We carefully disposed of the tick properly.

I love my summers. But oh, I am going to miss those little boys. We did sneak one more hunt in on the last day of school after the spider video. That hunt was stupendous! Stay tuned.

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