New England Buck Moth - Caterpillar

New England Buck Moth - Hemileuca lucina

I finally got around to visiting Farnham & Connolly Memorial Park in Canton.  I wasn't particularly impressed, as the water level is non-existent and not too many dragonflies are about.  The park is finished, but still very raw.  There were tons of birds, but since I'm normally looking for bugs I wasn't that interested.  I included a map below since for some reason there isn't one anywhere online.  The park is part of the Fowl Meadows and Ponkapoag Bog which are part of Blue Hills, though it seems like it's quite far from both.  it has a mile long trail that leads out to the woods, but the trail dead ends at 95.  I did see at least three of the above moth caterpillars though.  Bright red heads with orange back spines.  The side spines were black and branching.  Maybe 2 inches long. 

Daily Photo - Wooly Bear

Just a caterpillar in the yard.

Spangled Skimmer

Not an hard to find species, but pretty all the same.

Black Shouldered Spiney Leg Dragonfly

Also from back in June, it turns out this one isn't a new one though. I have much older pics of it from a previous camera I just never tried identifying it before.

Chalk-Fronted Corporal

A photo from back in June, at the time it was a new species for me to spot and I never got around to posting it, no idea why.

Ladybugs

The MOS butterfly room had ridiculous numbers of ladybugs prowling about. I assume they had some pest outbreak and are trying to control it naturally, but there were tons of the little guys trundling around.

Egg Case

I found this last week on a banana I got from a local grocery store. The sticker on the banana said Columbia and I spent a little time trying to figure out what it was but had no luck. I then had a weird dream where it hatched into weird moth bee hybrid things that I had to keep from escaping. it's sitting in a tupperware container while I decide what to do with it. I expect it went through some nasty fumigation so likely is dead, but better safe then sorry.

Pesky Termites

So, yesterday I dug a bit in our shed. The shed is about 12' x 12' and at least as old as me. It's at minimum 25 years old as it was here when we first moved in and wasn't new. Over the years it has begun to sink into the ground and in general rot.

We had the roof fixed and parts inside shored up, but I was thinking we'd have to demolish it soon and start over as there isn't any structure left to the bottom. I kind of want to rip out the south side and add glass to use it as a quasi greenhouse, but needed support at the bottom to attach. I also wanted to get it squirrel proof so they will stop storing acorns in all the pots I store.

While I was digging out a few rotted chunks of wood I found the main culprits of the sinking. Termites. They were eating the front support beams of the shed in addition to the planting beds that sat in front of it. So today I dug up all the plants from that bed and removed the dirt so at least some of their food is gone. (And so when we crunch the shed I won't have to worry about any plants.)

I have to go around the yard and check all the wood beds to see which ones have attracted termites (so far the pond most definitely has them.) Thankfully the one at my back door actually near the house foundation appears to have dry rot rather then termites. That one I have to replace as soon as possible with something not made of wood just in case. We will also be demolishing the old wood pile even though it isn't particularly near the house. Mom does not like the idea of termites and we're trying to remove some attractive territory.

Spider

I'm not sure on type, but it reminded me of a jumping spider. It's even on standard insect screen so size is easier to guess. This guy was sitting at eye level on the door of the screen porch. Talk about a surprise.

Assassin Bug

assassin bug - zelus luridus

This one has been sitting on my camera for a bit waiting for me to figure out what it was. I kept looking up stick insects and their relatives as I had flipped through my bug guide and found no obvious matches. Turns out it is Zelus luridus, an assassin bug. I'll add it to my collection of weird critters you see when you do absolutely no bug spraying. (I admit I am however using mosquito dunks in the pond this year, they don't seem to have done anything to the damselflies that keep hatching out and the mosquitoes have been MUCH less noticeable this year.)

Finally a Male Widow Skimmer

I went out last week and spotted one male widow skimmer, but it was just a bit too far away for any good pictures. This time I dragged my (crappy) zoom lens along just in case. I took 54 images of just one animal and got 5 in good enough focus to be usable. I really hate that lens, but unless a huge box of money falls on my head I'm kind of stuck with it.

Mantis on Strawberry

So, I've spotted at least three of these guys now. The above is a better show of their size. That is an over sized strawberry leaf.

More Yard Visitors

I'm still getting dragonflies. There are actually so many this year I've been looking at some and saying I already have too many photos of that species. This is another female whitetail. They're commonly found away from water, while the males are found closer to it. Obviously they're named white tail due to the males coloration.

Mantis

Pretend I haven't been missing. Here's another mantis. I'm excited because last year I didn't find any mid-sized mantis. I found an adult and plenty up to 1" long, but no signs of anything in the middle. This one was 2"-3" long. I actually found another one and coaxed it onto my hand but didn't have anything but my phone. As that picture is awful I won't try to figure out how to get an image off my painfully old phone.

Banded Pennant

Banded Pennant -Male

I just keep getting close to new dragonflies for me. This trip to Ponkapoag pond included the above banded pennant (which were all along the dam and rocky edges of the trail) and breeding halloween pennants. I never saw the halloween pennants perched, they would come out of the woods paired up and lay eggs before disappearing back into the woods. Then I spent the afternoon going on a farm tour for the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project. My mother wanted to buy a pasture raised chicken, and this is at the moment just about the only place to buy them.

Female Meadowhawk

My guess would be Autumn Meadowhawk, but there are several species that look mighty similar. I spent today tidying up the yard, replanting the raspberries, moving a few inconveniently located plants, planting the few things I still have in pots to go out and weeding, lots of weeding. I filled my laundry basket (weed carrier) four times. I also need to move the weed compost bin again as the bottom stuff has rotted down enough I'm getting a pile. (uggh, and just pulled off a sock and mistook a false blue indigo seed for a tick.)

Male Eastern Forktail

Eastern Forktail - Male

The array of damselflies and dragonflies appearing in the yard this year is impressive. The different fork tails in my area are differentiated by how much blue is at the end of their tail, and which segments are colored.

Hummingbird Moth

I've seen this guy come back a few times now. They're a small moth that mimics a hummingbird. It does get obvious when you get close they aren't a hummer (six legs), but from far away their flying pattern is very similar. (The computer is sort of functioning now, likely has a bad ram stick. Why it insists on giving obscure error codes instead of saying a ram stick is bad is what I'm annoyed about now.)

Blue Fronted Damselfly

Eeek a day late. Here's two to make up for it. My main computer is eating its operating system again so I spent too much time fiddling with it, okay, I went to Canobie Lake Park yesterday too. Enough about me.

Near as I can tell both these are female Blue Fronted Damselflies. I haven't found a picture of the blue form of the females, but this seems to match a description I did find. They were all over my backyard yesterday, don't see any yet this morning, but hopefully they've hung around.

Spangled Skimmer - Male

I know I said the dragonflies will stop. At some point they might, but it's summer and they are one of my favorite subjects. This is a male to match the female I posted two weeks ago. Often I don't exactly know what I've photographed until I get home and can zoom in unless it is an easily recognizable dragonfly. This one has been added to my mental list since it is the only dragonfly with white spots on its wing tips. They look almost exactly the same as another species unless you notice the wingtips and their slightly different eyes.