A cuckoo wasp (Chrysis angolensis species, I believe) takes a shine to the milkweed leaves.
.
.
.
.
August 19, 2018
September 26, 2017
Curiously of a sudden
a fork-tailed bush katydid (scudderia furcata)*
appears, out of somewhere, to greet
the latest monarch release.
.
.
*Best guess. Out of the eight species of bush katydid (scudderia), the fork-tailed (s. furcata) is said to be most common. Compare scudderia at Katydids North of Mexico.
.
.
September 17, 2017
September 9, 2017
Barely visible Myzocallis asclepiadis aphids in various life-stages
cling to the bottoms of milkweed leaves that I glean to clean
and feed to the season’s last monarch caterpillars.
All summer these underleaf-feeding aphids have been dropping what ecologist Anurag Agrawal calls “honeydew” excrement for ants and maybe others to eat on the leaftops below (a process just beyond the discretion & ability of this camera — so we’ll take his word for it).
.
.
.
September 5, 2017
August 15, 2017
Northern flatid planthoppers are common here on the stems of plants they might eat.
But I could not resist the dramatic image of one on the ground it will someday feed.
.
.
.
ID Reference (U of DE)
August 3, 2017
July 29, 2017
Called the sulphur pearl in its native Europe and a carrot seed moth in North America,
Sitochroa palealis was first reported in the U.S. in 2002.
But we just met, the two of us, hanging in the grass of national moth week.
.
.
.
July 24, 2017