Reports from the Field

Bug o’the Week – Blue Blow Fly

Howdy, BugFans,

Here’s a Holiday Rerun with some new words added for good measure (because who can look at something they wrote 12 years ago and not tweak it?).

The BugLady had fun photographing the deconstruction of an old farmhouse recently (in a deconstruction, everything usable gets recycled, not land-filled). On the outside walls, under the cedar shake siding, were long, skinny tubes and fist-shaped globs made by generations of mud wasps. The mud tubes that look like part of a pipe organ were made by a wasp called, logically, the ORGAN PIPE/PIPE ORGAN MUD DAUBER (Trypoxylon politum).

12.04.24

Bug o’the Week – Organ Pipe Mud Daubers (again)

Howdy, BugFans,

Here’s a Holiday Rerun with some new words added for good measure (because who can look at something they wrote 12 years ago and not tweak it?).

The BugLady had fun photographing the deconstruction of an old farmhouse recently (in a deconstruction, everything usable gets recycled, not land-filled). On the outside walls, under the cedar shake siding, were long, skinny tubes and fist-shaped globs made by generations of mud wasps. The mud tubes that look like part of a pipe organ were made by a wasp called, logically, the ORGAN PIPE/PIPE ORGAN MUD DAUBER (Trypoxylon politum).

11.27.24

Bug o’the Week – Dogwood Scurfy Scale

Howdy, BugFans,

If asked to describe a Red-osier dogwood shrub, lots of people would say “it has red bark with white lumps on it.”  It does – but it doesn’t.

Some of our most un-bug-like bugs are the scale insects.  There are lots of them worldwide – about 8,400 species in 36 families.  They’re called scales because they (the females, anyway) cling, limpet-like, to their food plant, protected under a waxy covering that looks fish-scale-ish.  They’re sexually dimorphic (“two forms”), and adult males – in the species where males exist – are often tiny and gnat-like.  If your basic definition of an insect is “six legs, some wings, and three body parts that are divided in segments” you’ll have to suspend it a bit for the scales. 

11.20.24

Bug o’the Week – Common Buckeye Butterfly rewrite

Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady originally wrote about the Common Buckeye in January of 2009, but she thinks she might have given it short shrift (due to insufficient scholarship), so here’s a rewritten version with new words and new pictures.

The first thing to know about Common Buckeyes is that they are not Yankee butterflies – they are Southerners (from a largely tropical genus) that recolonize God’s Country in varying numbers from year to year and produce a two or three broods here, depending on whether spring and/or fall is long and mild. But they are not very “freeze-tolerant,” and they can’t survive Wisconsin winters in any stage, so they wander back south in the fall.

11.13.24

Bug o’the Week – Two Enigmatic Insects

Howdy, BugFans,

In her program about insect Natural History, the BugLady says to the audience “so – we’ve been studying insects for hundreds of years – we’ve got it all nailed down, right?” Sure. The BugLady has had some interesting adventures with insects this year. Even if she can identify them (a big “if” – the X-Files are bursting), not all of them lead transparent lives (“What is it?” should, after all, not be the last question we ask about an organism, it should be the first, and the answer helps open a bunch more doors). The BugLady frequently writes about bugs who are caught in a classification dust-up. Here are two poster children for “temporarily displaced” insects.

11.07.24

Bug o’the Week – Oil Beetle Adventures

Greetings, BugFans,

When the BugLady was walking at Riveredge towards the end of September, she came to a fork in the trail and thought “if I go left, I’ll get back to the car faster, but if I go right, I’ll see something good.” So she did, and she did.

Along a 15 foot stretch of trail, she found a half-dozen Oil beetles in the grass (including one pair in flagrante delicto). She suspects that some of the motionless females may have been ovipositing. And then she looked closer.

10.30.24

Bug o’the Week – Wooly Bear Caterpillar again

Greetings, BugFans,

The BugLady has been doing a little dance as she walks down the trail lately, trying to avoid stepping on wooly bear caterpillars (her mission statement, after all, is “Less stepping on bugs”). She has been less successful when she drives. So, it’s time to rerun this episode that originally aired in 2009, but that she re-posts every five years or so. A few new words; some new pictures:

10.23.24

Bug o’the Week – Bugs in the News XIV

Greetings, BugFans,

Time to chip away at the BugLady’s giant collection of insect articles. Note that most of them are from various (free) on-line reports put out by the Smithsonian.

10.16.24

Bug o’the Week – Little Yellow Butterfly

Howdy, BugFans,

When the BugLady was on the trail recently, a small, yellow butterfly flew by, just above the ground. It was noticeably smaller than the ubiquitous Orange and Clouded Sulphurs, but it zipped out of sight pretty fast. Fortunately, the BugLady’s butterfly turned around, came back, and posed nicely.

10.09.24

Bug o’the Week – Rough Stink Bug

Greetings, BugFans,

The BugLady has a thing for stink bugs. They’re like bumble bees and water lilies – she can’t walk past one without taking its picture. She especially likes stink bugs in the genus Brochymena, the Rough stink bugs, which look like walking fossils. But before we talk about the Brochymena, which have made a few brief appearances in BOTW, here’s a brief Stink Bug 101.

10.02.24

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