280 days of Urbpandemonium #70

A mason wasp (Family Eumeninae*) drinks some raspberry nectar to get energy for her tasks. Those tasks: 1. build a chamber of dirt and saliva 2. find, and sting to paralyze, a caterpillar 3. place that caterpillar in the chamber and lay an egg on it 4. repeat.


* Named for the Greek general Eumenes (which means "friendly")

Garden giant

Every once in a while you'll encounter a wine cap that has truly earned the name "garden giant." This large cap grew from the well-watered mulch next to an organic garden, where it had plenty of fecal coliform bacteria in the fertilizer, and probably lots of soil nematodes to trap in its fungal nooses.

280 days of Urbpandemonium #71

I checked my "sap bucket beetle" tag to see what I'd written about these before. I like what I wrote back then, so I'm going to just directly quote myself when talking about Ellychnia corrusca*:

"These are beetles descended from bioluminescent ancestors, but have given up the key characteristic of their family. They fly by day so have no reason to light up at night. Mates are attracted to one another in the more usual insect way, by scent.

I've always had an affection for these soft-shelled, slow-flying beetles. At least once a year I'll grab one out of the air as it lazily flies by. It will crawl about on my hand for minute, trying to figure out what happened, and I'll look at the distinctive red markings on its underside and pronotum. There are about a dozen species of day-flying fireflies in North America, but this one is the largest, and I suspect the most common."



* "Glittering lampwick." Did you not notice it NOT bioluminescing Mr. Linnaeus?

280 days of Urbpandemonium #72

( big spider )

Nature, wet in mandible and tarsus

I figured out that I could use my camera in its macro setting with the lens zoomed in. It doesn't make for great photos, but I did capture this brutal vignette from a battle between two pavement ant colonies.

280 days of Urbpandemonium #73

This distinctive, but variable little hopper Entylia carinata* is a predictable presence on the underside of our sunflower leaves. My insect guide claims they prefer goldenrod, but we know that the bugs don't read the guides. More often than not, I find them in the company of different species of ants, who feed on the honeydew (you know, poop) that the hopper produces. Though the color of these bugs varies from light to dark, the shape--in imitation of plant material--is distinctive.

* I can't find any explanation for "Entylia," but "carinata" refers to the keel of the back of the animal.