Mating Bugs

Warm mornings are popular times to photograph mating bugs. I happened upon three when I was really looking for other things.

These  Japanese Beetles were on a blazing star next to the milkweed were the tussock moth caterpillars were my primary subjects. The Japanese beetle is an invasive species – and damages a lot of plants. The green and bronze iridescence of the adult forms do a have a beauty all their own….if only we had some predators to keep them in check.

The milkweed bugs seems to be everywhere – even on plants other than milkweeds. These two were mating but there were others just enjoying the flowers. They are seed eaters and the huge numbers of earlier instars will be seen on developing milkweed seed pods soon.

Red milkweed beetles are interesting to watch because their antennae are so long and – when they are not mating – they tend to move around the plant a lot. They vary in color from orange to red.

The most interesting thing about them is that each eye is bisected by an antenna!

Insects in our Garden

A few days ago was out working in our garden by 7 AM – pulling weeds and cutting spent flower stalks in our flower beds…but I got sidetracked observing insects. The first I noticed were on the skeleton of a milkweed plant. The milkweed tussock caterpillars had eaten all the leaves leaving only the stem and the larger veins of the leaves. They had started crawling over to the bush next to the stem. It seemed like there were hundreds of caterpillars.

After I finished some work, I went inside to clean up and recover from heat. I started wondering if the caterpillars would find the other milkweed plants that were about 5 feet away from the one they had consumed. I went to check at 9 and they had indeed found another plant! I continued to check periodically throughout the day. The gradually spread to 3 more plants. Sometimes they would appear very active and other times they would be resting underneath a leave that was still whole. When they ate, individuals worked on the leaf from the top and the bottom. It was a mass feeding frenzy.

The next surprise came the following morning. I went outside and found that the caterpillars had been active overnight and seemed to be larger. When I went back to check an hour later – more than half of them were not anywhere on the milkweed and I watched as more of them dropped off the plants. It was time for them to go roaming in the leaf litter!

On one of the checks of the caterpillars, I noticed some insects on a blazing start that was in bloom. They were tiny – about a quarter inch. The yellow and black insect is a syrphid or hoverfly.

There were two other insects on the plant but they stayed down in the flowers so much that it was hard to get a good identification.

Maybe some kind of bee?

The two types of insects did interact a little…did not seem to like the other being nearby.

I was very pleased with the performance of my camera (Canon PowerShot SX710HS) and the monopod’s contribution to stabilizing the camera to get clear images.