Year in Nature Photography – Day 140

Cabbage White
 butterfly (Pieris rapae) in flight

Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) blossoms

Unknown duskywing butterfly (Erynnis sp?) in flight

Pretty sure this is a little glassywing skipper butterfly (Pompeius verna)

2nd view of the little glassywing skipper butterfly (Pompeius verna)

Unknown duskywing butterfly (Erynnis sp?)

*Note: I’m quite behind with postings so if the next bunch are light on information, I’m just trying to catch up. Some great pictures to come up though*

Some pictures of some butterflies in flight. I still feel that the duskywing butterflies are too similar for my to identify to species, especially without seeing the under-wings. A new skipper that I’m pretty confident is a little glassywing. We planted some butterfly weed which is native to the eastern part of North America. Butterfly weed is part of the milkweed family of plants and thus provides a host for several native species of butterflies, including the monarch butterfly.

Year in Nature Photography – Day 132

Unknown dusky wing butterfly (Erynnis sp?)

Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) illustrating phototaxis

Green june beetles (Cotinus nitida) close up

Green june beetles (Cotinus nitida)

The blue dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) again

Green june beetles (Cotinus nitida) closer, likely mating

Wind knocked down our cardinal flower, and you can see evidence of tropism which is growth/movement towards a directional stimulus. In this case it is likely some combination of gravitropism (response to gravity due to being knocked over) or phototropism (response to light). After righting the plant it still has the bend in the stem though it has corrected itself. The link takes you to a page that has short time lapse clips of plant tropsims. My guess is this was primarily phototropism to re-align the leaves with the sun, due to the fact that the roots were still growing in the normal direction of gravity and tropisms seem to be sensed and responded to differently depending what part of the plant is affected.

Green june beetles were buzzing all over the yard today, looked almost like the carpet of buzzing bugs a bit larger than a thumbnail. My guess is I caught them mating, according to the website the females excrete a substance that brings males buzzing over. These beetles are actually native but are considered a pest to those who want to maintain the “green lawn”, due to their grubs eating turf roots and burrowing all over.

Year in Nature Photography – Day 116

More butterflies and another new species of butterfly today. The new one appears to be one of the duskywing butterflies which all sources online readily agree are difficult to distinguish without more thorough observation. The link is to a little video about the differences between several of the species. Aside from the duskywing there was a nymph with a bright orange abdomen, that I suspect is a wheel bug nymph due to their presence in the yard (day 58 and day 69) and not a leaf-footed bug nymph because the leaf-footed bug pictures online seem to have their entire body as orange.

American (Painted) Lady (Vanessa virginiensis)

2 Variegated Fritillaries (Euptoieta claudia)

One of the Duskywings (Erynnis sp?)

Variegated Fritillary (Euptoieta claudia)

Pretty sure this is a Wheel bug (Arilus cristatus) nymph

Pretty sure this is a Wheel bug (Arilus cristatus) nymph