Here are a few insect pictures before I get to the trip to Colorado last year. I’ll break it up by subjects (ie. landscapes, plants, animals, etc.). Enjoy!
Several different insects found in my office’s native plant garden and while visiting our station in Brandywine Creek State Park. My favorite catch was a mantis (I believe Chinese) in the act of feeding on a butterfly, gross, but fascinating. Enjoy!
Went up to the Blue Ridge Parkway entrance near Waynesville, a part of it I’ve only been on a couple times. Caught a picture of jewelweed in bloom, probably the yellow form listed, although there is a pale jewelweed that is also yellow. The juice from the stems is supposed to bring relief from poison ivy and stinging nettle, and it has also shown some anti-fungal properties. I also snapped a picture of a bee inside one of the blooms. There was some species of goldenrod nearby but I don’t have enough of a reference shot to determine the species as I was more interested in what turns out to be a locust borer on the flower head. Locust borers are native and as their name suggests, they bore into black locust trees, problem being that black locust are used in restoration and so the locust borers have spread with the use of the tree, according to the linked site. Also nearby was a species of joe-pye weed, probably hollow stem joe-pye weed which was feeding a bee and another feeding what looks like a pipevine swallowtail butterfly. Pipevine swallowtails can look similar to the black morph of the eastern tiger swallowtail, black swallowtails and the spicebush swallowtail, however if you can look at the spots on the hind underwing you can determine the species. Pipevines have a c shape of orange spots, spicebush have a blue spot that looks like a tooth or comet interrupting the row of orange spots , black’s have an extra orange spot connected to the main row, and black morphs have a complete row of orange spots and faint tiger striping. I also took a scenic shot from one of the overlooks.
phototerrascientia 