Milkweed Bugs, Large & Small

Last year I wrote a blog about the milkweed bug Oncopeltus fasciatus, which is also called the large milkweed bug. It's the kind I usually see on milkweed stems and leaves or sunning themselves on objects near milkweed. (Click here for that blog.)

Large milkweed bugs, Oncopeltus fasciatus, sunning on a fence rail. Adults sport a bright pattern of two black spots and a wide black band on an orange-red background. 

This week I stopped to look at the milkweed bug pictured below. It was sitting on milkweed flowers where its colors contrasted beautifully with the pink and cream blossoms. Looking more closely I saw by the pattern on its back that it was not the kind I usually see. It was the other milkweed bug: Lygaeus kalmii, also called the small milkweed bug.

A small milkweed bug, Lygaeus kalmii. The adult pattern is usually described as a red X on black, but I see a black heart and three red triangles on a red background. 

Like large milkweed bugs, small milkweed bugs also mainly eat milkweed seeds, piercing them with a sharp beak, injecting enzymes, and then sucking up the dissolved food. Both kinds of milkweed bugs also sometimes drink nectar from flowers -- the one above may have been having a sip when I spotted it.

Great Black Wasp

The great black wasp, Sphex pensylvanicus. Click to enlarge.

Great black wasps are big -- up to almost an inch and a half long -- and dramatically black with blue iridescence on the wings. I saw a few of them on summersweet (Cethra alnifolia) and milkweed bushes in Brooklyn Bridge Park this week. Adult great black wasps eat flower nectar and are important pollinators. They dwarfed the honeybees and smaller wasps that were also eating there.

Great black wasps are solitary wasps that do not live in colonies like the familiar yellow jacket wasp. Instead, the female great black wasp digs a multi-chambered tunnel in soft soil to make a nursery for her offspring. She hunts for large insects, usually katydids; stings them to paralyze but not kill; and takes them into the tunnel nest. She provisions the nest with several katydids, lays eggs on them, and then pushes dirt into the nest opening to close it. The eggs hatch into larvae that eat the katydids. Then they pupate through the winter and emerge as adults in summer to begin the cycle again.

Great black wasps are sometimes called katydid-killers. It's no coincidence that I see them in Brooklyn Bridge Park where there are flowers (for nectar) and katydids (for baby food) -- everything a great black wasp could want. Click here to see the greater angle-wing katydid, Microcentrum rhombifolium, that I wrote about last summer. 

Blue Dasher Dragonfly

The male blue dasher, Pachydiplax longipennis, has a blue abdomen with a black tip. Click to enlarge. 

The female blue dasher has longitudinal yellow stripes on the abdomen. 

Male and female blue dashers are about an inch and a half long. Both have wavy yellow and brown stripes on the thorax, the middle body section where wings and legs are attached.

The blue dasher is one of the most common and abundant dragonflies in the United States. They can be found near still water almost anywhere from Mexico through southern Canada. After mating, females lay eggs on the water; the dragonfly's immature stages are aquatic. Adults capture and eat small flying insects.

The poem below, by the Welsh poet W. H. Davies, inspired the song "Dragonfly" by Fleetwood Mac.

The Dragonfly -- W. H. Davies, 1927

Now, when my roses are half buds, half flowers,
And loveliest, the king of flies has come-
It was a fleeting visit, all too brief;
In three short minutes he has seen them all,
And rested, too, upon an apple tree.

There, his round shoulders humped with emeralds,
A gorgeous opal crown set on his head,
And all those shining honours to his breast-
‘My garden is a lovely place’ thought I,
‘But is it worthy of such a guest?’

He rested there, upon the apple leaf-
‘See, see,’ I cried amazed, ‘his opal crown,
And all those emeralds clustered around his head!’
‘His breast, my dear, how lovely was his breast-’
The voice of my Beloved quickly said.

‘See, see his gorgeous crown, that shines
With all those jewels bulging round its rim-’
I cried aloud at night, in broken rest.
Back came the answer quickly, in my dream-
‘His breast, my dear, how lovely was his breast!’

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A threesome of three-lined potato beetles, Lema daturaphila. Click. 

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Atlantic Ghost Crab

Atlantic ghost crab, Ocypoda quadrata. Click to enlarge. 

I met this little crab on a beach in Cape May, New Jersey. It's Ocypoda quadrata, called a ghost crab or sand crab.

The Latin name Ocypoda means "fast-footed," and quadrata describes the rectangular shape of its carapace, or back. It is pale like a ghost, and camouflaged to blend with the sand. It is famous for hunkering down and covering itself with sand very quickly, seeming to disappear before your eyes.

Ghost crabs live in burrows in the sand above the high water line. They don't go far from the ocean; females lay their eggs in the water.   The crabs are mainly nocturnal, but they come out in the day. They hunt at the water's edge, running after the retreating surf to pick up bits of food like sand fleas, clams, mole crabs, turtle eggs, detritus, and vegetation. Ghost crabs are common on Atlantic coastal beaches from Rhode Island south to Brazil.

Ghost crabs have eyes on long stalks that let them see 360 degrees around; there's no sneaking up on a ghost crab!

Growing Caterpillar

A black swallowtail butterfly caterpillar. Click to enlarge. 

For the past few weeks, I have been watching black swallowtail caterpillars in a nearby stand of fennel plants. Like many butterfly species, black swallowtails are picky about what they eat. They prefer host plants in the carrot family, Apiaceae, which includes parsley, fennel, dill, Queen Anne's Lace, and of course, carrots.

Fennel smells like licorice candy. It is delightful to look for caterpillars on fennel plants, because as I brush the lacy fronds, they release a sweet licorice smell. I usually wonder in passing what it's like to live on an exclusive diet of fennel.

Adult females lay eggs on the plants. A tiny caterpillar hatches right on its food and starts to eat. It eats and eats until it grows to the maximum size its external skeleton will allow. Then it sits quietly while its skin splits; it emerges larger and ready for the next growth stage. Each stage is called an instar. Black swallowtails have five instars.

Today, as I was taking a walk, I found the caterpillar pictured above. It was sitting very still. I learned later that it was about to change its skin. After walking in the neighborhood for a few hours, I stopped at the fennel plant to look again.  The picture below shows what I saw -- a new instar, feasting on its old skin. The caterpillar was efficiently recycling its resources. I could not help thinking that it probably tasted like licorice.

A newly emerged black swallowtail caterpillar, eating its old skin. 

A Baby Wheel Bug !

I found a tiny assassin sitting on a yellow flower in Brooklyn Bridge Park last week. It's an immature, or nymphal, stage of an assassin bug.

Assassin bugs are predatory insects in the family Reduviidae. They have long downward-facing beaks that unfold forward. Assassin bugs capture other insects and pierce them with their sharp beaks. Then they inject enzymes to paralyze and dissolve. Then they suck out the victim's liquified insides.

Click to enlarge. You can see the bug's developing little beak. 

The orange and black nymph pictured above overwintered in an egg that its mother laid on a plant last fall. It hatched this spring and will pass through five nymphal stages until it is a fully grown adult some time this summer.

And it's not just any assassin bug, it is Arilus cristatus -- a wheel bug!

When it is fully grown, it will look like this adult wheel bug. Get a load of the beak on this! 

The wheel bug is one of the largest terrestrial bugs in North America. Adults are about an inch and a quarter long. It is named for the cog-shaped armor on the adult's back.

If you get a chance, check the foliage around the Pier 1 entrance to the Squibb Park Pedestrian Bridge this summer. At least one great big wheel bug will be hunting there.