Roads End Naturalist

Exploring the natural world as we wander at the end of the road

Bugs Galore

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Mike Dunn Avatar
Mike Dunn

Every kid has a bug period…I never grew out of mine.

~E.O. Wilson, naturalist and author

The theme for summer camp last week at work was The Secret Lives of Bugs. We spent five days cruising around garden properties looking for bugs and other beasts. The kids had a great time and I managed a few pics of some of our finds along the way. Here are just a few of the wonderful creatures we discovered…

Longhorned beetle
A long-horned beetle brought to us one morning by one of the staff (click photos to enlarge)
Isopod
Campers learned about all sorts of “bugs”, including ones that had more than 6 legs like this isopod
Blue dasher dragonfly
The most common dragonfly at the Garden, the blue dasher
Spicebush swallowtail larva
One of my favorite bugs, a spicebush swallowtail caterpillar, still in its bird poop mimic stage
Eight-spotted forester larva
Eight-spotted forester moth larva
Oakworm moth just after emergence
One of the campers spotted this newly emerged oakworm moth (the wings are not yet pumped out to their full adult size)
Assassin bug nymph
Assassin bug nymph
honeybees from CCCG hive
One of the highlights of the week was a visit to a honeybee hive at the Carolina Campus Community Garden
honeybee with mite
A male honeybee with a varroa mite (that brown oval) on its thorax. These introduced mites are a major pest of honeybees.
bumblebee nest in box
We also learned about native bees from an NCSU entomologist. She brought a live bumblebee nest (above) and a drone box, where kids could let male bumblebees (drones) crawl on them (male bees lack stingers).
Mating Tiger Bee Flies
Mating tiger bee flies. These large flies are parasites on the nests of carpenter bees.
Signal fly - Family Platystomatidae
A signal fly earns its name from its behavior of waving its patterned wings back and forth as it walks, as though giving signals
Dragonhunter nymph
Sampling Morgan Creek yielded some nice bugs, including this unusual dragonhunter dragonfly nymph…
Dobsonfly larva
…and several of the somewhat intimidating hellgrammites (dobsonfly larvae)
Margined madtoms
We also managed some non-buggy critters, like these margined madtoms from Morgan Creek…
Spotted salamander close up
This gorgeous spotted salamander was found by another staff person as it cruised between buildings on a very rainy day

 

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Comments

2 responses to “Bugs Galore”

  1. tonytomeo Avatar
    tonytomeo

    In school, we could only use the word ‘bug’ in regard to insects of the Hemiptera family. My colleagues still think that is funny; but technically, bugs are hemipteran insects.

    Reply
  2. Marie Brown Avatar
    Marie Brown

    My son and his wife were out on his boat for several nights last week. They anchored at Rose Bay. 5 or 6 things flew past them, glowing like lightening bugs but the size of a small hummingbird. What could they have been?

    Sent from my iPad. Marie

    >

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Roads End Naturalist

Exploring the natural world as we wander at the end of the road

Copyright Mike Dunn and Melissa Dowland