Forests are places where we can get back in touch with our inner selves, where we can walk on soft ground, breathe in natural cents, taste berries, listen to the leaves crackling – all the senses are awakened in the subdued light…

~Pierre Lieutaghi

I decided to wander away from the house one morning and stroll through the “back 14”. The bulk of our 14 acres of forest is on some steep terrain, with a ravine and an intermittent stream “valley” making up the lowlands. Earlier this spring I spent a lot of mornings down slope from the house cutting and painting Eleagnus shrubs to try to kill off some of this terrible invasive. I have let up on those pursuits with the onset of the sweltering heat and humidity of summer, but I thought it was time for a leisurely stroll to see what I might find. Spiders and snails dominated the scene and I found myself picking up a branch to wave in front as I walked (although I tried to step around any webs that I saw).

Two spider species seemed to be the most abundant – the unusually-shaped (but accurately named) Arrowhead Orbweaver and various sizes of the more common Red-femured Spotted Orbweaver. The largest specimen I encountered was busy wrapping its overnight catch of a large May Beetle in silk.

As I walked, I started paying more attention to tree leaves and what I might find on them. If I saw chewing, I flipped it over to see if I could discover the chewer. On one hickory tree, I found a cluster of neat little eggs underneath a leaf. I think these may be moth eggs of some sort, although a species of true bug eggs is also a possibility (stink bugs, etc.). But, they seem to lack the usual lid associated with eggs of the latter group.

I also noticed some other insects associated with this egg mass – tiny parasitoid wasps of some sort diligently laying their eggs. They were purposeful in their movements and spent some time with each egg they parasitized. I saw six of the wasps, so I wonder how many of these insect eggs will actually hatch out the species that originally laid the cluster.

A Spicebush leaf yielded a member of one of my favorite groups of mini-creatures, a treehopper. These tiny jumpers are often adorned with strange appendages that help them mimic thorns or other features of their background, giving them both some armor-like protection and camouflage. As usual, I went to my go-to resource for this type of insect, Hoppers of North Carolina. There I learned that this is probably a female based on the long length of its horn (males have short horns). There are apparently several species in this group that look alike and may be separated primarily by host plant. Though Spicebush is not listed as a host plant, this one was next to a small Redbud tree, which is a known host plant. Right after I snapped this photo, this one leaped onto the Redbud. Another interesting tidbit is that these little hoppers can communicate by vibrating the substrate they are on. Research has shown that they communicate mating calls, food sources, and danger from predators using these vibrations (inaudible to the human ear).

Chewed leaves on a maple branch caused me to stop and look, leading to this discovery – one of the twig mimic caterpillars. This fairly large larva is distinguished by the dark stripes on the head capsule, the dark line on the slight hump near the far end, and the first two pair of prolegs that are noticeably reduced in size. It is the caterpillar of a really cool-looking moth, the Maple Looper.

As always, there were plenty of other macro surprises and delights along the way…

As I neared the house, I spotted something new to me in a patch of Microstegium – a dark-colored stink bug with prominent spines. I leaned in and saw it was missing most of one antenna. Online information said little is known about the life history of this species although it appears to eat both plants and other insects, but is not an agricultural pest like some of its relatives. What struck me most was the stark beauty of this species and its textured exoskeleton. Once again, a close look at our surroundings yields many surprises.