North Carolina: Bugs

So the chrysalis I posted a few days ago came from a caterpillar like this one:

Pipevine Swallowtail

Spot the yellow spider on these yellow flowers!

Spotted on a trail - this is a Question Mark Butterfly:

We were driving (very slowly) on a dirt road and I spotted this caterpillar, I had Rob stop so I could get its picture:

Yellow Woolly Bear Caterpillar - Tiger Moth

Natalie spotted this one on the trail.

More Bugs

We've been finding all sorts of interesting creatures lately, I'll credit spring.

First - creepy ones - these are brown widow spiders:

Supposedly they are not as poisonous as black widow spiders.  We found their interestingly spiky egg sacs on a fence one day and brought one home - only for it to fill a jar with tiny spiders.  We quickly made an id and disposed of our brood after watching them make cute little webs.  Now that we know what they are...we find them all over the place.  Yay.

This is a kind of tussock moth.  I'm not sure what kind, but we found them on a live oak tree. 

A few days later we found several in the pupa stage - the empty caterpillar is still on the outside - they do have a chrysalis, but they also have a cocoon around the chrysalis.  It looks like the empty body falls off in bits.  The female is not able to fly, but sits on the cocoon and lays her eggs there, then she dies.

We located more passion vine and found this wild Zebra Longwing chrysalis (and took it home of course!)

It eclosed the next day:

And finally, today we found this Julia butterfly caterpillar.  They also eat passion vine.  They have slender orange wings.

Bugs All Around

We found a lot bugs while we were in Arkansas.  I'm ok with most bugs.  I don't like cockroaches or palmetto bugs and I can't get past the slime factor of snails and slugs, but unless they sting, try to move in, or eat something I was hoping to eat myself, I can usually tolerate them.

Stick Bug at the diamond mine.  I think stick bugs look creepy.

Crickets in the Mist at Mount Magazine

Just like Momma - this is just the shell of a cicada, I liked to collect them when I was a kid - mostly because they crushed in a very pleasing way.

Wheel Bug again!  I'd never seen a wheel bug before our trip, but I found two in my parents' yard.  This one was laying eggs - and lots of them!

Some Wheel Bug trivia - they are assassin bugs, so they eat other insects, particularly insects that are considered pests.  They aren't bad to have around, but you should not try to pick them up (I don't know why you'd want to, they are big and do not look friendly at all!) their bite is comparable with a bee sting, but takes much longer to heal.

Hawk Moth

Some type of Hawk Moth,  I think I've posted one like this before.

We get some big moths resting on our front porch walls every so often.

What big eyes you have!



 I like moths.  I've never really had to deal with them chewing holes in my clothes though.  I read somewhere that moths are in decline, and honestly I don't know where I read it and I don't know if they really are or if some particular species of moth is in decline or what, but they seem to be pretty plentiful around here.

Fireflies

Somehow one night, the topic of lightning bugs came up with the kids. I had never seen lightning bugs down here, but it isn't very rural where we live, so I wasn't sure if Florida has lightning bugs or not. But a couple of weeks ago, we were driving home after dark and a bug hit our windshield and left a glowing spot, so we got our hopes up.

A few nights later, Rob came back from Mako's bedtime walk and annouced he'd seen fireflies. The next day he hyped up the kids and Caleb went out with him armed with a jar. They did catch some and we put what they caught in our butterfly cage, but what they caught was NOT lightning bugs!

Here is Caleb asleep next to his "fireflies".

What they caught are called eyed click beetles. Their bottoms do not glow, those two eye spots do the glowing.

If you mess with them they don't show off their lights, they play dead, so I colored in what they look like lit up:They don't really blink, it's more a steady burn and brighter than regular lightning bugs I think.

It turns out we have seen these bugs before, but not in a fascinating sort of way, in a "There is an ALIEN BUG with GLOW IN THE DARK EYES in the bathroom!" sort of way. Too bad we didn't know they are harmless...as adults. As larva they are called wireworms and they are a garden pest - they eat roots. What I read said they may live underground for up to 10 years, so maybe that explains why we don't see them every year.