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Welcome to the 2012/2013 edition of critterquest! This is the 6th Critterquest thread, so lets get some things out of the way in case you're new here.  Typical Seasonal Disclaimer: Bugs gross eew! We know most of you germophobe goons have been mommy's little precious for decades and kept in your sterile bubbles playing your animes. There are potentially  SCARY images of spiders, wasps and (insert tiny harmless animal that makes you pee yourself) in this threadFirst, a few guidelines:1. This is for wild animals. Don't post your pets please (if you're raising jumping spiders or something, then that's probably ok, but this isn't the thread for your domesticated cats, dogs, rabbits, or birds, etc) 2. We prefer live animals here! If you find a lizard on the side of the road, and you want to know what it is, that's ok, but don't come in here posting your lastest hunting trophy or boatful of dead fish. 3. Don't be scared of bugs! They're probably scared of you! (Be scared of Moose instead!) 4. If you post something, try and post where you found it. This makes it easier to identify! 5. If you post something from flickr, try and make the source available. Flickr's download protection is a joke (literally, you can right click, view source, and then you have the direct download link anyways), so if you're really that worried please consider using a watermark instead. 6. DON'T USE TIMG TAGS if you can help it. I know Imgur lets you put a smaller picture that hotlinks to the full size off site, so try and use that instead (so that we don't have pages with 200 10 megapixel images killing everything). Last Years Thread: Critterquest III: The P. audaxity of hope Critterquest IV and V were both bitten by a So you might be asking yourself what Critterquest is? Well, it's spring where I live (which honestly means there will be a blizzard by the end fo the month), but for the time being the birds are coming back, the bugs are coming out of hibernation, and the plants are growing again, and that means we can all go out and take pictures (or draw pictures, or describe in detail with words, or take a video) of all these cute little critters! Or big creatures, if you live near deer, elk, bears and the like. Maybe you'll see some celler spiders?  Maybe some spiders being eaten?  Bees!!!!!!!  Things disquised as bees, like hoverflys!  Things that wished they were bees, this this normal fly!  But this isn't just for bugs. Turtles can play!  Fish can play(this is a Gar)!  And birds can play (House Finches love to play)!  gently caress de- ALL GLORY TO HYPNODEER!  And we can't forget salamanders, lizards, and snakes, oh my (thanks to Knormal for these shots)   And moths and butterflies are pretty dang great (thanks to Slo-Tek here)  3rdinstarpolyphemus by RReiheld, on Flickr  unicorn-caterpillar by RReiheld, on Flickr Basically, if you see something in the wild, try and get a picture and post about it here! If you know what it is, please tell, but if you don't know then this is a great place to find out. And just remember, wherever you are there's probably a spider watching you, hoping to get it's picture taken!  
Mr. Despair fucked around with this message at Mar 6, 2013 around 21:18 |
| # ? Mar 23, 2012 21:19 |
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| # ? May 24, 2013 02:18 |
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Hello my name is Stu and I have a critter problem. Most people spend their lives oblivious to the bazillion really cool things happening around the clock within 5 yards of their posting station. There are critters everywhere around you, they mean you absolutely zero harm (unless you live in Australia) and are fun to learn about! Thanks for starting the new thread Mr. Despair. I will have some new shots to contribute tomorrow, but I'll repost my Dee Snyder caterpillar from last year:  and another of my favorites, because tiny mantids are adorable, and I really love the color in this shot:  Here's to another successful Northern Hemisphere season. Sorry again, Australia  it's warm enough there all year to go get some snaps of things that want to kill you though!
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| # ? Mar 23, 2012 21:33 |
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I went outside, set up a tatami mat in the freshly cut grass on campus and read for 2 hours so I got to see a buncha neat things. Lots of red spiderlings. This cute little dude was inchwormin' all over my mat, I picked him up and put him back in the grass so I wouldn't accidentally roll over and squish him.  This guy was all over my bag for a while, before flying in my face to alert me to his presence.  My phone camera doesn't do macro so all the up close/inchworm action shots I took were out of focus. I'm currently in north Louisiana. Stu, I love that baby mantid! 
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| # ? Mar 23, 2012 21:44 |
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Great timing for a new thread! I walked to my mailbox this afternoon and had my camera on me, when I found a bunch of ants and other crawlies in the grass nearby. Sadly I don't think any of the ant pictures came out (still getting the hang of manual mode on my camera), but I managed to get this little inchworm edit: ^^ High-five inchworm buddy! Hang in there, baby! by BohoValencia, on Flickr These shots are from sometime last year- I was about to head to the store when I saw this giant black spider on my steps. I grabbed my camera and got some shots as it walked up the side of my house.  IMG_5475 by BohoValencia, on Flickr  IMG_5486 by BohoValencia, on Flickr After I posted the pictures on my Facebook I had a bunch of people squeal that "omg it's a black widow!". I didn't see the red hourglass on it but Wiki says that they don't always have it, so I guess there's the chance that I did get super-close to a poisonous spider for the sake of awesome pictures  These were taken in central NC if anyone wants to take a stab at identification, and also there are more shots of the spider if you click through to the Flickr link.I can't wait to contribute more, I love this time of year and I love these threads!
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| # ? Mar 23, 2012 21:49 |
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Hooray new thread! This is the best thread on SA in my opinion. Everyone's real helpful and it's cool seeing folks get interested in the smaller things in life.  I haven't had a chance to crawl around and look for critters these past few days, so here's some reposts to get your critter-on. It's supposed to stop raining Sunday or Monday so I'll hopefully have some fresh shots for y'all. Tiny mantis, yay!  Robber Fly:  Spiders     Bad to the bone.
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| # ? Mar 23, 2012 21:52 |
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PREYING MANTITS posted:He's waving at us. Get down, lil' Phiddipus.Valencia posted:
She looks like a Black Widow to me! The hourglass would be on the underside of her abdomen, and like you said, it's not always readily apparent or even present. If she's not a Black Widow, she's definitely something in the Theriddiid family, quite possibly in genus Steatoda. I found a S. grossa in my room last fall, and she was a dead-ringer for a Black Widow in terms of general body morphology and size. Until I managed to catch her in a bottle and get a closer look, I was freaked out that I had a Black Widow chilling feet from my bed.
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| # ? Mar 23, 2012 22:01 |
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Yay!!! I scrambled to get caught up on the old thread before it was closed (...and I still have 20+ pages to go) and now I know that these guys that are all over the place right now (New York state) are probably boxelder bugs: And this is a snail. Beyond that I do not know, except that it is a very small snail:  Are the boxelder bugs particularly damaging? They're kind of gross when they get into the house and die all over the place, but is there any other reason to be bothered by how darned many of them there are right now? E. BUGS, not beetles. Derp. vvv. That is quite the collection of boxelder bugs you have there. They like to get between the wall and the bed in our guest room and die, unnoticed until the next once-in-a-while that someone comes to stay overnight. Andrias Scheuchzeri fucked around with this message at Mar 23, 2012 around 22:57 |
| # ? Mar 23, 2012 22:02 |
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Andrias Scheuchzeri posted:Yay!!! I scrambled to get caught up on the old thread before it was closed (...and I still have 20+ pages to go) and now I know that these guys that are all over the place right now (New York state) are probably boxelder beetles: I swear the town I live in is named after Box Elder bugs, they're so common here. They seem to just pour out of the cracks whenever there's a warm day (and in fact, I'm a little surprised that I haven't seen any in the past few days, it's been quite warm). This is a pretty common sight where I live, but to be honest I don't think they're that harmful. Even with that many I haven't seen any issues of them eating my garden, it's just annoying how they love to get inside the house and look for someplace warm (like the inside of your big screen tv. Really annoying having a foot long shadow of a box elder bug crawling over your screen). They can release a stink to deter animals, so if you have pets they might be annoyed by them, but they aren't poisonous.  Box Elder Bugs by MrDespair, on Flickr
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| # ? Mar 23, 2012 22:41 |
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Man I really need to get a better camera.
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| # ? Mar 23, 2012 22:44 |
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Hooray new Critterquest thread!  I'm one of the entomologist goons, and I just want everyone to go out and see more small animals. You don't need any specialized equipment to look for bugs, but once you develop an eye for them you realize that there are insects everywhere. Even urban areas have good places for insects. Even the low end digital cameras have a macro mode. Use that and take lots of pictures. Some of them won't be blurry. I will try to at least make a ballpark id for insects posted here, just a request that you always include the location. For the US, State and region will suffice, country and province for the rest of the world. A really good resource for finding pictures of American insects is BugGuide. They have a searchable database with lots of user submitted pictures. There's no comparable resource for Europe or the rest of the world really.
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| # ? Mar 23, 2012 22:56 |
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Saw this little guy in a marsh today. Only about a centimeter long from nose to butt.
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| # ? Mar 23, 2012 23:33 |
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Sam Hall posted:Saw this little guy in a marsh today. Only about a centimeter long from nose to butt. Baaaaaby frog! Where are you located? Assuming you're in the SE US, this little dude looks like an American Green Tree Frog who just metamorphosed into adult form.
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| # ? Mar 23, 2012 23:58 |
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I ended up coming home with a field mouse yesterday, was walking the dogs down near the rail embankment and he was just sitting in the middle of the path. I picked him up and he clung onto my hand and went to sleep in my shirt. I think he's only a baby, got him in a hamster cage right now and he's eating a little, but he sleeps most of the time, even at night, and he's worryingly tame. Gonna give him a few days and hope he perks up! He's not a pet (yet) so I think he counts!
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 00:11 |
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At work on Tuesday I saw what I'm pretty sure is a queen ant and a drone doin' it. (Bronx, NY)
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 00:19 |
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Saw a Mayfly hanging out on my backdoor. He wasn't too thrilled about me getting up close with my lens, but he also wasn't bothered enough to fly away.  Mayfly by MrDespair, on Flickr  Mayfly 2 by MrDespair, on Flickr And they say the early bird gets the worm, but the lazy bird who wakes up at 5 in the evening and goes looking for food generally has an easy time finding worms too.  DSC_0104.jpg by MrDespair, on Flickr Rabbit gave me the old evil eye.  DSC_0015.jpg by MrDespair, on Flickr Once he decided the crazy guy crawling towards him with a camera held out at arms reach wasn't going to eat him, he relaxed again though. (The camera was about 2 or 3 feet away at this point).  DSC_0021.jpg by MrDespair, on Flickr Mr. Despair fucked around with this message at Mar 24, 2012 around 00:39 |
| # ? Mar 24, 2012 00:37 |
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I'm in the northeast US and I met my very first pseudoscorpion the other day. I didn't even know they existed. It was so tiny I thought the claws were some kind of antennae until I looked closer. I was ill-prepared to photograph it (visiting a restroom) so all I have is a terrible, terrible cell phone picture: Better Wikipedia version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ar_1.jpg
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 01:27 |
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PREYING MANTITS posted:
I hope that's a toy/model motorcycle.
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 01:36 |
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Found this critter in the house, so I snapped a pic before I put him back outside.  Also there's a nature trail a short distance away from my house that I like biking along. It follows the course of a river for a ways, and I managed to find these turtles basking on a log. When I came back there were four of them. The close up pictures are taken from probably 40 feet away, using my gf's camera's zoom.    Also this little guy was only about two inches long, so I had to stop and take a pic.  Click any of them for huuuuge.
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 01:47 |
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Saw this guy today on a hike in eastern Long Island, New York. After some Googling I've decided it's probably a northern black racer. 
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 01:52 |
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I went out for salamanders the other day. Starting out, I noticed this bat house the DNR has for a state endangered bat found at the site (Rafinesque's big-eared bat).  I did not see any bats, but didn't want to disturb the house. I found a lot of Desmognathus (dusky salamanders), including a couple of different species.     Here's a very gravid D. fuscus. I've never seen a Desmog that was so fat before.  Absolutely gigantic D. quadramaculatus, black-bellied salamander. They're the largest species of Desmognathus.  D. ocoee? I'm not very good at IDing all the different Desmogs.  Tiny little Desmog.  Smug faced D. quad. One of the animals I'd been there to look for were four-toed salamanders, Hemidactylium scutatum. They live in sphagnum bogs, and lay their eggs in clumps of moss, where the larvae hatch out and then fall into the water. Females typically guard the nests. I ended up finding three adults and five nests.  Habitat shot.    Eggs; you can barely see part of a female in the last photo.    Adult female Hemi; they have really cute snub-noses. They're a pretty small salamander, and they have tails that break off really easily (defense mechanism), so you need to be careful when handling them.  Some pitcher plants, state endangered in South Carolina.  A mountain lake, with a number of Eastern newts (Notophthalmus v. viridescens). I caught this male really easily; look at the black keratinized structures on his legs and feet; those are so that he can hang onto females easier, and are only present in the breeding season.     Some butterflies and a hummingbird moth on some dog crap. Another species I was looking for was the spring salamander, Gyrinophilus porphyriticus. I only found one adult, but saw three larvae, too.  In situ after the leaves had been removed.      Larval Gyrino. The one salamander I really wanted to find was Aneides aeneus, the green salamander. They're state endangered, and a possibly candidate for federal listing. They require forested areas near rock faces, and I'd spent many hours looking for them, hiking through all sorts of terrain, climbing things I shouldn't have climbed, and going to all sorts of trouble. I saw this rock when I was leaving to go home, after I wanted to go a different route home, and decided to check it out.  Almost right away, I looked into a crack, and saw a snake looking back at me. I didn't get a photo, since it was pretty far back and my flashlight wasn't up to task, but it was a juvenile copperhead. I moved over a bit and then finally saw this face staring back at me.  After all my searching, I finally found a green salamander! And he was twenty feet from the road.  I managed to coax him out, and got a bunch of pictures. He was a lot larger than he looked from inside the crack.       They're really neat; if you notice his feet, they're all webbed. This isn't for swimming; Aneides are entirely terrestrial; their eggs skip the tadpole stage and hatch right into miniature adults, but it helps them climb (Aneides are the arboreal salamanders). They can climb upside down with no problem. After a bit of photographing, I went looking for more, and when I came back, he'd gone back into his crack.  I ended up finding another pair in a crack just below the first one. Overall, it was a really neat day. I also keep a number of salamanders, and recently my lesser sirens bred again. Here's the female guarding her eggs:  And here are the eggs themselves.  Unfortunately, the photos are kinda tough to take with the water's reflection, but I think it's pretty cool, in any event.
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 02:10 |
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Love all the salamander pics! Unfortunately the closest I've gotten to one is when a squirmy red one found its way into our house one time.
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 02:38 |
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The toad migration season is starting around here again, I'm hoping I'll manage to get some good pictures going in a few days or so.
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 02:40 |
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Was it one of these salamanders?   Red salamander (Pseudotriton ruber), cave salamander (Eurycea lucifuga), eastern newt eft (Notophthalmus v. viridescens). I don't want to derail the thread with salamander talk, but if you, or anyone in the US (the US has more species of salamander than anywhere else in the world), for that matter, want to go looking for salamanders but don't know how/where to look, feel free to PM me and I'd be glad to give some tips on salamander herping. It's a lot of fun, and this is the time of year to do it, though a lot of the breeding migrations are over now, except for some of the northern states.
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 02:50 |
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 Oh boy, a new thread and look at all of the pictures that have been posted already! I like that hummingbird moth, even if it's in the process of licking poop. Every time I've tried to get a photo of a sphinx moth, the little guy will fly away before I can get my camera out: they're too fast for me  In those sphinx moth species that have fan tails, does anyone know if the tail serves a particular purpose (as in aiding in flight)? They aren't actually mimicking birds, are they? Mr. Despair posted:
Rabbits are the most terrifying animals.
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 02:55 |
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It looked a lot like the top one! At the time we were in central Florida and lived right next to some "conservation land", which was practically a tiny swamp. Good place to go looking for critters, but also a good place to get bit by one of the many pygmy rattlesnakes.
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 02:56 |
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Found this little guy after he crawled on my hand at a park. He seemed friendly enough, so I let him gently down onto the ground. 
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 02:57 |
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This terrible-quality crop is from earlier today. I don't have a macro lens and both my 50mm and 28-70 have a bitch of a time focusing on smaller things. The color pattern on this spider was really interesting, though- the legs are greenish fading to black, and the stripe on the abdomen is bright orange, like hunting cap orange. Doesn't show very well in this at all, though. Its web is small and entirely horizontal. And this house centipede was just chilling over our front door a little while ago. Almost caught him catching a bug, but it got away. 
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 03:03 |
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Valencia posted:This terrible-quality crop is from earlier today. I don't have a macro lens and both my 50mm and 28-70 have a bitch of a time focusing on smaller things. The color pattern on this spider was really interesting, though- the legs are greenish fading to black, and the stripe on the abdomen is bright orange, like hunting cap orange. Doesn't show very well in this at all, though. That is probably an Orchard Spider Leucauge venusta. I like the little smileyface pattern on their butt.
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 06:17 |
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OneTwentySix posted:Unfortunately, the photos are kinda tough to take with the water's reflection, but I think it's pretty cool, in any event. You should consider getting a circular polarizing filter. It's the difference between this...  And this...  From the last thread, a couple of pictures!  Buteo jamaicensis  Grasshopper  Eastern Garter Snake  Wood Frog  Some kinda frog + mosquitos  Another frog  Yet another!  A toad  More toad
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 16:12 |
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 First up, this double-crested cormorant was hanging out at a pond near my house.  Next, here's a damselfly of some sort. The color didn't come out very good on the body but it was extremely green.  A garter snake  And some tiny tiny tent caterpillars, fresh out of their eggs 
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 17:18 |
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Soon as it gets a bit more spring like I am out and about with my new macro lens.Mr. Despair posted:
But in the meantime, requesting this be the anthem of the thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oDsSD4pmi4
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 17:26 |
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I hope everyone likes birds, because I have lots of bird pictures. All of these are from North East Arkansas. What I'm guessing is a domestic goose mix drying its wings off.  Mallard mix pretending to be a dog.  Okay, so they're not all bird pictures.  Male eastern bluebird, the subject of my masters project.  Tent caterpillars?  Not the best picture, but it's a yellow-bellied sapsucker.  Female red-bellied woodpecker.  American coot hoping that I will feed it.  Coots fighting over a bagel thrown into the lake.  Chipping sparrow  Canada Goose taking a bath.  Drying off.  Can anyone tell me what this is? It was a mud ball about the size of a golf ball inside one of my bluebird nest boxes. Sadly all the jumping spiders inside were in pieces, I think they were meant to be food for whatever the larval things are.  These guys are also in my nest boxes. They're flying squirrels.  Did I mention they're adorable?  Hognose snake that I almost stepped on.
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 18:18 |
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Thus in the middle of my chores and research paper work today, I was briefly distracted by a friend with a dog and bright sunlight: Checkin us out:  Coming out to play:  This is an Anolis carolinensis unless another herp goon can correct me. A beetle scurried past as we were sitting there so I shot him too:  Pretty cool he has four mouthparts that you can see. Yay critterquesting.
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 19:52 |
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Stew Man Chew posted:
This is a common ground beetle, family Carabidae, probably genus Amara. The mouth parts that you see are the sensitive palps on the lower jaws (maxillary palps) and the lower 'lip' (labial palps). The palps are full of chemoreceptors and sensitive hairs. If you see an insect eating, or inspecting a piece of food, you will see that they prod and probe it with these palps.
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 21:39 |
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Snake season started early this year! Caught this guy on a trail north of Columbus OH just a few days ago: 
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| # ? Mar 24, 2012 22:28 |
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Mr. Despair posted:
I request more pictures of fluffy bunnies! The best pet I ever had was a female Rex and I have a den with a small family in my yard. Every year they have kids and they are just starting to come out now. What scares me though? This guy keeps leaving me presents on my deck.  
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| # ? Mar 25, 2012 00:14 |
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Is this a bedbug? My sister found it in her bed, along with some smaller black bugs (baby bedbugs?) (it's a big smushed here) Excuse me while I tear my bed apart and hope that I don't find anything, and then hope to god they don't migrate from her part of the house.
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| # ? Mar 25, 2012 03:21 |
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Yeah, I think that's a female bed bug.
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| # ? Mar 25, 2012 03:26 |
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Yeah, definitely a bed bug. Good loving luck. Lord knows after my encounter with the horrible bastards every time I wake up with a scratch I get extremely paranoid that they've some how resurfaced. Get plenty of diatomaceous earth and spread it around, and get a plastic cover for the mattress!
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| # ? Mar 25, 2012 03:29 |
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| # ? May 24, 2013 02:18 |
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That's what I was worried about. At least we've caught it before any other houses in the room have had any infestations (hopefully). Gonna get some diatomaceous and cordon off the house with it, and see about tearing apart that room and cleaning that up. Ugh. Critters  e. and by go get some I mean I'm driving to wal-mart right now to find some. Also my sister changed her sheets today, so her dirty sheets are sitting in the laundry room on top of all our dirty clothes. Dear god I hope I can get this stuff down before they spread from that room, and hopefully our washing machines sanatize cycle gets hot enough to kill them. Mr. Despair fucked around with this message at Mar 25, 2012 around 03:39 |
| # ? Mar 25, 2012 03:34 |
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