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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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| # ¿ May 19, 2013 07:49 |
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What a beautiful beetle! Although, for some reason, the first thing that I thought of when I saw it was The Metamorphosis  .Is the little yellowish bit sticking out from the back of the abdomen an ovipositor?
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| # ¿ Mar 30, 2012 00:44 |
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Oh my goodness, that killdeer chick is the cutest thing!  Anyway, I'm having to go through a ton of material about children's animal stories for my independent study, but I've gotten sick of sitting and reading for hours and days upon end and decided to go outside and take some photos of real animals.  This guy is pretty chill: for the past few days, every time I've walked over to the little sapling he lives in, he's been sitting there patiently in the corner of his web. I'm guessing that those reddish lumps at the front of the body are the pedipalps? (And that, given their size, this spider is male?) I'm not sure what species he is; I've never seen one like this before.  At first, I thought this might be a bumblebee worker out early. But if she were a bumblebee, wouldn't her abdomen be fuzzier? In any case, I'm not sure what kind of bee this is.  I'm assuming that this is a syrphid fly/ hover fly of some kind.  I spent a long time kneeling in the weeds trying to get photos of these funny-looking bee mimics; they're pretty quick and won't let you get too close, so only about three of the twenty or so photos I took weren't blurry messes. (Also I am bad with cameras). Searching on Bugguide.net, it seems that these are bee flies in genus Bombylius, probably Bombylius major. Their round, fluffy bodies and beak-like proboscises are pretty adorable and/or hilarious, but it turns out that they parasitize bees by laying their eggs in solitary bee nests.  This one kept hovering over the ground and was probably scoping out place to lay her eggs.  I know it's nature, but parasitism still tends to gross me out. Still not as bad as what some wasps do, though.
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| # ¿ Apr 8, 2012 03:02 |
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ZarathustraFollower posted:The not-bumblebee is a carpenter bee. The bald abdomen is a giveaway. Thanks! This one was smaller and less orange than the carpenter bees I'm used to, so I was thrown off a bit.
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| # ¿ Apr 8, 2012 04:24 |
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The weather was nice today, so I decided to go out and take some more critter photos. I found another bee-mimic fly on the holly: not sure of the exact species.  And I learned that there are quite a few tiny jumping spiders living in the corner of the yard. I've actually never seen (or noticed) jumping spiders this small before: they're about the size of a tick or a gnat, and far smaller than the gigantic black ants that live in the same part of the yard. Whenever an ant would approach, this little guy would startle and leap away. However, the most interesting critter that I spotted today was this:  I noticed something twitching in a pile of sticks and found this very pretty wasp pacing up and down a twig. She would feel rapidly about with her antenna (hence the motion blur) and vibrate her wings as she walked.   I recorded a video along with the photos and as I did she started arching her abdomen and jamming her ovipositor into the bark. (Note: the video is a bit noisy because a jet flew over right as I was taking it. I live near a military base )I assume that she was laying her eggs there? Or was she just probing to see if it would be a good egg-laying site? I would appreciate if anyone could ID this wasp as well.
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| # ¿ Apr 18, 2012 02:54 |
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Thanks! Reading the wikipedia article on Ichneumonidae, it seems that she was searching for, and then injecting her eggs into, some host larva from a different wasp species.
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| # ¿ Apr 18, 2012 04:08 |
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^^^^^ Look at all of these fuzzy bees being posted  Oh, and I guess the bee fly is cool, too; he can be an honorary bee. He's probably Bombylius major, the large bee fly, or something thereabouts. Fenderbender posted:A male black widow. Not to dredge up old content, but do you think that this guy I posted earlier in the thread is also a black or brown widow? He looks somewhat similar to yours. I suspected that he might be a widow when I saw his cobweb and the reddish-orange hourglass shape on his lower abdomen, but then I noticed how heavily-patterned he was -- with all of his spots and leg-stripes -- and assumed that he was something else. I thought that widows didn't have any markings other than the distinctive hourglass. Checking bugguide.net though, it turns out that male widows (and juveniles and some females, I guess) do have spots and stripes. Welp. Bad shot of his underside:  He disappeared a while ago, and I think he's dead now RIP, buddy.New content:   On a colder day, I found this bee crawling across the ground beneath a bunch of clover, got him (her? but I didn't see a stinger) to climb up on clover stalk, and sat him in a sunny spot. He shivered his abdomen for a while and then flew off while I was pulling weeds. I guess he's another carpenter? They're the only bees I ever see now.
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| # ¿ May 8, 2012 03:06 |
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Farking Bastage posted:Can anyone help me identify this spider? He's a fearsome looking bastard by american standards ( insert Australia joke here) and has some odd habits. He is about the size of a half dollar. I'm not an expert, but this may be a member of Eriophora ravilla, a species of orb-weaver that is common in Florida and mainly active at night. Also, "he" might really be a "she": female orb-weavers are generally larger and more noticeable than males, and spend more time hunting on webs. The males, as far as I know, spend most of their time running around looking for mates and less time web-building. But all spiders are different and not all species exhibit the same degree of sexual dimorphism, so who knows? It's fun watching spiders follow the same little routine day in and day out 
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| # ¿ Jun 7, 2012 03:22 |
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Speaking of which, can anyone explain how or why a mourning dove's wings make that whistling noise on takeoff? I've never been able to find out if the noise serves any purpose: say, if it acts to startle predators or to alert other doves of potential danger. I always feel bad when I go outside and scare the local flock of doves. Unlike some of the other songbirds in the yard, they won't let humans anywhere near them. I suppose they're over-cautious and nervous as hell because everything eats them: they're basically like little meaty, suburban chickens.
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| # ¿ Jan 24, 2013 03:02 |
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| # ¿ May 19, 2013 07:49 |
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Huh, that's interesting. It looks like you can get the original article that the story cites for free here. The authors there actually reference another study specifically on mourning doves (the Coleman 2008 citation), but to read the whole thing you have to have a subscription to Naturwissenschaften. Just going by Coleman's abstract, though, it seems that even non-doves will respond to the alarm whistle. Neat. Maybe doves aren't so dumb after all (They are still pretty dumb, but I love them.)
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| # ¿ Jan 24, 2013 04:22 |
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