Green eggs on stinging nettle leaves (photo by Kate St.John)
Today, a quiz.
I found green eggs on stinging nettle on August 9 at Wolf Creek Narrows, Butler County, PA.
Are they eggs or something else?
And who laid them?
Post a comment with your answer.
I’ll reveal their identity later today.
THE ANSWER: 29 August, 3:15pm
This was a tricky quiz because the structures really do look like eggs. I thought they were butterfly eggs but they are too smooth. The butterflies most likely to lay eggs on nettle have very wrinkled eggs. For instance, click here to see the eggs of the small tortoiseshell butterfly.
Schenley Park outing, 27 August 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)
27 August 2017
This morning’s outing at Schenley Park was great for birds!
Though we saw only 26 species, plus a silent Empidonax flycatcher, we had good looks at some birds we don’t see every day including wood thrushes and a young Baltimore oriole.
Best Bird was a male pileated woodpecker, the first bird of the day. 😉
Best Insect — the one that got me excited — were some tiny flatid planthoppers, gray with blueish spots. To my untrained eye they looked like this, Metcalfa pruinosa, an insect native to North America.
Citrus flatid planthopper (Metcalfa pruinosa), photo from Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Beech blight aphids (Grylloprociphilus imbricator) are nicknamed “boogie-woogie aphids” because they waggle their bodies when disturbed. A puff of wind or a jolt to the branch will start them waving to ward off predators. My photo is out of focus because the aphids would not stand still when I got close!
Like all aphids these suck the juice of their host, the beech tree, but their scary name (blight) is misleading. Beech blight aphids rarely hurt the tree and are easily knocked off by a stream from a garden hose. Once on the ground the nymphs can’t fly up because they have no wings, though their mothers do.
Beech blight aphid colonies are sought by ants, wasps and a fungus for their sweet honey dew. They’re also sought by predators that they mesmerize with their dance or sting with their tiny mouth parts too small to hurt mammals.
Primrose moths on a primrose, Allegheny County,PA, 6 Aug 2017 (photo by Kate St.John)
Last Sunday I found a crowd of pink and yellow moths head down in a common evening primrose. Bob Machesney identified them as primrose moths (Schinia florida).
I should have guessed their name.
Moths are often named for their host plant and so are these. Primrose moth caterpillars eat evening primrose, biennial gaura and other members of the Evening-primrose family (Onagraceae). In July and August the adult moths fly at night and spend the day resting on their host plants. That’s why there were so many on one flower.
Keep an eye out this month for beautiful pink moths on primrose and biennial gaura. Here’s a common evening primrose (Oenothera biennis) without a moth in it.
Common evening primrose (photo by Kate St. John)
Click here to see biennial gaura whose flowers are actually quite small.
And here’s what the primrose moth looks like in a museum, mounted to show all its features. Amazingly its antennae are pink.
Primrose moth specimen, mounted (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
(primrose photos by Kate St. John. photo of mounted primrose moth from Wikimedia Commons; click on the image to see the original)
Today’s important message is late for this year’s growing season but we can always take action right now.
I’m sure you’ve heard about the dangers to honeybees from neonicotinoids, a class of pesticides used heavily in agriculture since 2008. What you might not realize is that this pesticide may be in your garden whether you put it there or not. Here’s why.
What are neonicotinoids?
Nicotine kills insects but it breaks down too quickly for modern agricultural use. Neonicotinoids (“neonics”) are chemicals similar to nicotine specially formulated to last a long time.
Neonics are nervous system disrupters that, depending on dose and exposure, cause confusion, hyperactive behavior, severe tremors or death in insects. Low doses kill slowly through chronic exposure because the chemical lasts so long (5 months to years).
Neonics are “systemic” poisons because they are water soluble. Plants suck up neonic-laden water and distribute it into roots, leaves, pollen, nectar, everywhere. The entire plant is poisonous to a wide range of insects including “bad” insects that suck juices and eat leaves (aphids, stinkbugs and Japanese beetles) and “good” insects that collect pollen and nectar (bees and butterflies). Bees and butterflies visit poisoned flowers and die elsewhere.
How do neonicotinoids get into your garden?
Neonicotinoids are primarily delivered via soil treatments and seed coatings. Garden treatments contain doses 40 times higher than agricultural products. These pathways may surprise you.
Pesticides you bought to kill bad insects, especially soil treatments. Check the label!
Potting soil: If treated with neonics, the plants grown in the soil are poisonous. Check the label!
Plants or seedlings you bought at the store: They’re already grown, but how? If their seeds were coated with neonics or the soil was treated, the plants you bought are poisonous.
Labels tell you some of the insects the product kills but never all of the insects affected.
Don’t panic.
If you’ve learned something new, don’t worry, don’t blame yourself. Time is on your side. Start now to change your garden. Remember this Chinese proverb …
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.
(photo of dead bee from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)
Reddish-brown stag beetle, Pittsburgh, PA, 1 Aug 2017 (photo by Rick St. John)
On an evening walk in our neighborhood my husband and I found a large beetle, more than an inch long. My husband’s closeup (above) and my cautious far-away photo (below) provided enough clues to determine its identify.
Reddish-brown stag beetle, Pittsburgh, 1 Aug 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)
Its size and shape place it in the scarab beetle group. Its large mandibles mean it’s a stag beetle, one of 1,500 species in the world, four in eastern North America. This one is a reddish-brown stag beetle (Lucanus capreolus) because it has bicolored legs dark at the tips and yellow at the base.
Basically harmless to humans, reddish-brown stag beetles eat rotting wood as larvae and sip sap as adults. The larvae develop for two years, then emerge as adults during the summer. Like other scarab beetles they’re most active at night and attracted to lights.
Stag beetles were named for their head gear which they use like antlers, not like teeth. Just like stags (or deer) the males fight each other with their horns!
In the video below, watch male stag beetles in western Europe (Lucanus cervus) fight for dominance. “The goal is to throw down the opponent” !
What big “teeth” you have!
The better to fight with, my dear.
(photos by Rick and Kate St. John. video from YouTube)
p.s. regarding the loud bird sound in the background of the video filmed in Europe. Is it a Eurasian magpie?
Cicada, western Pennsylvania (photo by Dana Nesiti)
What’s that sound? In July the birds stop singing and the bugs begin. Some sing during the day, others at night. We usually don’t see what’s making the noise but sometimes we can identify the bugs by song. Here’s a group of insects that are fairly easy to figure out.
Cicadas sing during the day and they are loud. Some songs are so unique that you can identify the bug if you know what to listen for.
Here are audio descriptions for five common species of annual(*) cicadas in southwestern Pennsylvania in order of “most likely to hear/notice,” at least in my experience.
As with birds, pay attention to the habitat where you hear a cicada. Swamp cicadas, for example, are only found in swamps or marshes.
Scissor grinder cicada (Neotibicen winnemanna in the eastern U.S.). Easiest sound to identify.
Song: a repetitive WEEE ah, WEEE ah, WEEE ah, WEEE ah, tapers at end
When? may begin in late morning, but sings the most at dusk
Identifying cicada songs are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the sounds of bugs. There are an amazing number of vocal bugs including crickets, katydids and grasshoppers.
p.s. Annual(*) cicadas have a life cycle of 2-5 years but they seem “annual” because some individuals in each species reach adulthood every year (i.e. the species appears annually).
p.p.s There aren’t many scissor-grinders in my neighborhood this year. I wonder if they had a bad reproductive year the last time this brood was above ground. How long do scissor-grinders take to reach adulthood? If it’s 5 years then that’d be 2012, a very hot year. Hmmm.
Japanese beetle eating Japanese knotweed, Allegheny County, PA, June 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)
Last month along the Panhandle Trail I paused to look at a wildflower near some Japanese knotweed when I noticed the knotweed was being eaten by Japanese beetles. 🙂
Japanese beetles (Popillia japonica) were introduced to North America by accident in the early 1900s and spread across the continent. The adult beetles eat leaves, the larvae eat roots. If you have roses, you’ve been battling Japanese beetles your entire life.
Of course I was happy to see these two “Japanese” species together. The beetles felt so at home on the knotweed that they were mating on it.
Japanese beetles mating on Japanese knotweed, Allegheny County, PA, June 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)
My hope is that the female beetles will drop to the ground below the knotweed and lay their eggs. When the eggs hatch the larvae will burrow underground and eat the roots of nearby plants.
Good. Eat the knotweed roots. Eat the leaves. Go on, Japanese beetles. Keep eating!
