Two Weekends of Wildflowers

Everything's changing so quickly outside now! Last weekend, I went into the woods behind our house to check out the wildflowers, and I was pretty well astonished by the variety of blooming plants I found just in this little sloping area. A bunch of these flowers were ones I'd never encountered before!

The Cutleaf Toothworts (Cardamine concatenata) were fully open:

I seemed to have missed the peak blooms on this Blue Cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides), which was holding onto only a few flowers:

Twinleaf (Jeffersonia diphylla) flowers danced on long stems next to the plant's strangely shaped leaves:

Patches of Rue Anemone blooms showed up in pale pink and white:

The pink blooms were very pretty:

But I especially liked the white flowers:
 

It seemed like this Spring Beauty was trying to be extra beautiful with its bonus petals:

I haven't been able to identify this small yellow violet that was blooming by a stream, but it was quite a lovely flower, named or not:
 

Speaking of yellow flowers, after seeing tons of Trout Lily leaves, I was happy to find a few plants in bloom! These are some of my favorite spring plants:

Small beetles (Asclera ruficollis, I believe) were also enjoying the Trout Lily blooms, apparently munching on the pollen:

A few other insects were out and about on this sunny day, including this Green Stink Bug:
 

Although most of the Bloodroot blooms in the woods had faded, this amazing patch lit up a corner of the yard:

When I went out exploring again yesterday, I found almost an entirely new cast of characters. Well, the Trout Lilies and Spring Beauties at least are still going strong; our yard is practically carpeted with Spring Beauty blooms, which is quite a lovely thing to see:
 

Jack-in-the-Pulpit leaves and flowers are starting to pop up all over the woods:
 

Big patches of Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) are just starting to open their bright blue flowers:

And I'm so, so happy to see Large-flowered Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) with its billowing blooms. These plants are scattered all through the woods, and one gorgeous patch even came up right next to the house:

Spring is in full swing now, and I'm excited to see what creatures and plants will show up next!

Yard Bugs, Day and Night

With the warm temperatures, the diversity of insects in our yard has exploded. I feel like I’m visiting some sort of exotic zoo every time I go outside. Here’s a selection of some of the cool little creatures that have shown up around our house over the past couple of weeks.

There seem to always be dragonflies flying around our yard right now, and this handsome Common Whitetail made our garden his hunting ground one day:

He would find a stick for a perch, and then zoom off after some smaller flying insect, then back to the perch again. It’s not often dragonflies are so obliging for me and my camera!

A couple of other fancy flying creatures have been hanging around the garden as well. This male Zabulon Skipper (what an awesome name) was very pretty with his checkered orange wings:

He looked maybe even more striking when back-lit:

And it probably wasn’t a coincidence that a female Zabulon Skipper was also flying around the yard at the same time. I never would have guessed that this dark brown butterfly is the same species as the first one:

Sometimes I’ll take a step in the garden and a tiny grasshopper will launch up from my feet, only to blend in almost perfectly with the soil when it lands again:

A bunch of stink bug eggs have hatched on one of my plants on the porch. I’m not exactly sure what species these are, but these teeny pinhead-sized dots are pretty darn cute:

(I ended up washing away most of these babies, lest they collectively hurt the plant when they get bigger and start eating more.)

At night, a whole different menagerie of bugs comes out, and I get to see them when they come to my porch light. This large Tulip-tree Beauty moth (Epimecis hortaria) was gracefully draped around our porch’s railing one night:

And we get a lot of Green Pug moths (Pasiphila rectangulata) this time of year, some individuals a lovely dark green-gray (which my camera's flash does not at all do justice, unfortunately):

And others with more faded colors:

This tiny weevil (I think it’s a Cambium Curculio weevil, Conotrachelus anaglypticus) came to show off its funny elongated snout (complete with antennae on the end):

And I had no idea what to make of this strange-looking beetle at first, but it turns out that it’s actually a type of weevil as well, an Oak Timberworm weevil (Arrhenodes minutus):

So basically, if you want to see something pretty, or bizarre, or just plain cool, some insect hanging around will almost certainly fit the bill!

Creatures of the Night: Moths, Leafhoppers, and More

There seems to be an endless parade of creatures who come to my porch light at night, and whenever I step outside and look around, there's pretty much always something new and interesting to see. Here's a selection of some of the awesome creatures (mostly insects) I've met on my porch over the past several days.

I think of leafhoppers and their relatives as primarily daytime creatures, so I'm still always a little surprised when I see these guys under the lights. This Speckled Sharpshooter (Paraulacizes irrorata) is pretty weirdly shaped compared to other leafhoppers I see more commonly around here, but it's also very cool looking -- its bulky head reminds me of a snake:

Two very pretty species of planthoppers have made several appearances as well -- Acanalonia conica:

And its paler, almost ghostly cousin, the Northern Flatid Planthopper (Anormenis chloris):

Every once in a while, I get another glimpse of a Green Stink Bug nymph (Chinavia hilaris), which I first noticed on my porch a couple weeks ago. This one has its sucking mouth part stuck right in the stem of this bean plant -- mmm, plant juices!

Another stink bug, though, I definitely wasn't happy to see:

This guy is a Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (Halyomorpha halys), an invasive species introduced from Asia only in the last dozen or so years -- according to the internet, those white bands on its antennae are a good way to distinguish it from similar-looking native species. This is the first time I've seen one of these bugs in Connecticut, but they've been a horrible nuisance for my family in Maryland in the past couple of summers -- they get so numerous that my dad has taken to vacuuming them off the back porch, and they get pretty much everywhere (in windows, in the dog's long fur...). Not to mention the agricultural damage they cause. So yeah, it's not a great situation, and I'm not at all pleased to see them in my yard.

But there have been plenty of other, happier bugs around, too, including several very pretty moths. I'm always amazed at how even all-brown moths can have just the coolest, most intricate patterns. This Adjutant Wainscot (Leucania adjuta) has some pretty awesome stripes when you get up close to it:

Even bolder was this carpet moth (I'm not sure the exact species):

 

(Update: A kind person on Bugguide.net helped identify the above moth as a Toothed Brown Carpet (Xanthorhoe lacustrata).)

 
And two American Idias (Idia americalis), a darker and a lighter individual, showed off some interesting variations on a striking design:

Finally, I'm not the only one benefiting from the bug-attracting qualities of the light. A few medium-sized spiders have set up webs in the corners around the door, and they seem to pretty much always have something on hand to eat:

I love expanding my knowledge of the huge variety of creatures who pass through our yard, and a porch light is a great way to get some of those creatures to come to me!

Green Stink Bug Nymph

This morning, I found this very pretty bug on my porch:
 

As it turns out, this is a nymph (that is, juvenile) Green Stink Bug (Chinavia hilaris), a native insect which I see fairly frequently around here. I just cannot get over the gorgeous colors and patterns on this creature! These bugs eat all sorts of different plants, but they've not (yet) become so numerous that they cause problems in my yard, so I'm happy to have them around.

Keep on munching and growing, pretty little creature!