Butterfly or Moth? The Skipper Family (Hesperiidae) is a Little of Both

A member of the Grass Skipper family drinking nectar
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

As we learn new skills, we keep them sharp by putting them to use. So let’s use our butterfly or moth checklist on this fellow.

First, it has a dull brownish color which would tend to make it a moth. It holds its wings upright when at rest which says butterfly. It is active in the daytime, which says butterfly, and the antennae are not feathery, but they end in a club-like thickening. The body is thick and hairy which says moth, and the head is oversized for a butterfly which says moth again. What do we do when our checklist of butterfly versus moth indicators is split down the middle?

While none of the checklist indicators are 100% accurate, because of some rare exceptions, the most accurate is the antennae structure. So, to start with, we’ll operate on the assumption that it’s a butterfly, but to be sure, let’s start at the Order level of Lepidoptera which includes both butterflies and moths since we’re certain that it’s one or the other.

There are two ways to start narrowing it down.  We can thumb through the butterfly and moth pictures in our field guide until we find a picture that matches or comes close. Using that method we find that the closest match is the silver-spotted skipper, but there are some distinct pattern and color differences which rule out this particular species, but there are enough shared traits that we start to focus on the skipper family which contains many different species, although my Audubon Field Guide details only a few.

My other favorite source is bugguide.net. From the main page, I click the butterfly picture on the graphic selection plate at the top left. That brings me to Papilionoidea (Butterflies excluding Skippers). Whoops. Let’s back up.  Near the top of this page there’s a complete taxonomic trail leading to Papilionidea. By choosing the next rung up the ladder, Order, we get to Lepidoptera (Butterflies and moths). About halfway down that page we get to Identification. Ah-ha! There are three listings: Moths, Butterflies, and Skippers. Although skippers are butterflies, they are a separate group with their own taxonomic family (Hesperiidae).

From there, I’m reasonably confident that it belongs to the sub-family of Grass Skippers (Hesperiinae). However, I can’t make a positive identification at a lower level than that. I can rule out many Grass Skippers, but I can’t pin it down. I think it is probably a Little Glassywing Skipper (Pompeius verna), but may be a Northern Broken-Dash Skipper (Wallengrenia egeremet). It looks very much like a three-spotted Skipper except the short antennae disqualify it as does the range. It looks like a Eufala Skipper as well, but again the range is a disqualifier.

• ·         NHPTV list of Skipper species that live in New Hampshire

Grass Skippers feeding on flowers in July
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved.

To make matters worse, I believe that I actually photographed as many as three separate Skipper species all flitting among the same flowers. I’ll detail the other two another day. There’s an old saying: Discretion is the better part of valor. Well, that saying applies equally well in trying to classify animals or plants. Sometimes you just can’t be sure based on the available information. That’s ok. A partial identification which gives the reasons why you can’t go further is better than making assumptions or guesses based on incomplete data.

Our taxonomic classification for the creature photographed on this page is:

Kingdom: Animals

Phylum: Arthropods

Class: Insects

Order: Butterflies and Moths (Lepidoptera)

Superfamily: Skippers (Hesperioidea)

Family: Skippers (Hesperiidae)

Subfamily: Grass Skippers (Hesperiinae)

Genus: either Pompeius

              Or  Wallengrenia

Species: either Little Glassywing Skipper (Pompeius verna)

                     Or   Northern Broken-Dash Skipper (Wallengrenia egeremet)

Miscellaneous observations:

These Grass Skippers are one of the few buterflies that actually make a buzzing sound when they fly at speed. This may have something to do with the wing arrangement. The fore and hind winds separate out and may be held at different planes while at rest. This posture is somewhat common among skippers, although it was rarely displayed among the group in my yard.

Grass skippers showing two different resting wing postures
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

Quick facts about Grass Skippers:

Diet: Caterpillars eat grasses and sedges. Butterflies drink nectar - in my yard these species were dining on cone flowers (as show in the top picture) and appeared to prefer Blazing Stars Kobold (Liatris Spicata) where they were feeding in a group of about 15 or more individuals.
Range: varies by species
Habitat: Since the caterpillars feed on grass and sedges, they prefer open areas. Individual species may be particular about the specific species of grass that they eat.

Northern Green Frogs (Rana clamitans melatona), Frog Traps and Frog Legs

Norther Green Frog (Rana clamitans melatona)
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

Today’s new species for What Lives in my Yard is the Northern Green Frog (Rana clamitans melanota), not to be confused with the green tree frog. The Northern Green Frog is the first of the taxonomy Class Amphibia or Amphibians to be recorded in this blog (although I am fairly certain, not the last).

My Frog Trap

 In a sense, you can say that I discovered these frogs in my yard by setting a trap. Not the usual kind of trap, but an effective one nevertheless. I put a small man-made pond in my backyard two years ago. It has a stone waterfall, some plants to provide shade, and a 100 gallon or so reservoir/ pond. When the streams dry up each year, usually in July, it is the only permanent pool of water on my property, discounting a mud hole or two at the far end of the forest.

In July, therefore, this little pond becomes a very attractive bit of real estate for animal species that need water, like frogs, for example. The water is the bait and the lack of water elsewhere is the barrier that keeps the frogs there once they take the bait, especially when dryer summer weather arrives, limiting their opportunity to move again. There are also a number of insects that take up residence or breed in the pond as well. At present, it contains hoards of what appear to be daphnia, but until I get a USB capable microscope running, they’ll have to wait.

The Wanderlust of Young Green Frogs

 It is ordinary for juvenile green frogs (less than two years old) to travel when it rains or is wet enough for them to be comfortable away from their home pond. If they find another body of water, they may take up residence there. If they stayed in one spot, the survival rate would probably be higher (since they are less vulnerable to foxes and other land predators which are numerous in New England), but the home pond would become a bit crowded as the males tried to defend their breeding territories against the maturing juveniles. Since they get bigger each year for four or five years, the juveniles would get pushed out anyway, so their natural wanderlust serves them well.  

Meanwhile, there are three Northern Green Frogs living in the pond all of a smaller size consistent with them being juveniles. I toyed with the idea of netting one and getting some better photos, but you can see all the identifying features in the photos I already took, so there was no need to disturb them further.



Click the image for a slide show of my Northern Green Frog images



Identifying Features of Northern Green Frogs

The first and most obvious identifying feature for a Northern Green Frog is the pair of defined ridges on its back. You can see them in the photo at the top left of this post. They run from the ear circles down to its rump. The underside of the green frog is white with dark irregular spots, especially at the intersection of the white and green or brown - as is also visible in the photo. It has a prominent lighter green area above its mouth and may have a bit of the white coloring from its underside also showing just above the mouth. Overall coloration can range from quite green to a muddy brown. There’s a southern variant called the bronze frog because of its color which is classified as Rana clamitans clamitans.

Tadpoles of the green frog tend to have yellowish undersides.

Frog Limb Deformities

Green frogs are one of the species that have been reported in recent years with limb deformities which, as memory serves, have been attributed to chemical contamination and also parasitic infection, perhaps facilitate by a chemically-compromised immune system, although it has been years since I read that in a newspaper, so I can’t say for certain that I’m recalling it accurately, so I should check to be sure. Wait here a minute, I’ll be right back… Yes, there it is at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences from a 2002 Penn State study: Limb deformities caused by physical intrusion of Trematode parasites facilitated by depressed immune systems caused by agricultural run-off.

 The three frogs I have in my pond have none of that. Although the valley below the mountain could have significant agricultural run-off, any frogs that can travel far enough to reach my pond most like don’t have extra legs slowing them down, so it’s certainly a non-random, self-selecting healthy sample.

Frog Legs and Essence of Frog

Well, I have to say that I have never caught frogs for food, but green frogs, especially the full-sized ones of 4-5 years old or more, are a suitable species from which frog legs may be harvested to be cooked and eaten, although bull frogs are more commonly used for this purpose in the United States. At any rate, for those so inclined, froglegs.org has a list of recipes that is lengthier than I would have imagined. I  do have to confess, however, that I have tried fried frog legs at Les Chefs de France, a restaurant in the French Pavilion at Disney’s Epcot Center, and I had a dessert dish that was described to me as “Essence of Frog” with a very light maple syrup while in southern China, which I was told, “would improve my virility.” Both were quite good.

Quick facts about the Northern Green Frog (Rana clamitans melanota)

Lifespan: In captivity, according to the University of Michigan, green frogs can live for about 10 years. That’s much longer than I would have guessed, although I knew some species of frogs, including the green frog, may remain tadpoles for more than a full year.

Lifecycle: Green frogs reach sexual maturity at two years old. They lay as many as 7000 eggs in an annual clutch, with an occasional second clutch of up to 1500 more eggs. With egg masses of that size and a 10 year lifespan, it’s obvious that a very small percentage of those eggs will survive to adulthood or we’d really have a plague of frogs.

Eggs hatch into tadpoles in 3-7 days. From there, development may take one of two paths. Either the tadpoles will undergo metamorphosis in about three months becoming frogs before the winter, or they will overwinter as tadpoles, hibernating in the mud until the following spring. These individuals may take as long as 22 months to metamorphosize into juvenile frogs. Once they do, however, they reach sexual maturity at the same overall age as the early metamorphs, at two years old.

Habitat: fresh-water wetlands, ponds, and lakes

Diet:  Adults: Mostly insects and some other small animals opportunistically. Tadpoles: diatoms, algae, zooplankton.

When the northern green frog is here:  All year round.

Range: From Texas to Florida in the south and up through Central Canada along that same east to west stretch.

IUCN Redlist status:  Least Concern

Scorpionfly (Panorpa latipennis) - Attack of the Flying Scorpion

Scorpionfly (Panorpa latipennis)
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

There are some very strange and interesting looking bugs in the world, and some of them live in my yard. This scorpionfly is just one example. From the photos, you can tell that it’s a male, because that is not a stinger… There are many kinds of scorpionflies, and the National Audubon Society Field Guide doesn’t even try to list them all, instead opting for a single listing under the generic Sorpionfly (panorpa spp.) I understand that there are 100,000 or so North American insects, but I’m definitely in the market for a new insect field guide. There are simply too many pertinent species omitted from the Audubon Guide, although it does have good information about scorpionflies in general.

·         Slideshow of the male scorpionfly (Panorpa latipennis)

At any rate, the scorpionfly in question, in this case, seems to be of the species Panorpa latipennis, based on the ID photos at this link on buggguide.net, but without being able to find good comparison photos of all 40 North American species of the scorpionfly, I can’t be 100 percent certain. I’m going with Panorpa latipennis until someone convinces me otherwise (I look forward to your comments below).

·         Don’t forget to check the Master List of Animals that Live in my Yard.

As you might guess from the scorpionfly’s enlarged tube mouth, these insects eat fruit, nectar and dead or immobile insects. The adults aren’t big hunters, but surprisingly, to me at least, the scorpionfly larvae hunt more than the adults. They catch insects and eat organic matter around the small burrow they dig in which to live.

The larva will stay in the burrow overwinter. Like some of the other insect species I’ve already noted, the larvae of this species are certainly too shallow in the ground during the New England winter to avoid sub-freezing temperatures so I’d love to see what happens to them in the cold. Does the bug freeze and thaw, or does it have some anti-freeze protein in their system that keeps them liquid enough to avoid major cold damage. Technology Review (not my go to source for insect information, but a site I use regularly for other things) noted back in 2000 that insect antifreeze proteins seem to be 100 times more active than those found in fish. Given that there are some fish that regularly survive being frozen into a block of ice in the Arctic winter, that’s quite an accomplishment.

The larva pupates in that same burrow, and the adult scorpionfly emerges in the early summer.  This one was photographed in my yard on the ides of July.

As dangerous as the appendage from which the scorpionfly gets its name looks, it is pretty harmless. It is often eaten by other insects, birds and the usual insect eaters. The male specimen that I found in my yard was not a great flyer. It flew short distances (less than four or five feet at a time) landing squarely on various leaves for several seconds or more with each “hop.” For most determined predators, that wouldn’t be good enough.

“Attack of the Flying Scorpion”

Although I am committed to recording every animal species that lands in my yard, common and uncommon, I particularly enjoy finding odd-looking creatures. This one would be a candidate for one of those old 1950’s atomic scare movies where an ordinary bug is exposed to radiation and becomes a giant monster terrorizing remote villagers. I imagine it would have been called “Attack of the Flying Scorpion.” Of course, those who know that the scorpionfly doesn’t really carry a poisonous stinger at all, and that only the males have this particular appendage, might wonder just why they were attacking people…  

By the way, over at Examiner.com I just posted a video and some pictures of an endangered Blanding’s turtle laying eggs that I discovered about a half mile down the road from my yard. It’s not posted on this blog, because it wasn’t in the yard itself, but it’s interesting nevertheless.

Quick facts about the Scorpionfly (Panorpa latipennis)

Lifecycle: Scorpionflies live about a year. The eggs are laid on the forest floor in a small mass. Although I could find no detailed information about when, I’d guess eggs are laid sometime during the month of July in the New England region, maybe a bit earlier in the north and on into Canada. Eggs hatch and the larva grows, overwintering in a ground burrow. In the spring it resumes activity, pupating and becoming an adult. Adults emerge around May, possibly a bit later.

Habitat: Forest and forest-edge

Diet:  adult scorpionflies- nectar, fruit, dead insects; larva – insects organic matter

When the scorpionfly is here: all year round

Range: The Panorpa latipennis sparsely populates New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Ontario according to Bugguide.net, but it must be present to some extent in the intervening areas as well. Perhaps it is just being recorded as one of the other variants there.

IUCN Redlist status:  Not listed

Beneficial Invasive Species - Drone fly (Eristalis tenax)

Drone Fly (Eristalis tenax) is a honeybee mimic
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

We are used to thinking of invasive species as bad things, but the drone fly (Eristalis tenax) appears to be a case of an introduced species that is actually good for the new environment. The only downside that I could find is that if you eat the maggots, you'll get sick... so, please entomophages, leave this one alone.

Bugguide.net tells us that the drone fly also known as the European drone fly, was introduced to the United States before 1874. It apparently found North America to its liking and is now well established from Alaska to Florida and point seven remotely close to being between them.

With a good look at it, the drone fly is relatively easy to identify even though its behavior and appearance mimics that of a honey bee. It is decidedly less hirsute than the average honey bee, for one thing. The drone fly does, however, fly from flower to flower pollinating them as it feeds on nectar.

• See a slideshow of my Drone Fly photos here.

The drone fly is quite common and is responsible for the pollination of many flowers and garden vegetables. Although the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders  says it prefers compound flowers, I found it on a wide variety of plants in my yard.

The Audubon Guide also suggest that the drone fly may have fooled Ovid, Vergil, Solomon and the author of the Bible's Book of Judges (or at least the protagonist of the book, Samson). All of whom represented in their writings what must have once been a common wives' tale that honeybees rose from the carcasses of dead animals. The drone fly, a notorious honeybee mimic, does, in fact, lay its eggs in either stagnant pools or on rotting meat left in damp locations. Someone passing by and not looking too closely might mistake the drone flies, on a lion's carcass, for example, for a swarm of honeybees.

The larva or maggot of the drone fly is called the rat-tailed maggot. it has a long tail-like tube extended from the back of its abdomen that it sticks up through the surface of the stagnant water in which it lives to breathe. The rat-tailed maggot eats just about any decaying organic material that it can find, then crawls out of the water to a more dry area to pupate and become an adult drone fly.

Occasionally, if people drink fetid water or eat spoiled meat containing the egg or larval form of the drone fly, the maggot can actually live in the intestine for a while causing intestinal pain according to at least one report at the website of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.

The Drone Fly, then, becomes the first invasive species from my yard recorded in this blog.

Quick facts about the Drone Fly (Eristalis tenax)

Life Cycle: Twenty or so eggs are laid in a group in foul water or decaying flesh. When ready to pupate, the larva climbs from the water to drier ground to form a cocoon and become an adult drone fly.  Britain's National Insect Week website says, as I suspected, that drone flies hibernate like house flies, and may wake on warmer days in the late winter.

Diet: Nectar as adults, rotting organic matter as larva.

Range: All of the continental United States, Alaska, and sub-arctic Canada.

IUCN Redlist Status: Prevalent, not-listed

When are they here: Drone flies are present all year round hibernating as adult flies in the winter, and emerging to lay eggs in the spring. Aside from the occasional warm winter day, drone fly adults are active from April through October.

Double-lined Prominent Caterpillar Moth (Lochmaeus bilineata) - Or is it?

I’ve talked about identifying whether a particular insect is a butterfly or a moth, but what if it’s still a caterpillar? Often caterpillars have distinctive colors and patterns as well and can be identified that way. Some, however, like the Variable Oakleaf Caterpillar and the Double-lined Prominent Caterpillar, fall into the variable category, meaning that different individuals of the species may have substantially different coloration.

It’s not a minor variation either. It can be the difference between a caterpillar that is all green with narrow yellow stripes and a caterpillar that is green with a broad irregular reddish brown patch down the length of its back.  If I saw the two extremes of the Variable Oakleaf Caterpillar side by side, I would never have guessed that they were the same species.

That can be tricky if you are trying to identify a caterpillar by searching through photos. If you happen upon a photo of a color variant much different from your specimen, you may rule it out too early. That happened with me on the caterpillar pictured below.

Double-lined Prominent Caterpillar (Moth) - Lochmaeus bilineata (probably)
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

At first, I thought that it could not be a Lochmaeus manteo (Variable Oakleaf Caterpillar), based on a few images I saw with a pronounced reddish saddle. Neither, however, could I find much else that was similar except the closely related Lochmaeus bilineata (Double-lined Prominent). By the way, Bugguide.net says the two may be indistinguishable in larval form, so technically, my specimen could be either species.  With some further searching and the use of a handy identification tool at Discover Life, I came back again to Lochmaeus bilineata and discovered some images of variants without the red marking on the back. These were nearly identical to my specimen, with the exception of two pairs of little red wart-like structures which should be present, but are not visible in my photos. Despite this, I am as certain as I can be that it is one of the two Lochmaeus species, and most probably Lochmaeus bilineatus or the Double-lined Prominent.

Clues to caterpillar identification

besides the color, pattern, presence of bristles, horns on its head or tail, and other distinguishing physical features, another clue to use to identify caterpillars is the type of food, usually leaves of some sort, which they eat. Some species of caterpillar are very picky about what they eat. In this case, both of the Lochmaeus caterpillars eat oak and other tree leaves. The Double-lined Prominent caterpillar that I found was eating a beech tree leaf, when I encountered it, although there is certainly plenty of oak on the property as well.

Another way to identify a caterpillar’s species is to see what it turns into after it undergoes metamorphosis. This, obviously, takes a little more time, and involves some risk to the caterpillar if you can’t keep it in a proper environment. If you aren’t sure what it eats, you shouldn’t even try to keep it captive until it pupates and forms a chrysalis or a cocoon. Even the chrysalis itself most likely requires the humidity and temperature to stay within a certain range to keep it viable. Ambient outdoor conditions for your region can be a good clue though.

If I had tried to keep the Double-lined Prominent caterpillar until it became a butterfly or moth, in this case, a moth. It would have formed a silken-thread cocoon and emerged as a pretty non-descript gray-patterned moth of small to medium size.

Quick facts about the Double-lined Prominent Caterpillar Moth (Lochmaeus bilineata)

Diet: Tree leaves: beech, oak, birch, elm, basswood, linden

Range: From New Mexico in the Southwest and Saskatchewan in the northwest eastward to the Atlantic Coast.

IUCN Redlist Status: Prevalent, not-listed

When they are here: Adult Double-lined Prominent moths can be found from June through August. I didn’t have a resource with good information on the larval life-cycle, but my BEST GUESS is that they overwinter in caterpillar form and form a cocoon when it gets warm in the spring, perhaps late April or early June based on the presence of the adult moth. The larva is certainly present in early-mid July, when I found this specimen.

Habitat: Deciduous woods

What's in a name: Eyed Brown Butterfly (Lethe Eurydice or Satyrodes eurydice)

Yesterday, I didn't get a species post up, but I did log one. It was the eyed brown butterfly (Lethe eurydice or Satyrodes eurydice). When I told my wife that name, the first thing she asked was "Shouldn't it be the brown-eyed butterfly?"

The answer is no. The butterfly in question, is brown and has eyespots. It does not have brown eyes. In bird and insect naming convention, when an adjective, like a color, applies to a specific feature, the accepted practice is to use a hyphen to link them. For example, the two-spotted bumblebee, the green-striped grasshopper, and so forth. In the first case, the bumblebee has two spots, and in the second, you guessed it, the grasshopper has green stripes.

Now what if the grasshopper was green and had stripes of a different color? Then it might be the striped green grasshopper, or possibly the green striped grasshopper, without a hyphen although the latter option would be a little more confusing and, for that reason, less likely to be used.

The eyed brown butterfly (Lethe eurydice)
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

So, the  Lethe eurydice or eyed brown butterfly, follows this convention and is named for the prominent eye spots on its wings, making it Eyed, and is predominantly brown in color, making it the Eyed Brown Butterfly.

See a slideshow of the Eyed Brown Butterfly, here.

The eyed brown butterfly, by the way, unlike the monarch butterfly which flies great distances as it migrates, is a relatively poor flyer, and it doesn't migrate at all. Instead, the larva or caterpillar version emerges from the egg and puts on size and weight through the summer and fall, and waits, dormant, through the winter before it forms its chrysalis in the late spring, according to the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders.

Those who have been following my other posts, especially this one, will notice that the eyed brown butterfly might fall into the moth category with a couple of the less reliable indicators like color and thicker body.

The caterpillar form of the eyed brown looks like it has horns at both ends, with those at the head being colored red with red lines extending to the eyes while the tail horns are green. The caterpillar is green with lighter green or yellowish stripes running along the length of its body. I don't have photos of the caterpillar or chrysalis (yet!), but you can see images (from bugguide.net) of the chrysalis here and the caterpillar here.

You'll note in the quick facts section below that the eyed brown lives in wet, boggy meadows and such. That does not generally describe my yard although there is one corner that borders an small open wetland area, and there is a large slow moving river in the valley below us (perhaps a mile away).

Quick facts about Lethe eurydice (or Satyrodes eurydice):
Life Cycle: the eyed brown lives a little over a year and has one generation per year. The caterpillar overwinters before forming a chrysalis and undergoing metamorphosis to become a butterfly in the late spring.
Diet: Sedge grasses as a caterpillar, nectar as a butterfly
Range: Bugguide.net says they range from Delaware to Colorado and north up into Canada (Nova Scotia on the east side and Eastern Alberta to the west).
IUCN Red List Status: unlisted

When Can it be Found Here: The eyed brown stays in place all year round, but may be spotty or regional in its range. It is in butterfly form from June to August.

Habitat: Wet marshes with sedges and cattails, bogs, open sedge meadows

How to tell a moth from a butterfly

Some people just don't like bugs. Even those people, however, often have a favorable view of butterflies. The colorful patterns of their wings make them like little abstract paintings on the wing, a mobile art gallery in the garden, as it were. In my yard, fortunately, there are a number of different butterflies and colorful moths.

The first step to identifying one of these insects, is to determine whether it is a butterfly or a moth. A good close-up view of the antenna can usually put this question to rest. Although there are some exceptions to the rule, the antennae of butterflies are structurally different than those of most moths.

The antenna of a moth, upon close inspection, is feathery in structure with a main "stem" and smaller little "branches" all along its length. The two photos below show the difference. Note that the butterfly antenna as shown in the top photo almost always has a thickening at the end, almost like a club.

Antenna of the Eyed Brown Butterfly with club-like end
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

Antenna of the Polyphemus moth showing feathery branches
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

Another way to tell the difference between a moth and a butterfly is the cocoon or chrysalis. Most all moths spin a thread cocoon. This cocoon will usually be on the ground or attached firmly to a solid object such as the underside of the eaves of your house. Butterflies, on the other hand, tend to form a chrysalis which has smooth walls and is usually hanging in the air from a branch. Of course, by the time you see it flying around, it's too late for this test.

Generally. moths are active at night, but are occasionally seen moving about during daylight hours (at least they are in my yard). Butterflies are active during the daytime. This helps, but is really not reliable enough of a clue to make the determination between moth and butterfly on its own.

Another clue is the way the insect holds its wings when at rest. Butterflies wings stay extended and may be upright and together, sticking straight out to the sides or slowly moving back and forth between the two positions. Some of the larger moths do this too, but many moths at rest have swept-back wings that fold back along their body.

Moths and butterflies have two sets of wings, the forewings and the hindwings. To fly effectively, the forewing and the hindwing need to be held together. In many moths, there's a kind of tiny row of hook-like structures on the hindwing that catch and hold bristles from the forewing. In butterflies, however, usually just have a lobe of the hindwing that overlaps the forewing. However, it can be very hard to see this unless you are handling the butterfly or moth which risks damaging them.

Another clue, but not a sure thing, is the color of the wings. Moths tend to be nocturnal and hide during the daytime, so most often, their wings are a drab brown, gray, white, or other color that allows them to more easily blend into their surroundings. Butterflies, on the other hand, tend to be bright and visually distinctive, using their coloration and intricate patterns to self-identify their species to prospective mates. Their wing patterns may also serve to deter potential predators, sometimes exhibiting large false eye spots that make their wings look a bit like a large predatory face.

Butterflies often, but not always, have long slender bodies, while many moths have short, more bulbous bodies. Again, though, this is not always a reliable indicator.

Although each individual clue may be less than 100% reliable, when you start stacking them together and all of them point to either moth or butterfly, then their value increases. The antenna difference is the easiest and most reliable differentiator between a moth and a butterfly, although, as I mentioned there are some exceptions to the rule.

Once you have it narrowed down to moth or butterfly, you at least know where to start looking for a specific species identification

Green-striped Grasshopper (Chortophaga viridifasciata) - Noticing Familiar Things

Green-striped grasshopper
(Chortophaga viridifasciata)
Photo by Brad Sylvester
copyright 2011, all rights
reserved

There’s a line from a Billy Joel song that goes: “Don’t imagine you’re too familiar and I don’t see you anymore.”  Many times, however, we do fail to see things that have become too familiar. Before I started my quest to identify every species of animal that lives in my yard, I might see a grasshopper and note that it’s a grasshopper, or think that every bumblebee I see is one of the same group. Probably even the same hive.  As I start taking close-up pictures and then using specific traits to identify the species of things I see in my yard, however, I am seeing things I never saw before and realizing just how diverse the animal populations in one small 5.25 acre really are.

I’ve already made entries here for the two-striped grasshopper and the two-spotted bumblebee, so I’ve become a little familiar with their detailed appearance. So when I see a bumblebee I don’t just see another bumblebee. I notice instead that this one has bit of orange on its abdomen and therefore isn’t the same species as the two-spotted bumblebee that I’ve already logged. I didn’t have camera to get good photos of it, but I know now that I have at least two species of bumblebees and the next time I’m out with my camera, I’ll being looking for the specific colors and markings of every bumblebee I see.

Similarly, I was out walking across the lawn when a grasshopper jumped up in front of me. It was green like the two-striped grasshopper I had already recorded, but it had wings which made it a different age than the fourth instar specimen that I had photographed the other day. Wanting a closer look, I carefully grabbed it off the lawn and set it on the patio table. Eye bars! Not only was it a different age, it was a different species. There were not two stripes on its back, there was not a uniform black stripe on its leg. It was definitely not a two-striped grasshopper.

Using the USDA site again, I started picking out grasshoppers from their list for further research. On my seventh try, not bad considering how many there are (and how little I know about them), I found it. It was, without doubt an adult female green-striped grasshopper (Chortophaga viridifasciata). It lives here, the size fits, the distinctive shape and pattern of the pronotum (the plate that covers the top of the thorax extending from the back of the head) matched exactly!

Interestingly, the green-striped grasshopper females are green and the males tend to be brown. Males and females both fly to escape threats, but says the USDA the females can fly 20-60 feet, twice as far as the males.

They prefer wet, grassy areas –including irrigated fields. The USDA says they have been found in red clover and tobacco fields, but it’s not clear if they are damaging the crops or just eating the weed grasses. Either, this grasshopper, which is quite common in the eastern United States, is probably not going to hurt my gardens at all. It definitely prefers Kentucky Bluegrass over Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans.

Quick facts about the green-striped grasshopper (Chortophaga viridifasciata)

Life Cycle: eggs hatch around July, then begin molting through their instar segments beginning in early April and taking about 100 days to reach the fourth instar. They’ll overwinter in the fourth or fifth instar stage. In the spring, perhaps in early April, depending upon the temperature, they re-emerge and begin developing into adults with one or two more molts depending upon what stage they were in when they went dormant for winter. The adults lay eggs in sandy soil which hatch into nymphs and the cycle repeats.

Diet: Grass

Range: From Montana to New Mexico and east to the Atlantic Coast. Southern Canada. Mexico and Central America.

IUCN Redlist Status: Prevalent, not-listed

When are they here: Green-striped grasshoppers stay all year round although the dormant nymphs may be difficult to locate during the winter months. Once they reach adulthood, they may travel some distance before mating and laying eggs.

Crimson-ringed Whiteface (Leucorrhinia glacialis) - Dragonfly Identification Resources

Crimson-ringed Whiteface dragonfly (Leucorrhinia glacialis)
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

Today I learned that there are many, many species of dragonflies. Furthermore, some of them aren't dragonflies at all, but are actually damselflies. Sow when I tried to get an identification on the dragonfly pictured to the left, I ran into some difficulty at first.

Searching for dragonfly identification, even adding in my region was of little help. I searched text and images through Google, but found nothing that brought me much closer to figuring out which dragonfly this might be. Knowing how birds and bugs are often named for a prominent feature, however, I figured that there was a pretty good probability that this particular dragonfly had white-face somewhere in it's name. So a search of white face dragonflies New Hampshire brought me a couple of very good leads.

First was a list of all the dragonflies known to occur in New Hampshire which I found on the New Hampshire Fish and Game  Department's website. It's actually a checklist of dragonflies and damselflies designed for use in the annual Dragonfly Survey. Furthermore, it was actually designed by someone I know from my bird watching hobby, Dr. Pamela Hunt of the New Hampshire Audubon.

The other resource was from the familiar bugguide.net hosted by Iowa State University Entomology. There, I found a category of dragonflies called whitefaces. Go figure. It had eight pictures of various whiteface dragonflies so all I had to do was pick one closest in appearance to my photos. then I checked against the New Hampshire list to make sure it lives here. Sure enough, according to Dr. Hunt's checklist, the crimson-ringed whiteface does live in New Hampshire and is found mainly near the seacoast. My yard is on a mountain about 30 miles (or less) from the coast, so that checks out.

From there, I checked every other whiteface species listed at the bugguide site to rule them out. One other was almost a match, but had a feature which ruled it out. So that's how I identified this dragonfly as the crimson-ringed whiteface. It's marking are really quite striking. To see a slideshow of the other photos I took of the crimson-ringed whiteface click here.

This dragonfly was zipping around the edge of the forest, not in it but alongside it. There is no real body of water nearby except the small (100 gallons or so) man-made pond that I put in the backyard. The streams have largely run dry for the summer. However, the IUCN redlist website lists their preferred habitat as "lakes and ponds in forested regions, often with boggy margins; preference varies from very little to abundant aquatic vegetation." Further into the woods around my yard there are more wetlands and boggy areas and there are lakes and small ponds within less than a mile.

Life Cycle of the Dragonfly

Dragonflies, of course, lay their eggs in water and the wingless nymph lives in the water until it undergoes a metamorphosis into an adult dragonfly. Dragonfly nymphs are active predators and will eat just about anything they can catch until it is time for them to climb up out of the water, and molt, revealing at last into their adult forms. Adults mate and lay eggs in the summer. The eggs hatch before winter and dragonflies spend the winter in their aquatic nymph form.

Primitive dragonflies date back about 300 million years says Katleen Tait of the University of Pennsylvania.

The crimson-ringed whiteface is one of the group of dragonflies called Skimmers, a group which includes 38 New Hampshire dragonflies. In all there are 170 species of dragonflies known to have been found in New Hampshire.

Crimson-ringed Whiteface dragonfly (Leucorrhinia glacialis)
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

Quick facts about Leucorrhinia glacialis:
Diet: Mostly flying insects such as  bees and flies
Range:

United States (California, Connecticut, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming)

Canada (Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward I., Québec, Saskatchewan);

IUCN Red List Status: Least Concern
When Can it be Found Here: Dragonflies don't migrate. They will stay in New Hampshire for their entire lifespan. They hatch from eggs in the late summer or early fall, overwinter as aquatic nymphs and then metamorphosize into their adult form in the spring or summer to lay eggs and start the cycle all over again.

Cedar Waxwing in the Pin Cherry Tree

Earlier today, I saw a bird called a black and white warbler (click here for a photo of the black and white warbler I took at a location a few miles away from my yard or here for an ID photo from the Crossley ID Guide). the appearance is distinctive and there was no doubt about what it was, but I did not have my camera. It's a bird that I don't often see in my yard, so I wanted to record it for this blog. I went in to get my camera, but when I came back out, no luck. It was gone into the woods. I won't count it as living in my yard until I can get a photo to share with you.

However, since I had the camera, I walked over to an area where I heard some birds singing to see if I could spot something else. The area where I was looking has several mid-sized pin cherry trees. This was a particularly bad year for pin cherries, in my yard at least. They flowered up beautifully, but very, very few of the flowers bore fruit. I wonder if there was a severe shortage of pollinators this year. The trees have, I would estimate about five percent of the amount of fruit they have had in prior years.

Pin cherries are a favorite of many birds, including the one shown in the photo below, the cedar waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum). I've been writing a regular column about Bird Watching for Examiner.com, so I tend to notice the birds that live in my yard and their habits. I have had cedar waxwings in the pin cherries in prior years, but I was worried that the lack of fruit this year might keep them away. Thankfully, this one, at least, is here.

Cedar waxwing with pin cherries
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

Cedar waxwings tend to nest later in the year than many other birds. This is probably due to their heavy reliance on dietary fruit that doesn't ripen until July or later in New England. The picture shows some pin cherries in the top right. You can see that they are not quite ripe as they will be a uniform dark red when ripe.
Pin cherries are quite flavorful and sour. They can be eaten by people, but they are very small and contain a large pit, that makes them more work than they are generally worth. One year, when they are plentiful, I'm planning to gather a batch for fermenting and see if they'll make a decent wine.

In the winter, like American Robins, waxwings tend to flock together and will mob berry bushes and fruit trees en masse to feed. In the breeding season, however, they split up into nesting pairs. They do migrate north into central Canada in the summer and south to Florida, Cuba, and Mexico in the winter, but the territory is so broad  that there are cedar waxwings in the northern half of the United States all year round, though not necessarily the same ones.

The easiest trait to pick out on this bird is the crest. I may stand up erect or be swept back giving the cedar waxwing a distinctive profile either way. The facial coloring is also another clear species indicator. Black, mask-like coloring over the eyes is quite easy to spot. The cedar waxwing will have a white border around the mask top and bottom. The Bohemian waxwing, however, has the white border only on the underside of the mask.

The cedar waxwing in the picture here actually has a variant coloring. The band of color at the tip of the tail feathers is usually yellow in the cedar waxwing, but occasionally it will be orange as seen in this particular bird. So for today, July 8, 2011, what lives in my yard? The cedar waxwing does!

Two-spotted Bumblebee (Bombus bimaculatus)

Two-spotted Bumblebee (Bombus bimaculatus)
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved
For more photos, click here

Growing up in New England with clover in the lawn, I have certainly seen my share of bees. Although I recall that there used to be far more wild honeybees than I see these days, I do still see a good number of bumblebees in my yard. I see them on the flowers of my squash, peppers, chives and many different flowers all over the yard.  (Let me first say some people use bumble bee as two words and some say bumblebee as one word, I’m going to use the latter variant throughout this page.)

I’ve never really looked closely enough to see what species they were specifically, until now. It turns out that there are quite a few different kinds of bumblebees. My Audubon field guide only lists a few, but it can hardly be blamed as it only covers about 550 insects of the 100,000 or so that live in North America. Whatever species they are, they are certainly welcome in the garden because they seem to be doing a pretty good job of picking up where the missing honeybees have left off in terms of pollinating my vegetable gardens and apple trees.

To figure out what species a bumblebee is, you have to look at the pattern of black and yellow on its head, thorax and abdomen. The best reference for common bumblebee patterns that I’ve found online is this chart from Bumblebee.org. Comparing the photos of bumblebees that I took at about 9:30 a.m. on the sunny morning of July 7^th, 2011, with the grass still wet from evening rains, they appear to be of the species Bombus bimaculatus or the two-spotted bumblebee which therefore becomes the third wild species and second insect added to the master list of What Lives in my Yard? There may be other species as well living in my yard, I’ll be more observant from now on and if I spot a different kind, I’ll make a note of it for this blog.

I’ve included a single picture here on this page, but if you’d like to see a slideshow of the other pictures I took of the two-spotted bumblebee, click here. I’m going to try to put up slideshows of most species from now on to give a wider range of views, and talk about identification a little using the photos. Field guides generally have a single photo and it may be hard to identify one you see given individual differences from the single example.  That’s why I try to take photos from a variety of angles if there is any doubt about the species.

Bumblebees, in general, are pretty easy-going and won’t aggressively attack like a yellow-jacket might. If they do, however, bumblebees have the advantage of being able to sting over and over again since they do not leave their stingers in their victims.

The two-spotted bumblebee, according to bugguide.net, has a long tongue, not unlike a hummingbird’s tongue, that is used to sip nectar from inside long tube flowers. The ones I photographed, however, were collecting pollen. In the photos you can see the pollen sacs on their legs are full and yellow with pollen that will be carried back to the hive. Bombus bimaculatus feeds on both nectar and pollen.

Bumblebees live in ground burrows, and experience a near complete hive die-off each winter. Only the queen survives to re-establish the hive in the spring. Interestingly, the queen bumble bee herself will actually go out and collect pollen for the first new worker bee larva in the spring.

The two-spotted bumblebee lives east of the Mississippi River from southern Canada to Florida.

Eastern Chipmunk

Eastern Chipmunk (Tamias Striatus) July 5, 2011
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

I can tell that for the first weeks of this blog, at least, it’s going to be very easy to find new species of animals to add to the list of what lives in my yard. Even as I snapped the photos of the Two-striped Grasshopper yesterday, I heard a familiar short, sharp “tseet!” repeated every few seconds from the canopy of a maple tree that stands beside my back deck. I knew I had my second entry if I could just spot the Eastern chipmunk (Tamias striatus) that was calling from some hidden spot within the branches.

Fortunately, high-pitched sounds are easier for the human ear to locate. After a few more calls, I had it pretty well narrowed down, and then a small movement caught my eye. Sure enough, a chipmunk was peeking down from above, watching me intently for any sign of a threat.

Chipmunks, of course, are familiar to almost everyone in New England. If you have trees in New England, you probably have chipmunks nearby even though they actually live in burrows in the ground. Chipmunks store food in their burrows during the months of plenty against the colder months when food will be scarce (or frozen solid).

In my yard, they have a plentiful supply of acorns. The cracked and empty acorn shells attest to their appetite for these nuts. They also have a bad habit of eating my strawberries, just as they begin to ripen. Chipmunks are also known to eat insects, worms, grains (including commercial chicken food when the chickens aren’t looking).  They will chew food into manageable pieces and then stuff their cheek pouches full to carry it back to special food storage chambers within their burrows.

Like many animals, though, chipmunks are opportunistic and will eat a wide variety of foods if the occasion presents itself. Bird eggs, unprotected small baby animals, fungus, and some types of kitchen waste may also become part of the chipmunk’s diet.

In turn, says the State of Connecticut’s Department of Environmental Protection, chipmunks are eaten by hawks, owls, bobcats, weasels, foxes, house cats, raccoons, snakes, rats and coyotes. I would also add fisher cats as a common predator of the chipmunk in areas (like New Hampshire) where they co-exist.

If you need to remove a pest chipmunk, smearing a bit of peanut butter on the trigger of a live trap works quite well as they can’t remove it in one grab and eat it elsewhere, but they have to keep working the trigger to get every last bit. Eventually, if not right away, they’ll trip it and be trapped.

Chipmunk burrows are generally well-hidden and usually have more than one entrance. They may extend for 5-10 feet in length with several chambers. The Eastern chipmunk may have one or two litters of 3-5 babies each year says New Hampshire Public Television’s chipmunk info. page.

Although chipmunks are not seen above ground in winter unless their dens are seriously disturbed, they don’t hibernate in the true sense. They do stay inside their burrows though, living off the food they have stored from the previous summer and sleeping. Occasionally, they will make their burrows in the walls or foundations of homes if they can find a way in, although more frequently if you hear something in the walls or ceiling of your home, it will be a squirrel, which unlike the chipmunk, nests above ground.

First neighbor -Two-striped Grasshopper (Melanoplus bivittatus)

Two-striped Grasshopper (Melanoplus bivittatus) July 5, 2011
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

So, this is the first of my animal neighbors to be found. Aha! I thought, this will be an easy one. It's a grasshopper, but what kind? I am by no means an expert or even mediocre quality entomologist.


Although I can't find any grasshoppers that look like this in National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders (National Audubon Society Field Guides), my first guess was that it is a young Pasture Grasshopper (Melanoplus confusus), but it lacks the diagonal eye bar characteristic of the species according to the USDA site. So that's out. With a brown eye that is evenly spotted, my next guess is the Two-striped Grasshopper (Melanoplus bivittatus). The description fits pretty closely and my photos match the fourth instar photo at the USDA page for the two-striped grasshopper.

The wing-pads appear underdeveloped which confirms that it is not an adult grasshopper, but is at one of the various pre-adult instar stages of development. So, what's an instar? 


What's an Instar?


An instar is one of the stages that grasshoppers go through on the way to adulthood. Each time they molt it is another instar.  So the second molting results in the third instar.

• Click here to see a slideshow of my photos of the Two-striped Grasshopper

In theory, we should be able to tell exactly which instar it is (ie, what stage of development it is in) by noting the development characteristics that are present and its size. This grasshopper was about 1.5-1.8 centimeters in length, and I'd estimate the femur length at about half of that. Those dimensions would be close for the fourth instar of the Two-striped Grasshopper.

The Two-striped Grasshopper Lives in my Yard

So that's my conclusion. This insect was found on the edge of my deck railing near a large grape vine at about 2 in the afternoon on July 5th, 2011, a bright sunny day with temperatures in the 80's. Yesterday, I saw the same insect with about four or five others of the same age and species on the grape leaves. There was no damage to the plant and I did not observe them eating it, although I'm almost positive they will eat some. The plant is too large and vigorous for so few to do any real damage at this point, so they can stay as long as they like for now. I'm pretty tolerant of insects and animals in my yard, but when they start competing with me for food (or they consider me to be food) they get relocated (or worse)... sorry, that's where I draw the line.

Two-striped Grasshopper - front view
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

 Grasshopper Photo Notes

Looking into the face of this grasshopper, one can see why they are often used as the inspiration for evil aliens in sci-fi movies. I took these photos using the macro function on my digital camera with autofocus. They were cropped using Paint. They came out pretty good, but I wish the depth of field in the second photo was a little better to keep the back legs in focus. I took a total of six pics at various angles. The two-striped grasshopper shifted nervously as if preparing to leap away as I got close and angled around for the shots, but it stayed put for the photos.