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Insects in the family Tettigoniidae are commonly called katydids or bush-crickets. There are more than 6,400 species. Part of the suborder Ensifera, it's the only family in the superfamily Tettigonioidea. The name is derived from the genus Tettigonia, first described by Linnaeus in 1748. They are also known as long-horned grasshoppers, although they are more closely related to crickets and weta than to grasshoppers. Many tettigoniids exhibit mimicry and camouflage, commonly with shapes and colors similar to leaves.
Jewel wasp sequence. I've seen this jewel wasp - Pseudomalus auratus - several times on the leaves of an abutilon. I watched it for quite a while...
The drone brood (male bees) is on the increase at this time of year. About 10% of the cells are now occupied by drone larvae like these two and usually positioned towards the outside of the brood nest, surrounding the worker cells. You can spot them immediately by the elongated raised sides and the larger diameter (6mm across compared to 5mm for workers) to take the much fatter drones. The size of the cell is what determines whether the Queen fertilises the egg as she lays it to give a worker or not to give a drone. This quirk of social insect reproduction means that workers are related 50% to the queen and drones 100%. The consequences of this system (haplodiploidy) are complex but are the basis of the usual explanation of the extreme altruism in social insects and the worker sterility - I can explain if anyone is interested :-)
It's been a banner year for tersa sphinx moths in my yard. Unfortunately, I never saw any caterpillars---those are VERY interesting!
Female Green Fly Feeding On Flower macro taken with a Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FZ28 using a Raynox DCR-150 macro lens. P1030635
Due to the cloudy and breezy weather, this little one posed for a bit, while I practised about with DOF and POV's. I am nowhere near even remotely close to ID'ing Butterflies yet. Another area I wish to learn more about this year. So any help would be gratefully recieved :)
This is one of my favorite species of dragonfly. The female is yellow & brown, while the male (which I will post at a later date) has more orange coloring. Pennants get their name from their habit of perching on the tops of stems while they blowing in the wind. Celithemis eponina, Libellulidae. Emiquon Preserve, Central IL, Summer 2013.
Mariposa dice: Lxs declaro unidxs en matrimonio... lxs novixs ya pueden besarse!
Dedicado a mis amigxs gays.
Taken with my compact camera
No crop
No edition
This dragonfly was walking, albeit sporadically, across my patio. At first, I thought that it was injured or worse, dying. But whatever the reason, it did manage to walk an incredible distance before I lost sight of it altogether.