As I mentioned in my breakdown of the Birds of Chicken Inferno 2009, such as they were, moths were where the real action was. A number of lovely species appeared both night and day in great numbers, enough that eventually I had to put my beer down long enough to snap some shots. Apparently my [...]

Monarch Butterflies, as they do every fall, are heading south for the winter.  Along the coast one can see pretty big numbers of them, especially on days when wind out of the north carries them to the shore.  I am always amazed by long migrations, but it is usually birds I think of when considering [...]

Two of the more recognizable butterflies of the northeastern United States were kindly enough to pause in front of my camera lens of late, the Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) and the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus).  Both are bigger butterflies than the skippers I’ve recently seen, and both are strikingly colored and rather common, but, [...]

As I mentioned in my previous post the last visit I made to Forest Park was relatively birdless but the bugs did their best to make up for the lack of birds.  In particular, the area around the reclamation pond was quite buggy, with the water and numerous wildflowers creating quite the habitat for everything [...]

On a recent birding outing around Forest Park the birds had made themselves scarce but the bugs were out in force.  So I made lemonade from lemons (maybe not the best metaphor when dealing with bugs) and focused my camera on the six-legged set, in particular on a Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis).  This particular dragonfly [...]

Monday was a well-spent vacation day.  Why?  Well, Charlie was in town and we went birding at Jamaica Bay!  I’ll leave it to Charlie to tell the tale of the birds we saw and didn’t see and stick to three of the insects that we spotted: a fly, a butterfly, and a cicada.  Charlie also [...]

My first birding excursion to Mendon Ponds, as reported earlier in the week, was an outstanding introduction to the abundant avifauna of my new stomping grounds. As a bonus, the bugs were pretty cool too. Every invertebrate seemed to be on the move but, like John at Born Again Bird Watcher, I was singing the [...]

One thing that I like about this time of year is bugs.  Sure, migration is over and the hordes of wood-warblers are busy breeding further north but bugs, well, bugs are everywhere, and they tend to be easy to photograph, that is, if you don’t mind photographing whatever bug it is you happen to come [...]

Have you been to Lenoir Preserve in Yonkers lately? Probably not. After all, unless you live in the northwest Bronx or any of the rivertowns along the Hudson, you probably take your leisure in more convenient natural settings. But Lenoir, seat of the Hudson River Audubon chapter, has always been a special place for me, [...]

Join the other slugs over at the 33rd edition of Circus Of The Spineless, the blog carnival devoted to all things without a spine. Nice edition, Laurent!

I have never in my life been more glad not to be a bug.

In Albany’s Pine Bush recently Daisy and I came across a pair of moths that were, we assume, mating. Neither of us had ever seen such a moth, nor had we ever seen any moths mating so it was, um, interesting. Anyway, I sent some pictures over to Patrick and he quickly responded with an [...]

During this past summer whenever I was outdoors and the birds weren’t showing I took pictures of the dragonflies that I spotted. I’ve managed to identify some of them but I am certainly not an expert. As I’ve mentioned before, they are “a serious identification challenge and figuring them out is an interesting, though frustrating, [...]

It seems like Tennessee, Bay Breasted and Cape May Warblers are being reported a bit more often than usual this fall migration. I realized this when, on the same day that Will, Zack, and I found a Bay-breasted Warbler and a Tennessee Warbler in the same foraging flock at Vischer Ferry, my friend Tom found [...]

Earlier this month I found and photographed this spider in my grandmother’s backyard. I finally got around to trying to figure out what it was today by searching obsessively through web page after web page. Well, I think I mostly figured it out, narrowing it down to its family, the Agelenidae, more commonly referred to [...]

Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriacea) is an easily recognizable plant with a range that encompasses virtually all of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. It is one of over 140 species of milkweed, the genus Asclepias. Its common name comes from the white fluid released when the plant is harmed, and the scientific name derives [...]

Just like butterflies, I honestly don’t know much about dragonflies. They look cool, they don’t bite people except maybe if you are handling them, and this past Sunday one was flying around, trying to catch and eat the deerflies that were trying to eat me and my fellow birders. Here is the coolest picture I’ve [...]

As a person who is still relatively new to the world of birding I feel that I have made some pretty big strides in figuring out the wide variety of birds that I see and hear. I might not identify them all but I definitely manage to put a name to the vast majority that [...]

Welcome to the twenty-first edition of Circus of the Spineless, the blog carnival concerned with the intricacies of invertebrate life. A preponderance of earthly animal life exists unencumbered by the stricture of a spinal column, yet inverts rarely get the glory afforded to the higher order organisms. That trend is certainly not going to be [...]

While visiting my grandmother today I took some time to investigate what bugs were hanging out on her lilac bushes. There were lots of cool bugs, but nothing could top this Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. It was such a gorgeous specimen that I followed it when it flew to the other lilac bush! A day with [...]