I spent a great day on Saturday, 29 May, visiting a variety of parks in Orange County and Rockland County in downstate New York with a fellow Queens birder, Seth, and a Rockland County birder, Gene.  Though, really, to call either of them “birder” doesn’t give a complete picture of what they are about considering the diverse array of life forms that pique their interest.  Over the course of the day we looked at birds and plants and dragonflies and reptiles and mammals and butterflies and amphibians and more but a single blog post could not contain the images I got of all of those things.  This post, therefore, is focused on just insects, which are, of course, ridiculously diverse.  If you want to see the reptiles and amphibians from the trip, well, just click here, and if you want to see birds from the trip, click here.

I am indebted to Patrick and Karlo and Steve who all helped me identify these insects.  Birds are difficult enough; when it comes to bugs I tend to try to get pictures and identify them later with field guides in hand.  I was pleasantly surprised when I managed to identify a couple of relatively difficult butterflies on my own and even more pleased to find the wasp I was trying to identify in the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America, though, of course, and somehow not surprisingly, it turned out to be not a wasp but a fly.

Enough explaining how this birder managed to identify bugs; it’s time for the pictures!

Dreamy Duskywing Erynnis brizo

one of North America’s fifty or so Mydas flies, Mydas tibialis

Red-spotted Purple Limenitis arthemis

Arrowhead Spiketail Cordulegaster obliqua

Peck’s Skipper Polites peckius

Blackberry Looper Moth Chlorochlamys chloroleucaria