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While exploring the grounds of Wildsumaco Lodge on the east slope of the Andes in Ecuador I came across a rather large bug lying on its back.  I assumed it was some kind of dead freakish moth and flipped it over to get a better look and was very surprised that it opened its wings [...]

My trip upstate this past weekend was about more than family, food, and feathers (though all three of those things figured heavily).  Somehow we also found time to look at a variety of cool insects, and, of the insects, we most appreciated the butterflies.  As regular readers here know, butterfly identification is not my forte, [...]

I spent my weekend in upstate New York with Daisy visiting my folks and we had a good old time eating far too much food, having far too much fun, and, somewhat unfortunately, considering some of them were of the biting variety, seeing far too many bugs.  The wet summer that has been the bane [...]

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 [...]

The acquisition of a new field guide is always a joyous occasion, signaling either an impending journey or impending answers to old questions. By the latter, I’m referring to those unclosed cases that accumulate any time a nature lover ventures outdoors armed with a camera but not a clue. As you can imagine, my digital [...]