The Backyard Arthropod Project

Predaceous Diving Beetle

Tim Eisele — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:00:10 +0000

Here’s another one that I photographed in my office on July 26, 2011. But, it was actually found dead in the back window of a car some months earlier, sometime around February[1]. And who knows how long it might have been there, it was completely dried out and had probably been rattling around since at [...]

Water Scavenger Beetle

Tim Eisele — Sat, 12 May 2012 10:00:25 +0000

While this was photographed on July 26, 2011, I actually found it some time earlier. It had died on the sidewalk on campus sometime earlier that summer, and had been sitting around in my office until I happened to bring my camera to work and take pictures of it. I didn’t want to risk taking [...]

Female Orb Weaver Spider

Tim Eisele — Wed, 09 May 2012 10:00:44 +0000

I found this late in the season, on November 19, 2011. It was dragging itself slowly down the hall next to the big windows in the building I work in, so I scooped it up and brought it home. I originally thought that this was a male, mainly because it was smaller than the other [...]

Black Ichneumon with Red Abdomen

Tim Eisele — Sat, 05 May 2012 10:00:28 +0000

We found this black-and-red ichneumon wasp hanging around our porch light on August 1, 2010. Here it is in long form so that you can see the whole thing: She’s probably Cryptus albitarsis, the most common of the ichneumon wasps that have this particular coloration. And we can be sure this is a “she”, because [...]

Large, black, furry jumping spider

Tim Eisele — Wed, 02 May 2012 10:00:20 +0000

I found this unusually large jumping spider on one of the roof support pillars on our front porch on July 18, 2011. He was a big, black, furry, sinister-looking specimen, over a centimeter long. Normally, jumping spiders are kind of cute, but this one has more the air of the insect murderer that he actually [...]

Black caterpillar with yellow-orange stripes

Tim Eisele — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 10:00:41 +0000

When Sam caught this one in the yard on June 13, 2010, I thought it was going to be an easy ID. Pretty good-sized caterpillar, distinctive-looking striping; should be a piece of cake, right? But, it turns out to be not so easy. I went all through Caterpillars of Eastern North America, searched BugGuide, posted [...]

Another Twig Mimic Inchworm

Tim Eisele — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:00:55 +0000

Sam found this lichen-covered rock with an inchworm on in on June 6, 2010. I’m pretty sure that the inchworm wasn’t eating the lichen, because the camouflage is all wrong. It’s disguised as a twig, and the way it is posing, it would look pretty darned convincing if it were on a tree. But, being [...]

The Herald

Tim Eisele — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 10:00:20 +0000

I found this fairly large moth (the body was about an inch long) hanging out on the ceiling of our garage, right over the spot where I park our truck. I collected it for photographs on November 22, 2011. But, it had actually been there for some time (maybe weeks) before I realized it was [...]

Ctenucha virginica caterpillar and adult

Tim Eisele — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:00:07 +0000

We just caught another one of these over the weekend, so it is probably time to post this. On May 21, 2010 Sam and I found this hanging on the side of my father-in-law’s hunting blind in our back yard. I recognized it as a caterpillar that I’d originally posted way back in 2008, but [...]

Introduced Pine Sawfly Larva

Tim Eisele — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 10:00:54 +0000

Sandy caught this on September 18, 2011 while sweep-netting in the grass on our septic drain field. It was about an inch long, not an unusual size for a caterpillar. One thing that we noted right away, though, is that it wasn’t actually a caterpillar. If we count the prolegs on the abdomen, we see [...]