lightsinthedistance-modernlife

I set out on a hike today in search of anything neat I missed during yesterday's hike, which I started too late to take full advantage of the daylight. I made it through the entire trail today, and had quite the detour along the way. I stopped by a dead Sycamore tree to look for beetles, since I found a neat species of Osmoderma beetle in it last year, but no dice this time. I trudged on, arriving at a small area with some fallen trees, and decided to stay a while. I quickly noticed that there were wasps flying around EVERYWHERE. Thankfully, these were Ichneumonid wasps in the genus Megarhyssa , which are harmless to humans. A male Megarhyssa sp. wasp. There were dozens of males like the one above flying around and landing on the fallen tree I was examining. Some were larger with vaguely different markings, indicating that I had at least two different species around, which seems to be normal for the genus, I usually see groups of more than species. The males were gathered to find...

Yesterday was a nice day outside, and I figured it would probably be one of the last before the snow started falling. I decided to take advantage of this, and set off to find some mushrooms. (Also, it was snowing when I woke up this morning, so I was correct in my assumption. Maybe I should take up weather forecasting.) I packed some collecting supplies and set off for the nature trail near my old elementary school. It has a nice array of habitat types and gratuitous amounts of decaying logs, so I was optimistic that I would find some nice mushrooms. However, almost immediately after I stepped onto the trail, my trip turned into millipede hunting. It's just too difficult to resist turning over every decaying log I find in hopes of getting some millipedes out of it. My habit ended up paying off: I found many millipedes and collected 7 specimens from 4 separate species. It's astounding how many little critters live in decaying wood and the surrounding leaf litter. It's a mini...

One of my mantras when I go out to look for bugs and other critters is "Turn over that decaying log." You always have a great chance of finding neat stuff when you look through decaying wood, including creatures such as centipedes, millipedes, spiders, slugs, and of course, insects. Today was no exception. "O hai!" After rolling over a particularly good log, I looked into a hole bored into the wood and found what one girl described as "an uncooked sausage" before she backed away to find some prettier biology. Despite its leathery appearance a bird or small mammal would look upon this beetle grub with much more glee. Then it would gobble this sucker down in a heartbeat. A grub in the hand is worth...two in the log? Judging by the size of this grub, I'm guessing that it's a grub of the Eastern Hercules Beetle ( Dynastes tityus ), though I'm not completely sure. I've uploaded it to BugGuide and hope to hear back about it soon.  While decaying ...