This striking red wasp with iridescent blue wings has been fairly visible on Queen Anne’s lace lately. It’s a Western Red Spider Wasp in the Tachypompilus genus.
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In general, I think people should be talking more about moths. In the Lepidoptera order, more than 90% of species are moths, and less than 10% are butterflies. Plus, moths have remarkable variety in body type, wing shape, and antennae form.
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This week’s subject is the rose weevil. Weevils are beetles with exaggerated snouts. The snout, or rostrum, helps the insect munch into its favorite foliage to lay eggs and to eat.
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Seeing an oak treehopper (Platycotis vittata) was on my long-term wishlist, and it was so exhilarating to find one that I was on a nature high for a couple of days. These brightly-colored, odd-shaped true bugs look like they should live in tropical forests, but they’re fairly common in the Pacific Northwest.
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Scarab beetles in the sub-family Melolonthinae have two common, common names: May beetles and Junebugs (more later). There are over 600 species in North America, and all have frilly, fanning antennae, claws on their forelegs, and a large plate near the mouthparts…
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