To turn the old story of The Ant and the Grasshopper around, here's a grasshopper diligently preparing for the next season by digging a hole in the ground and laying eggs in it.   Hard to be more future-planning-minded  than that.  I was coming back from a bike ride on the land--and the wind was so blustery in my face that I got off in the north ( Read more... )

This morning, husband spotted a very large, very handsome yellow and brown moth on the city-supplied black trash container, nestled into a depression that runs on the back side of it.   After looking into a couple of books (whose pictures showed this species with different markings--it's variable) I found it on BugGuide.net    There's not a record ( Read more... )

Thanks to someone else's post on an insect listserv, BugGuide.net, and texasento.net's beetle info page (with the county-level distribution maps)  I was able to ID a handsome little beetle that appears every year in cactus flowers around here.


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A late afternoon walk down to the creek revealed another new species for the place--a male American Rubyspot.  American Rubyspots are Broad-winged Damselflies--they hold their wings like "normal" damsels, but they have wider wings and may not have pterostigmata (though the American Rubyspot usually does, in this area.)

What I noticed was a small " ( Read more... )