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BY
Wooly Bears
will soon be appearing. They
are young
Preying or
Praying, Mantis could fit either name. Some of them may reach 5 inches,
especially the females. In
the fall they look huge as they are filled with eggs. The Chinese Mantis
are larger than our natives, but are not as hardy.
As the nights cool off I see females on the door and window
screens. By this time they are looking for plants with straight, sturdy
stems on which to place their egg cases. They glue the spongy, brown
masses each fall. Males are
smaller and you won’t see as many as the female because the female eats
her mate to get protein for the eggs.
The young hatch in spring and begin eating-even each other.
We think of
them as good bugs because a part of their diet includes many of the bugs
we hate. But they are not
fussy and will eat good bugs also. If you try to keep them over from
year to year, some of their favorite plants are Golden Rod,
Leaf Miners do
what their name says-they mine between layers of leaves of many plants.
They are listed as “bad bugs” but don’t do a great deal of harm.
Their trails through the leaves are interesting to watch. It is the
larvae that are traveling as they eat between the layers and cells in
the leaf. This gives you an idea of their size. Their parent can be a
fly or a moth who lays tiny white eggs on the leaves.
Different species have a favorite plant. In a flower garden
Columbines are one of their favorite. Actually they don’t do much harm
in ornamentals, but can harm vegetables, especially if you want to eat
the leaves. They do like Beets, Spinach, and Chard. They are all over
the
Spiders and
Parasitic Wasps help cut down on their numbers. You can squash the Leaf
Miners eggs on the foliage or pull off infected leaves and destroy, in
order destroy the next generation that would live over winter as pupae
in the soil.
A fierce one to
find in your yard is the Dragonfly that is bloodthirsty and hunting for
living prey. They fight each
other for territories and like a pond with some plants growing up out of
the water as some females lay their eggs on stems in the water. Others
just drop them into the water.
Their offspring love Mosquito wigglers in the water as their
parents catch them in the air. Even a small pond is a life and death
battle ground. If Mosquito
larvae aren’t available they will eat each other.
About this time
(last summer and early fall) we will start to hear the Crickets.
In most species only the male “sings” in order to attract a mate.
Other calls are to let other males know that a territory is taken and
some have an alarm call to announce a predator. They have a series of
ridges on one wing and a scraper on another. Some Crickets have a chorus
in which several call together. One author says to count the chirps in
15 seconds and add to 37 to give the temperature.
The female
Cricket jabs here sharp ovipositor into the soil and may lay as many as
3 or 4 eggs. Some in bunches, or some singly. Their ears are on the twin
spines at the end of their body. Their main ears are small openings
below their knees on the front leg. They will eat most anything
including clothing, grain, tomatoes, etc. Farmers who leave clothing in
a field of crickets my find it well chewed when they come back.
The Black Field Cricket is the one most people know but there is
a Mole, a House, a Green Tree, and a Cave Cricket. They die in the cold
which may be why they try to come into the house in the fall.
Cicada Killer
Wasps come out of their underground homes when it warms in the spring.
They are big, handsome, black and yellow, solitary hunters
belonging to the “digger” Wasps. Each of these hunters has their own
special food supply for their young. The adults live on nectar after the
hatch in the spring. About mid-July the females hunt for a dry place,
preferably in clay, to dig a burrow with several chambers at the bottom.
She then looks for a singing Cicada to stab, paralyze, and then drag
upside down along the ground to her den. She then attaches one egg to
the body. When the eggs hatch they eat the food their mother provided
and then spin a cocoon in which to spend the winter. In the spring when
it warms up they come out of the cocoon and the cycle starts over. Copyright 2011 |