2015 June 29

   Sorry no posting yesterday – not enough business!

   Jeff Gaskin writes: On Sunday morning, June 28, while still in the sunshine there was a Red Admiral in the southwest corner of Swan Lake . It was near a patch of nettles which was near the bridge that crosses Swan Creek not far from the highway.  [Jeremy Tatum comments:  Yes, there have been caterpillars in that nettle patch!]

  Rob Gowan reports an interesting moth from the summit of Mount Washington from the June 20 trip.  It is Anarta nigrolunata, which is a moth that occurs in the alpine meadows of high mountains.  We are struggling with technical computer difficulties, but we’ll try and show Rob’s fine photograph of it if we can just tame these computers.

  Scott Gilmore writes from Upper Lantzville:  On Sunday (June 28) we found some interesting longhorn beetles and a couple of flies.  I can name the beetles as least to genus, and John H Ascher has identified the flies (snipe flies – Rhagionidae) to genus.

Phymatodes sp. (Col.: Cerambycidae) Scott Gilmore

Xestoleptura crassicornis (Col.: Cerambycidae) Scott Gilmore

Necydalis sp. (Col.: Cerambycidae)  Scott Gilmore

   Scott describes this as a wasp mimic.  Jeremy Tatum comments: Yes I have seen this one or a congener myself, and it is a quite astonishing ichneumonid (a sort of wasp in the broad sense) mimic.  The one thing that gives it away is that it is fairly lethargic – whereas an icheumonid is constantly on the move and its antennae are constantly in motion. Other than that, the resemblance of this beetle to an icheumonid is truly astonishing.

Snipe fly Chrysopilus sp. (Dip.: Rhagionidae) Scott Gilmore

Snipe fly  Rhagio sp. (Dip.:  Rhagionidae)  Scott Gilmore

   Two micro moths, photographed recently by Bill Katz and Jeremy Tatum, have recently been indentified for us by Eric LaGasa:

Pandemis cerasana (Lep.: Tortricidae)   Bill Katz

Herpetogramma pertextalis (Lep.: Crambidae)  Jeremy Tatum