Insects and Spiders Archives - Heartland Safari

Virginia Waterleaf

Updated May 5, 2025

We were out in the yard, inspecting the blossoms on the apple and cherry trees, when sprays of little lavender flowers caught our attention. A patch of Virginia waterleaf (Hydrophyllum virginianum) was growing next to the shop. The plants were about a foot tall with long, deeply lobed leaves. Clusters of flowers hung at the […]

A minuscule ant about 1mm long, is pictured from above on a white countertop next to a gargantuan wristwatch and band for scale. Pharoah (or Thief) Ant.

Questionable Identity: Thief or Pharoah Ants

Updated April 21, 2025

I like my coffee immediately upon consciousness in the morning. That requires a fast coffee maker, which we have. It maintains a reservoir of hot water at all times and is ready with no notice to produce coffee. Recently, after eleven years of exemplary service, that coffee maker sprung a leak. Water began to pool […]

Insects and Spiders

Asian lady beetle wintering inside the house on a sunny window sash frame. The insect’s shape is an almost perfect hemisphere, with black spots adorning its orange elytra (forewings adapted as wing-cases). On its pronotum (the hard plate covering its thorax), it sports an M-shape mark, typical of this species.

Aphid Eaters: Multi-Colored Asian Lady Beetles

Updated February 24, 2025

Every so often throughout the winter, I become aware of a lady beetle waking up from her diapause to see if it’s spring yet. She’s been sleeping with her friends in odd corners of the house, with a few holing up in the can lights in the kitchen. They fall on the floor. The dogs […]

Insects and Spiders

Another insect on the screen on the south side of the house on a cool fall day. It looks like a honeybee (a drone honeybee at that), but is a Common Drone Fly. It has a rotund body with circling tan bands, hair all over, large compound eyes covering most its head. It’s a fly, with only one pair of membranous flight wings, unlike the bee’s two pairs.

Master Mimic: Common Drone Fly

Updated January 20, 2025

On a late fall day, another type of insect clings to the screen. It reminds us of a bee with its fuzzy black and yellow stripes, but it has two translucent, membranous wings instead of four and bristles sticking out of its antennae. Also, unlike a bee, this critter has no waist and no stinger. […]

Insects and Spiders

An insect with angular body, tiny head and two antennae sits head-down on a window screen in the autumn sunshine. Leaf footed bug has flattened, leaf-shaped expansions on its hind legs, which give the animal its name.

No Beauty Queen: Leaf-Footed Bug

Updated November 25, 2024

In the late fall, all manner of insects are planning to spend the winter on Owl Acres. They are congregating and searching for sheltered places to survive the snow and wind and the drop in temperatures. Asian lady beetles swarm out of the fields where they had been eating aphids. They line themselves up on […]

Insects and Spiders

Alt text: Horror on the porch. A bright green caterpillar hangs from the defoliated stem of a tomato plant, which the animal has been feeding on. Its back bristles with more than 70, tiny white cocoons, each housing a wasp pupa. The tomato hornworm is still alive, but is doomed. It has been successfully hijacked as host for the little parasitic wasps and will not complete its own life cycle, to become a five-spotted hawk moth.

Hollowed Out for Halloween

Updated October 28, 2024

We’ve heard a lot about viruses these past few years, with the corona virus front and center. We’ve all been scared at some level about getting COVID. We worried about how sick it would make us and whether we might spread it to someone else. So when I think of a virus, I think of […]

Insects and Spiders

Minute pirate bug feeding on baby flies on a green leaf, according to the Wikimedia caption. Small, oval-shape insect with a bold crossing pattern on its folded wings. Its stylet (straw-shape mouth structure) is extended and working on dinner.

No-See-Ums: Minute Pirate Bug and Biting Midge

Updated October 14, 2024

On one of those glorious fall days recently, I took Dave and Clancy for a walk. As we strolled along the road, the breeze from the south ruffled my hair and extinguished the sound of the interstate a mile to the north. It carried the scent of ripening corn. Close by the crickets and katydids […]

Insects and Spiders

Dozens of aphids, all head down, stud the stem of a Jerusalem Artichoke in the prairie garden. A lone black ant patrols the herd.

Miniature Farmers: Ants and Aphids

Updated September 23, 2024

Raising cattle for milk and beef has been an important part of the activities on Owl Acres for over 150 years. Another kind of animal husbandry has been going on here for millions of years. We noticed it recently when we were inspecting a Jerusalem artichoke plant in our prairie garden. Ants were tending a […]

Insects and Spiders

Life and death and life in the garden. Orange, black-spotted ladybird beetle hunts blue-green aphids on a leaf stem

Mice of the Insect World: Aphids

Updated September 16, 2024

Aphids. They’re crawling all over the leaves of my Jerusalem artichokes. They’re tiny, only about a sixteenth to an eighth inch long. They are soft-bodied, and they are shaped rather like a pear. They’re usually green, although specific species may be other colors such as yellow, black or orange. Aphids have their own family, Aphididae […]

Insects and Spiders

Green, angular, grasshopper-like insect looks directly at the camera, allowing us to see the dark spot deep in its clear, compound eye. Fork-tailed Bush Katydid shares the summer space on Owl Acres with one of its cousins, Common Meadow Katydid.

Late Summer Symphony: Fork-Tailed Bush Katydid

Updated September 2, 2024

I love this time of year. The world is thrumming with life. The crickets and grasshoppers, the cicadas and tree crickets all taking their turns to sing. The symphony will go on until that first hard frost when it shuts down all at once. But today is not that day. The weather is beautiful; the […]

Insects and Spiders