Hatching

On July 21 

Today, July 30.

More Insects: Metamorphosis Stage 1

 
I found a monarch butterfly caterpillar beneath our awning this morning. By 6 PM it had turned itself into a chrysalis. My brother says that it isn't in a very good spot, since it isn't camouflaged, so I don't really expect stage 2 of the metamorphosis to take place. 

Two-lined Spittlebug

Since there has been a dearth of birds this month to write about, I'm switching, for a moment, to insects, of which I have only a cursory understanding & interest. However, my brother is a semi-pro entomologist, so whenever I find an interesting "bug" I shoot him a photo. Sometimes he even wants a specimen and I have to (eyew) snuff it out and put it in the freezer. (Were I to have a 2nd animal interest, it would be turtles: There aren't that many of them [at least around here], they're either immobile or slow, which makes them easy to identify, and, aside from the readily recognizable Snapping Turtle, they pose no danger.)

This morning on the door of my car I found a Two-lined Spittlebug, which aside from everything else, struck me as yet another great insect name. I have found, on the whole, that insects have much more interesting and entertaining common names than birds, some of them far more amusing than the cliched "Yellow-belled Sapsucker." My brother, of course, mostly uses their scientific names, so half the time it's Greek (and Latin) to me.

He told today, after viewing the photo, two interesting things about spittlebugs. First of all, this species--Prosopia bicincta--was originally subtropical but has been moving north--can you say "climate change" boys & girls? 

The second thing he told me cleared up a minor mystery. Last week I noticed, on our lawn, that clumps of grass were enveloped in a foamy substance that disappeared as soon as it was touched. I thought it was either dew or condensation, though neither really made sense to me. It turns out that a nest of nymphs of a common species of spittlebug around here, the Meadow Spittlebug, attaches to the stems of plants and looks like someone spit on them--hence the name. I only noticed them for a day, but they were all over the lawn.  They are considered an agricultural pest and this may explain the sudden brown patches on our grass. Apparently, according to the North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service, there can be so many on a lawn that it "squishes" when walked upon. It's bad enough I have to worry about lanternflies, now I have to consider the damage bugs spitting on my lawn can do.