An orange sulphur nectars on an aster.


Field Trip Report: Fox Ridge State Park
  October 4, 2009

We snuck in our last field trip of the year on a sunny day that was wedged in between some cold and some rain.  We saw lots of late season butterflies, especially orange sulphurs.  All total, we ended up seeing 10 species, including 4 different species on a single pile of dog/coyote poop in a parking lot.  I think the highlight of the trip (for me anyway) was seeing a velvet ant (picture below).

Our butterfly species list was:  cabbage white, clouded sulphur, orange sulphur, eastern tailed-blue, pearl crescent, painted lady, common buckeye, eastern comma, question mark, and silver-spotted skipper.

Our dragonfly list was: common green darner, black saddlebags, and wandering glider.

*If anyone wants to provide more complete information or corrections for any of the below items, feel free to contact the club by email*

All photos copyright Paul V. Switzer. Please do not use without permission



Pearl crescent


Question mark

Fly

  Chinese mantid

Cow killer
Dasymutilla occidentalis
The cow killer is a type of velvet ant (Family Mutillidae).  Velvet ants are actually not ants at all, but instead are female, wingless wasps (males have wings).  Cow killers lay eggs in nests of bumblebees, which nest in the ground, and their young feed on the bee grubs.  They have a very powerful sting, which you would only find out if you were silly enough to grab one in your hand and make her think you wanted to eat her.  This sting has given them their common name of  "cow-killer".
  Scentless plant bug
Harmostes sp.


Yellow-collared scape moth.


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