Last summer the family took a vacation to the ‘upper peninsula’ of Michigan. There we stayed in a rented lakeside cabin for several days, and from that base we could see the spectacular scenery associated with the great lakes. Well, the wife and kids did that. I just wanted to hike through woods and fields with the camera to look for bugs. To each there own! I will have a few posts about this trip.
The first picture shows a mating pair of square-headed wasps (looks like
Ectemnius sp.). Don’t get to see wasps mating too often.
Mating square-headed wasps by
Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr
Next is a great spangled fritillary butterfly (
Speyeria cybele), followed by a kind of flower longhorn beetle (
Trigonarthris sp.).
Great spangled fritillary by
Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr
Flower longhorn beetle by
Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr
Speaking of longhorns, larger species were common up north. Especially the white-spotted sawyer (
Monochamus scutellatus).
white-spotted sawyer by
Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr
Next is an interesting fly. Getting the ID took a while, but this is a Syrphid fly, genus
Chalcosyrphus. The little jumping spider is the bronze jumper,
Eris militaris.
Syrphid fly by
Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr
Bronze jumping spider by
Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr
Bringing up the rear, we visited the Tahquamenon waterfalls, which definitely had a lot of falling water as advertised -- but
look at this cool orbweaver spider! These were quite common along the fern and tree-lined trails to and from the falls. Their large webs were usually not occupied in the day time.
Orbweaver spider by
Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr
More often than not they were in hiding. One had to look in the upper left and right corners of the web for a “sincere” looking rolled up leaf that promised to hide a fat spider. Scissors (which are one of the most useful tools in my kit) were used to expose one while it still hid in its retreat.
Orbweaver spider by
Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr
Orbweaver spider by
Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr
There are several candidate species in the genus
Araneus, and they can be hard to ID since they are quite variable. But because of a slight detail I will hazard the ID to be the cross orbweaver,
A. diadematus.