Scenes from the Field – July/August 2024

Long-tailed skipper caterpillar (Urbanus proteus)

Viceroy caterpillar (Limenitis archippus)

Banded sphinx (Eumorpha fasciatus) – 3rd instar

Banded sphinx (Eumorpha fasciatus) – 5th instar

Red-headed Willow Leaf Beetle (Chrysomela texana) larvae

Red-headed Willow Leaf Beetle (Chrysomela texana) larvae

Invasive apple snail eggs (Pomacea maculata) – becoming more prevalent around here.

Little yellows puddling on the soil (Pyrisitia lisa)

Trying to keep the sun off me!

I came back from Ecuador this summer with Covid. I pretty much took a test a few minutes after arriving home from the airport, having felt poorly for the several days prior. We’d had field work lined up for the following week after our return for weeks and I knew I would be going out to help as I’d done in years past with this project. It’s an easy vegetation survey, at least easy now that we have a method, but it is a long day walking around the edges of retention ponds trying to gauge and map how vegetation has changed through the years. We’ve previously done these in October or November but the client had us out there in the summer, which I really don’t recommend. It was brutal, especially after being sick and not quite recovered. I would have preferred sitting in the office post-Covid, recuperating and laying in bed mid-day during lunch breaks. It was rough.

That said, being in the field is always an opportunity to find interesting plants and wildlife and that was certainly the case this time around. My first viceroy caterpillar! That was pretty remarkable! I was disappointed to see so many invasive apple snail eggs, though. I smooshed as many as I could but given how limpkins are moving into the state, I’d rather have them eating invasive snails than devouring rare mussels. The banded sphinxes were also really cool, there were quite a few I found. And the bizarre larvae had me perplexed until I put them into iNaturalist. The way they were perched on that stick (and others) to pupate—crazy cool to see!

Now, a lot of these things were seen while tromping around in wetlands, some ickier than others due to stormwater runoff that flows into these ponds. But the fact that life was finding a way…worth it! Though, maybe not worth it with the oppressive heat and post-Covid exertions!