Friday, July 27, 2012

So she's actually orange and green

I went out to the linden tree again, this time with a butterfly net. And after a few catches and immediate escapes, I finally managed to transfer one of those orange beasties to a container.

Those guys are fast!

Some kind of wasp; narrow waist, ovipositor, long antennae. Crawling up the wall of the container. A second or two later, she* was gone.

I love those stained-glass wings!

I've searched through BugGuide's orange wasps, without finding a match. So I'll crop this and a few others (belly, wing venation, etc.) and send them off for an ID.

And then I'll post my linden tree residents inventory; lots of critters coming up!

*She, because she has the ovipositor for laying eggs.

5 comments:

  1. I can tell you that she's at least a braconid (Braconidae). The antenna without an elbow in them, plus the arrangement of veins in the wings, indicate that. Beyond that, you're on your own, and there's only about 50,000 species of Braconidae to flick through.

    ReplyDelete
  2. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2018783244_moths27m.html


    Love your bug explorations
    I saw this in todays Seattle Times and thought of you. In the article there is a link through to the new on-line guide to PNW moths

    ReplyDelete
  3. Theronia hilaris ... I think. You may want to look into it further.

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a glorious beastie this is!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi, Christopher; Thanks. That's a step farther along than I had got on my own, wading through hundreds of "orange wasps".

    Kate; getting there. Bob Carlson at BugGuide identified it as Theronia atalantae fulvescens.

    Upupaepops, thanks for the link. I'll be using that guide.

    Sarah, glorious is the word!

    ReplyDelete

I'm having to moderate all comments because Blogger seems to have a problem notifying me. Sorry about that. I will review them several times daily, though, until this issue is fixed.

Also, I have word verification on, because I found out that not only do I get spam without it, but it gets passed on to anyone commenting in that thread. Not cool!

Powered By Blogger