opihiman's Favorites

We were visiting my wife's mother, borrowing her neighbors' swimming pool for our kids. I looked in the pool filters and noticed that they were trapping lots of small frogs and toads, so began a daily ritual of checking the filters and freeing any that were still alive. I did not keep count of how many I rescued, but Narrow-mouthed was by far the most common, I rescued at least a dozen live ones (and fished out a few that had died) over 6 days' time. This photo shows my single biggest rescue haul, all from a single check of the pool filters...

This photo has languished for years in the "unidentified bees" folder of my photo library. I never noticed its spectacular legs until today! Identified in the BugGuide discussion group on FaceBook by Jeremy Day, John Maxwell, and Doug Yanega.

Second state record! Preceded only by Deb Kral's find in the southern Berkshires a couple of years earlier. Was just barely alive when found, lying on the road; I picked it up and it died before we got home. Specimen is now, I think, in the possession of the MA NHESP (?).

These moths were performing a bizarre whirling display, have never seen anything like it before or since. Video of the display can be viewed on FaceBook at

https://www.facebook.com/opihi/videos/2240173849593/

Have not seen another one since, but haven't looked very hard, especially since searching involves some disturbance to their habitat. The area was impacted heavily a few years ago when a dam was removed about a half-mile upstream, the entire area was flooded with silt and sand that had accumulated above the dam over the decades. The sediment has since been washed away, but possible that the event wiped out populations of several stream-dwelling creatures...

Found on the snow. I had been having discussions with people in the FaceBook group "Insects and Spiders of New England" about how all snow fleas are springtails, but not all springtails are snow fleas, so finding this critter in the snow was great for elucidating that point.