VES News - Fall 2014

VES NEWS
The Newsletter of the Vermont Entomological Society
On the web at www.VermontInsects.org
Number 85
Fall 2014
VES NEWS
Contents
The Newsletter of the
Vermont Entomological Society
VES Officers
Michael Sabourin
Warren Kiel
Trish Hanson
Luke Curtis
Rachael Griggs
Bryan Pfeiffer
President
Vice President
Secretary &
Newsletter
Treasurer
Deputy Secretary
Webmaster
Emeritus Members
Joyce Bell
Ross Bell
John Grehan
Gordon Nielsen
Michael Sabourin
Mark Waskow
The Vermont Entomological Society is
devoted to the study, conservation, and
appreciation of invertebrates. Founded in 1993,
VES sponsors selected research, workshops
and field trips for the public, including children.
Our quarterly newsletter features developments
in entomology, accounts of insect events and
field trips, as well as general contributions from
members or other entomologists.
Number 85  Fall 2014
DEPARTMENTS
Member Profile: Mary Holland
Page 3
Field Notes
 Antlions Trapping Insects
By Mary Holland
Page 4
Feature Articles:
 Bob Spear (1920-2014)
Luke Curtis, VES Treasurer
2177 Ripton Road
Lincoln, VT 05443
Cover Images: Front: Doug Burnham
captured this shot “Moth Meets Bee” that
features a bumblebee and the orange-spotted
pyrausta (Pyrausta orphisalis) sharing a meal in
his backyard in Montpelier on July 27, 2014.
Back: This orb weaver, likely Araneus
marmoratus, was photographed by Lena Curtis
in Sudbury, VT on October 9, 2014.
See this newsletter in living color
on the web at:
www.VermontInsects.org
Page 2
Page 7
Page 8
VES Odds and Ends
Page 9
VES Events
Page 10
VES is open to anyone interested in
arthropods. Our members range from casual
insect watchers to amateur and professional
entomologists. We welcome members of all
ages, abilities and interests.
You can join VES by sending dues of $15 per
year to:
Page 5
By Bryan Pfeiffer
 Prehistoric Leafcutter Bee Pupa
By Chau Tu
 The Quick and the Dead
By Galway Kinnell
Newsletter Schedule
Spring:
Summer:
Fall:
Winter:
Deadline April 7 - Publication May 1
Deadline July 7 - Publication August 1
Deadline October 7 - Publication November 1
Deadline January 7 - Publication February 1
2015 Dues
Check Your Mailing Label
The upper right corner of your mailing label will inform you of the
month and year your VES membership expires. Dues are $15 and
can be sent to our treasurer at
Vermont Entomological Society
c/o Luke Curtis
2177 Ripton Road
Lincoln, VT 05443
Thanks!
VES News - Fall 2014
Member Profile
MARY HOLLAND IS NATURALLY CURIOUS
I have written three children’s books, including
Milkweed Visitors, which introduces young and old
alike to the insects that visit a milkweed patch,
have lived in Vermont on and off since the late
Ferdinand Fox’s First Summer which describes the
‘70’s and there is no question it’s the perfect place learning curve in a red fox’s first few months of life,
for me to spend my life. I originally came to this state and The Beavers’ Busy Year which presents the adaptaas an environmental educator, to direct the Environ- tions of this remarkable rodent. Next is a series of
mental Learning for the Future (ELF) program for the books on animal features, with Animal Eyes due out in
Vermont Institute of
early 2015.
Natural Science,
which I did for eight
My monthly
years. Since then I
Naturally Curious
have designed and
column is pubpresented my own
lished in the Valley
programs, including
News which serves
Knee-high Nature
the Upper Valley. I
Programs for the
am hard at work
very young, on up to
writing and
my “Naturally
photographing my
Curious” program
next adult book,
that is based on the
Naturally Curious
book I wrote,
Day by Day, which
Naturally Curious: A
will present several
Photographic Field
species/topics to
Guide and Month-bylook for each day
Month Journey
of the year.
Mary and Emma, living the good life.
Through the Woods,
Fields and Marshes of
New England, which won the 2011 National Outdoor Every outing is an adventure, and I am very aware of
Book Association award, in the Nature Guidebook
how fortunate I am to be able to pursue my passion
category.
and share it with others.
By Mary Holland
I
My joy is spending time outside familiarizing myself
with seasonal events and changes in the natural
world. I’m thrilled when I see wildlife, but just as
content when I come across animal signs, be they
tracks, scat or signs of feeding. I spend a good portion
of every day discovering things to share on my blog,
www.naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.c
om in which I post a photograph and short essay on
five natural history subjects a week.
VES News - Fall 2014
[Editor’s Note: I encourage you to visit Mary’s blog at
http://naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.com/.
Nature topics are wide-reaching but VES members who
prefer to stick with entomological topics will not be
disappointed. To whet your appetite, I’ve included an
entry about antlions on the following page. The antlions
described were observed by Mary at VES member Joan
Waltermire’s home.]
Page 3
Field Notes
ANTLIONS TRAPPING INSECTS
By Mary Holland
T
he larvae of a predaceous group of winged insects (family Myrmeleontidae) that closely resemble dragonflies and damselflies are referred to as
“antlions” – they have the ferociousness of a lion and
prey mainly on ants. The manner in which an antlion
traps its prey is ingenious. It excavates
a conical pit in sandy
soil (an antlion is
also called a
“doodlebug” because of the squiggly
trails it leaves in the
sand looking for just
the right spot for a
pit). Using its head
as a shovel, it tosses
out sand as it turns
in a circle, digging
deeper and deeper,
until it forms a pit
roughly two inches
deep and three inches wide. The antlion lies at the
bottom of the pit, covered by a thin layer of sand except for it pincer-like mandibles, which are ready to
snatch prey at a second’s notice.
The slope of the sides of the pit is at the angle of repose – as steep as it can be without giving way – so
when an ant accidentally steps over the edge of the
HERE’S A GOOD
pit and falls in, the sand beneath it collapses, carrying
the ant to the bottom of the pit and into the pincers of
the waiting antlion. If the ant tries to scramble up and
out of the pit, the antlion tosses a load of sand at the
ant, knocking it back down. The antlion then injects
venom and digestive fluids into the prey via grooves
in its mandibles, and drinks the innards of the ant
through these same grooves.
The antlion’s anatomy is as unusual
as its method of
capturing prey. It
has a mouth cavity,
but no mouth
opening, and no
external opening
for solid waste.
Because digestion
takes place outside
of its body, the antlion doesn’t accumulate a lot of
waste, but what it
does accumulate
stays inside of it
until the antlion matures into an adult. This can be
anywhere from one to three years, depending on the
species. When fully developed, the antlion constructs
a small, round pupal case out of silk and sand, in
which it overwinters. It emerges from this case the
following spring as a winged adult. (Thanks to Joan
Waltermire and John Douglas for photo op.)
READ!
Take a look at “The Great Giant Flea Hunt” at
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/science/thegreat-giant-flea-hunt.html by Carol Kaesuk Yoon,
which appeared in the NY Times on July 29, 2014.
The flea in question (Hystrichopsylla schefferi) recovered from a mountain beaver by Merrill Peterson and Carol Kaesuk Yoon, can reach nearly half
an inch. Merrill photographed it here, where it
dwarfs a preserved cat flea.
Page 4
VES News - Fall 2014
BOB SPEAR (1920-2014)
A farmer, navy veteran, technical specialist at General
Electric, and a self-educated naturalist, Bob in the
onsider everything you know about the past half 1960s (with the environmental movement on its way)
-century of birdwatching in Vermont. Long be- began to document the status and distribution of Verfore your field guides and checklists, before bird apps mont’s bird species. But Bob did not dwell only in the
and atlases, before nature centers and eBird, before
comfortable landscape of birdwatching. He went on
VINS and VCE, there was Bob Spear.
to establish Vermont’s first Audubon nature center,
Green Mountain Audubon, in Huntington, which he
On the long, green path of Vermont’s conservation
directed for seven years.
movement you will find auAnd in 1969 he published,
thors and intellectuals, farmwith support from the Verers and environmentalists,
mont Department of Fish
men with outsized legacies
and Game, the first of three
that remain with us in the
editions of Birds of Verwild even though the consermont, at the time the most
vationists themselves are
comprehensive account of
now gone: George Perkins
the state’s migrating and
Marsh, Zadock Thompson,
nesting bird species ever
James P. Taylor, and Hub
assembled. My own worn
Vogelmann, to name a few.
copy of Bob’s book laid the
foundation for a similar
Now another great conservabook, Birding in Vermont,
tionist has passed. Bob Spear,
which I co-authored with
bird carver, educator, and
Ted Murin.
soft-spoken field naturalist,
died yesterday, October 19,
Bob went on to establish
2014, in the company of his
the Birds of Vermont Mufriends, family and, although
seum in Huntington, which
we weren’t there with him,
to this day delights and
the community of people
educates accomplished and
whose lives he touched and changed.
novice birdwatchers from around the world. The
word unique is too often overused and misappropriRarely do we think of artists as conservationists. But ated in writing and in conversation, yet Bob’s museas sure as John James Audubon and Roger Tory Peum is unique – a tribute in wood to the vibrance of
terson could paint, so too could they be anointed con- birds.
servationists. Without them we would not know what
flies across our paths. And we cannot protect that
With elegance, care and attention to detail, Bob prewhich we cannot name and understand. Bob walks
sents Vermont’s nesting species in their natural habiamong them.
tats. You want to know where a Nashville Warbler
nests? Find it in Bob’s diorama featuring the warbler
Bob’s life of art and nature began during the Great
and an actual nest he collected from a bog mat in VerDepression when a stray parakeet flew into the family mont. Want to learn other warblers? Bob carved them
shed in Colchester. That odd encounter helped spark all and built an automated “Lazy Susan” on which
in Bob, at age 18, a passion for coaxing vivid birds
they spin while you stand back and watch through
from blocks of wood.
By Bryan Pfeiffer
C
(Continued on page 6)
VES News - Fall 2014
Page 5
BOB SPEAR (Continued from page 5)
Bob did find his replacement. Well, actually, he found
replacements. No one person can replace this guy.
The Birds of Vermont Museum now features the
work Ingrid Rhind, a carver Bob trained, as well
as other carvings from Dick Allen. The museum
marches forward under the wise leadership of ExecuThe museum’s bird-feeding station, with microtive Director Erin Talmage, who has guided the
phones bringing bird sounds indoors, is arguably the place through many challenges. Along with Erin is
best view of feeding birds I have seen on the planet.
her talented staff and an active board of directors inOn one blustery spring day a long time ago, I guided cluding Bob’s daughter, Kari Jo, and President Shirley
a group of blind and visually impaired Vermonters
Johnson.
on a birding trip at the museum and its preserve.
From behind the huge plate-glass window these folks In an interview nearly a year ago for a newspaper arcould see and hear and sense the birds outside. There ticle about his life and work, Bob, at age 93, examong us, Bob enjoyed the people as much as he did pressed the desire to keep carving even as he lacked
his birds.
the dexterity he once
had to replicate
What you need to
beaks and talons
know about the Birds
and feathers.
of Vermont Museum
is what you need to
“I started in the
know about Bob: Eve1930s when a pararything there is prekeet flew into the
sented with care and
woodshed on our
quality, even the
farm in Colchester,”
hawks in flight hanghe said. “I still have
ing from the ceiling
more birds to
over your head. This
carve.”
was no easy task. A
museum of bird carvNo you don’t, Bob.
ings on a small preNot then. Not now.
serve demands conYour work is done.
stant attention, marYour life is comketing, money, sweat and, most of all, love. Bob loved plete. In our own lives, the rest of us should achieve
birds. He loved life. He loved his partner in life and
as much.
nature, Gale Lawrence. And he loved the museum.
[Editor’s note: Bryan posted this tribute to Bob on
his blog on October 20th and graciously allowed me
Late in his life, and too early in mine, as we walked
one day in the woods around his home, where he still to include it in this issue of VES News. If you’d like
to read more about Bob, visit the Birds of Vermont
split firewood into his 80s, Bob worried about the
museum’s future. Who would inspire others to watch Museum’s web site, go to VTdigger and open an article by Candace Page, or see Kari Jo Spear’s rememand listen to birds here in Huntington and beyond?
He asked whether I myself would move to Hunting- brance of her father in the Burlington Free Press at
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/life/greenton to run the place. Few other times have I felt so
mountain/2014/10/29/bob-spear-bird-carvershonored and humbled. But it wasn’t to be. Perhaps
that was a mistake on my part – but not as much of a daughter/18114769/. A VES member profile of Bob can
be found in the Summer 2012 issue of our newsletter.]
mistake as my not visiting more with Bob in recent
years.
binoculars to learn the field marks of the birds in motion. Bob even carved a display of rare, endangered
and extinct birds. Oh, he also carved a Canadian
Tiger Swallowtail butterfly.
Page 6
VES News - Fall 2014
PREHISTORIC LEAFCUTTER BEE PUPA
Using micro CT scans to analyze the anatomy of the pupae and the construction of the nest cells—which leafcutos Angeles’ La Brea Tar Pits are probably best known ter bees build from plant material—Holden and her team
for their collection of large fossils of saber-toothed
identified the species as M. gentilis, which still exists tocats, dire wolves, and Columbian mammoths. But lately, day, says Harris. The picture above shows CT scans of the
scientists have been focusing on the area’s microfossils (a male pupa.
loose term to describe the remains of organisms including
“Different species of leafcutter bees construct their nest
insects, birds, and mollusks that are best studied and
cells in different ways—some of them have sort of roundidentified with a microscope). Turns out, these smaller
ed ends, some have
specimens can reflat ends,” Harris
veal a wealth of
explains. “They use
information about
different shapes of
prehistoric climate
leaves and they
and habitats.
construct in differA prime example
ent fashions, so it
entails two fossilshould be possible
ized insect pupae
to tell the species
from a species of
apart just by lookleafcutter bee
ing at their nests.”
called Megachile
These particular
gentilis. The specifossilized nest cells
mens are about
were constructed
35,000 years old
from the leaves of
and signify the first
at least four differrecord of this parent types of woody
ticular species from
Micro CT scans of (A) a dorsal view of a male leafcutter bee pupa within its trees, shrubs, or
the Pleistocene
nest cell, and (B) a dorsal view of the pupa. Images by Justin Hall, Dinosaur
vines, indicating that
Epoch, according to
Hall, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
the habitat at the
John Harris, chief
time
was
either
woodland
or
riparian.
This observation,
curator of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles
along with what we know about the modern distribution
County and the Page Museum at La Brea Tar Pits.
of M. gentilis, suggests that the climate at the tar pits was
Scientists first discovered the fossils as one intact specicooler and more humid than its current arid and dry state,
men in 1970, about 200 centimeters deep in a fossil deposit according to Harris.
called Pit 91, says Harris. They thought it was a fossil bud
and added it to the collection at the Page Museum. “And Microfossils like these provide better hints about the prehistoric environment than fossils of larger species because
nobody thought much more about it until about a year
ago, when we had a young researcher [Anna R. Holden] those bigger animals traveled farther distances and might
have simply died near the tar pits, whereas organisms
who was interested in fossil insects,” Harris says.
“Looking through the collection, she came across this par- such as insects, rodents, and snails mostly likely spent
their whole lives in the vicinity, says Harris.
ticular specimen and realized it wasn’t a bud or a gall.”
By Chau Tu
L
In fact, the “bud” turned out to be two very well preserved structures called nest cells, each containing a leafcutter bee pupa—one male, one female. (Leafcutter bees
lay a single egg in a nest cell, which develops into a larva
and finally an adult bee that chews its way out.) So far,
these are the only fossilized leafcutter bee pupae that have
been recovered in a three-dimensional state and not
squashed flat like most fossils of soft-bodied animals, according to Harris.
VES News - Fall 2014
The excavations of microfossils from Pit 91 alone have
doubled the number of species identified in the Tar Pits so
far, from 300 to more than 600. Harris estimates that it
could take another decade before the pit is fully excavated, alongside some 16 other fossil deposits newly recovered in the area.
(To read more, see September Science Friday.)
Page 7
The Quick and the Dead
By Galway Kinnell
At the hayfield's edge, a few stalks
of grass are twitching; I bend close
and find the plump body of the vole.
He's dead, I lobbed him there myself,
after snapping him in a mousetrap to halt
his forays through the flower beds. Yet now
he lives: he jerks, he heaves, he shudders,
as if the process of decomposition
had quickened in him and turned violent,
or he were struggling with something
blocking an attempt at resurrection-or could it be that something
unimaginable happens, something
worse than death, after death.
I prog him, tilt him, peer under him
and see: he's being buried, by beetles-bright-yellow or red chevrons
laid across their black wings-carrion beetles, sexton beetles,
corpse-eating buriers who delve
and undergrub him, howking out
the trench his sausagey form settles into.
Now a beetle moils across him,
spewing at both ends, drooking him
in chemical juices. The reek of him
is heavy, swampy, surely savory,
luring from afar not only beetles
but those freeloaders of the afterlife
the midden flies, who arrive
and drop their eggs in, too,
before the covering of the grave.
Scummaging down into an ever
more formfitting last resting place,
the vole by now has dwelt almost
a full day in death, and yet somehow he's
still looking good. His gape drawn back,
he bares his teeth: uppers
stubby and old-folks yellow, lowers
an inch long, curled inward, like uppers
of beavers if forced to subsist on soft food.
At the last day, when souls go back
to their graves and resume the form
and flesh once theirs, this one
could jump and jig, as if simply
risen from a good night's dead sloom.
The flies' eggs hatch, the larvae squirm
in and out of the eyeholes; in and out
of the ears; in and out of the snout,
which slorped too often the airy auras
of our garden flowers; in and out of the mouth,
which, even cluttered with bent choppers,
snipped flowers and dragged the blossoms
stem first through gaps in the stone wall-all but the peony blossom, which stuck
and stoppered the hole for a week
like a great gorgeous cork; and in and out
of the anus, like revenant turds,
that go in to practice going out.
The last half of the vole's tail
still sticks out, as if it might be left
that way, like a stalk of grass, to make
the site look natural. At the grave's edge
a cricket stands in glittering black,
ogling it all. Shocking to find
this hearth critter here, like a Yankee
town father spectating at a cross burning.
A larger beetle, the pronotum behind
her head brilliant red, noggles
into view; pushing the grass down
on either side she plouters
without pause past the tobacco-ish
teeth and down into the underroom
of the self-digesting birth banquet,
to deposit her eggs, to wait, and then
to peel tidbits from the carcass and feed
her hatchlings mouth to mouth, like a bird.
Soon this small plot will be unfindable:
every blade of grass will look
like a vole's tail, every smither
of ungrassed earth like burial ground,
day won't feel exactly like day, nor night
like night, and in the true night,
when we have our other, more lunatic day,
I may hear in the dunch of blood
a distant, comforting, steady shovelling
but I will know--when a human body
is drained of its broths and filled
again with formaldehyde and salts,
or unguents and aromatic oils, and pranked
up in its holiday best and laid out
in a satin-lined airtight stainless-steel
coffin and stowed in a leakproof concrete vault-I will know that if no fellow-creatures
can pray their way in to do the underdigging
(Continued on page 9)
Page 8
VES News - Fall 2014
(Continued from page 8)
and jiggling and earthing over and mating
and egg laying and birthing forth,
then the most that can come to pass
will be a centuries-long withering
down to a gowpen of dead dust, and not ever
the crawling of new life out of the old,
which is what we have for eternity on earth.
[Editor’s note: Vermont poet Galway Kinnell died October
28th at age 87 in his home in Sheffield, Vt. Years ago, he
contacted me for information about carrion beetles and I
was surprised, some time later, when he sent me a copy of
this poem as it appeared in the December 25, 2000 issue of
The New Yorker. Sadly, my signed copy was destroyed
during flooding by Irene. I was grateful to find a copy of
“The Quick and the Dead” online at pinecam.com.]
--Galway Kinnell
VES Odds and Ends
The Ground Beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) Fauna of
Maine, USA by Richard G. Dearborn, Robert E. Nelson,
Charlene Donahue, Ross T. Bell and Reginald P. Webster,
has been published and is available in The Coleopterists
Bulletin 68(3):441-599. 2014. According to the abstract, “A
survey of the modern carabid fauna of Maine has shown
that the fauna consists of 425 documented species, 14
more than previously documented for the Maine fauna in
the latest catalog for the family in North America or in the
most recent checklist on the state beetle fauna… Notes on
biology are presented for species for which that knowledge exists. Distributions are presented for all taxa based
on standard biophysical regions for the state and the
knowledge of those distributions; distribution maps are
presented for all species for which township records are
known and for which we have specimen records in our
database. Congratulations to the authors on completion of
this important contribution!
VES member Betty Gilbert has drawn my attention to
some interesting research in the Animal Behavior section
of Science (Vol. 345 no. 6197 pp. 609-610; 8 August 2014).
The article, by Elizabeth Pennisi, is entitled “In the battle
for fitness, being smart doesn’t always pay.” Here’s a
summary: “Having a good memory and being able to
solve problems would seem to offer great fitness advantages to animals as well as people. But if having high
cognitive ability is so great, why are some animals not as
smart as their peers? To find out, researchers are analyzing individual animals from bees to birds in their natural
settings. At the 2014 International Society for Behavioral
Ecology conference in New York City, researchers described how they are coming to understand that there are
different ways for animals to be “smart,” and why variation in cognitive abilities persists in populations. These
studies are in their infancy, but new technology is making
it easier to move lab-based work into the field.”
VES member Stacey Thalden’s 2015 Intersectus Design
Calendar: The Nature of Art is now available for preorder. Celebrate nature with vivid full-color insect artwork by Stacey (Zebith) Thalden. Each month you can
enjoy a different painting, illustration, or photograph that
presents the remarkable patterns, colors, and textures
found in the incredible world of insects! Visit the Intersectus Design Etsy shop to order:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/IntersectusDesign
Dedicated to VES member Nona Estrin is a new book by
former Vermont State Naturalist, Charles W. Johnson. Ice
Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram, is the
“life story of the most innovative and famous polar ship
of all time, the Norwegian vessel Fram, involving three
extensive expeditions, two Arctic and one Antarctic, in
the late 1800s and early 1900s.” Other familiar titles by
Charles include The Nature of Vermont: Introduction and
Guide to a New England Environment, Bogs of the Northeast,
In Season: A Natural History of the New England
Free Entomological Literature. A large amount of dupli- Year (with Nona Estrin), and Vermont Life Guide to Fall Folicate entomological literature is in storage at the National age: Leaves and Landscapes of a Northern Autumn (with Gale
Lawrence). For more information , visit
Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution. This literature is available free of charge to research- http://www.charles-johnson.com/
ers visiting the Museum or by mail upon request. To see
VES Member Bill Boccio will have a photo exhibit at the
what is available, visit this link:
Essex Junction Senior Center on November 15, 3-5 pm.
http://entomology.si.edu/documents/FreeEntLit.pdf
VES News - Fall 2014
Page 9
VES EVENTS
V
On June 21st, Laurie DiCesare headed up a trip to Lake
Arrowhead in Milton. She wrote, “ We had a good time
on the canoe / kayak trip at Lake Arrowhead on Saturday. Five people attended, the Lindheim family of four
from Barre, and a gentleman from Milton. The weather
was a bit windy so there weren’t many dragonflies out,
but we saw a lot of turtles and had a couple of very close
fly-bys from Great Blue herons. I stayed on and paddled
back to the cove where I saw many bluets doing ‘the
wheel.’ I also saw an Eastern Kingbird that let me paddle
within a few yards, then turned to face me for the portrait.”
Bryan Pfeiffer
ES members took part in several events this field
season, starting with the Black Fly Festival in Adamant on May 31. Thanks for representing VES, Susan,
Michael and Maggie!
Pair of northern bluets, Enallagma annexum.
Anthony Pauly and Laurie DiCesare walked the Gilbrook Reservoir
on July 19. Over 20
species of odonates
have been found at
the site. Laurie and
Bill Boccio observed a giant
swallowtail at this
location on August
28.
(Continued on page 11)
Page 10
VES News - Fall 2014
Bill Boccio
Our Annual Butterfly Walk at the Birds of Vermont Museum in Huntington on July 6th was well-attended and
was especially meaningful since it was Bob Spear’s last
time to join VES members in this favorite get-together.
VES Events (cont’.)
Michael Sabourin, Laurie DiCesare and Mary Metcalf
attended the VES Buckner Preserve Walk in West HaDon Miller led us on a fascinating visit to the Ethan Allen ven on August 24. The weather was very hot (80– 85 deHomestead in Burlington, VT on August 9th. A highlight grees). Right away we saw and photographed several
for all of us was observing oodles of the tiger beetle Cicin- giant swallowtails. After about an hour, Laurie had to
dela repanda at what Don referred to as “Repanda Beach” duck into the shade, rested on a log, and tanked up on
on Winooski River.
water and a candy bar. Soon after emerging from the
woods, she found a teneral cicada.
(Continued from page 10)
Cicindela repanda is commonly known as the Bronzed
Tiger Beetle or Common Shore Tiger Beetle
Mike Deep
Laurie DiCesare , with input from Don Miller, Mike Sabourin, Mary Burnham, Doug Burnham, Trish Hanson,
Luke Curtis and Maureen Cannon, compiled a species
list during the trip. If you’d like to see a copy, let Laurie,
Don or Trish know.
Newly-eclosed dog-day cicada, Tibicen canicularis.
Only a few dragonflies (mostly Common Whitetail) were
found patrolling the first pond. We also visited the roadside wetland beyond Tim's Trail, but found very few
odes. Maybe August 24 is a bit too late in the season for
dragonflies. Our trip with Michael Blust on May 29 of
2010 yielded 21 species. In the future, we may consider
visiting the site in late May, June or July. For a complete
list of species observed, contact Laurie or Trish.
VES members enjoying a great field trip led by Don Miller
at the Ethan Allen Homestead
VES News - Fall 2014
A big THANK YOU to all who contributed to
the fund for the FLETCHER FAMILY. As of October 23, a total of $1,200 was raised. It
wouldn’t have happened without the support of
VES members!
Page 11
Tentatively identified as the Marbled Orb-weaver, Araneus marmoratus
Lena Curtis
Vermont Entomological Society
c/o Luke Curtis
2177 Ripton Road
Lincoln, VT 05443