Ornate Checkered Beetle

Check out this cool beetle, Trichoda ornatus! The genus name Trichoda comes from Greek word trichos meaning hair which refers to the stiff hairs called setae that cover its body. As these hairs brush up against flower stamens as the beetle crawls around on a flower, they naturally collect pollen making this beetle a good pollinator. The species name ornatus comes from Latin and means decorated or adorned. The elytra are the hardened, modified forewings of beetles and in this case they are decorated with a mottled yellow and bluish-black pattern that is very striking.

The adult beetles are out in spring and summer looking to mate and continue the lifecycle. The mated female will lay an egg in a flower head near the center. When the egg hatches, the larva will attach itself to the leg of a Hymenoptera which is usually a leaf cutter bee or a potter wasp. The larva is transported back to the nest where it will detach into a cell created by the host for its offspring. From here it will develop by eating the food stored for the host larva and it will also consume the host larva. Depending on the size of the host larvae, the beetle larva may need to move into adjacent host larvae cells and will consume between 1 and 8 host larvae as it develops. The beetle larva will enter the pupal stage, overwinter, and emerge as an adult in the spring.

The ornate checkered beetles are found on flowers as they forage on pollen. The adults will also eat other insects like bees, flies and wasps that they encounter on the flower. I found them on the rosy plectritus in the wildflower garden in front of the pavilion and on the yellow cinquefoil in the south meadow.

Researching the life of this beetle was fascinating! It reminded me that there are millions of unseen forces that are part of the fabric of life shaping the world in which we live giving it endless wonder and beauty.

Resources

iNatrualist: https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/89030-pollinator-of-the-month-ornate-checkered-beetle-trichoda-ornatus

Ornate Checkered Beetles Eat Bees and Pollen | Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine | University of Colorado Boulder. https://www.colorado.edu/asmagazine/2018/06/28/ornate-checkered-beetles-eat-bees-and-pollen. Accessed 17 June 2026.

“Trichodes Ornatus (Ornate Checkered Beetle).” 10,000 Things of the Pacific Northwest, 25 June 2021, http://10000thingsofthepnw.com/2021/06/24/trichodes-ornatus-ornate-checkered-beetle/.

Mosquitoes

As all of us have experienced, mosquitoes can drive you crazy while you are trying to sleep or enjoy a hike and their bites are itchy. I know that it is difficult to recognize that mosquitoes are a valuable food source in a diverse, healthy, thriving ecosystem. During their aquatic life cycle they provide food for animals such as fish and macro invertebrates like dragonfly nymphs. As adults, mosquitoes are food for animals such as bats, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects and spiders.

The female bites mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians in order to obtain the blood she needs to produce her eggs. She lays her eggs on the water or along the perimeter of wetlands or moist, swampy areas. The egg, larva, and pupal stages are aquatic and so water is essential to a mosquito’s life cycle. Depending on the species, females deposit their eggs singly or in clusters called rafts. The male adult mosquito doesn’t bite. It lacks the mouthparts needed to pierce the skin.

Interestingly, both male and female mosquitoes feed mainly on nectar and other carbohydrates like fruit juices. I wondered if mosquitoes pollinated flowers. According to a page on the US Forest Service website, they do! Here’s an excerpt from that page: “In 1913, it was first determined that mosquitoes are pollinators too! In the early 1970s, scientists determined that the Aedes communis was an important pollinator of Platanthera obtusata, the blunt-leaf orchid. In fact, many mosquitoes around the world pollinate small flowers that live in wetter environments.

This snowpool mosquito eats the nectar from the floral spur of the Platanthera obtusata, during which time its eye naturally comes into contact with the pollinium, a cluster of pollen. The pollinium sticks to the mosquito's eye even when it flies away. Thus, when it eats from another flower, the pollinium touches the stigma of that flower, and the flower is pollinated!” With all of the aphids I see on the leaves of oak trees at the moment, I imagine mosquitoes are drawn to the sugary secretions of aphids as a food source as well.

While recognizing their role in the environment, I also want to acknowledge that in many parts of the world mosquitoes are a serious issue. They transmit many viruses and parasites that cause terrible diseases that lead to much suffering and death. In the United States, West Nile virus, for example, is transmitted by mosquitos and is a growing health concern for humans and for birds. It is highly lethal to crows and other corvids like jays. To say the least, our relationship and history with mosquitoes is complex and I hope that someday it will find its way to a being in balance.

I hope this post inspired you to learn more about mosquitoes. Nature is an exhaustible source of wonder and mystery. I hope to see you out there!

Resources
Falkner, Mirna. “Mosquito Facts - 29 Things You Didn’t Know about Mosquitoes.” Www.cumberlandcountynj.gov, www.cumberlandcountynj.gov/mosquito-29.

Kachur, Torah. “New Study Finds Mosquitoes Don’t Just Lay Eggs in Standing Water.” CBC, 13 Apr. 2017, www.cbc.ca/news/science/mosquito-eggs-water-1.4069272.

“Mosquito Biology | Cape May County, NJ - Official Website.” Capemaycountynj.gov, capemaycountynj.gov/489/Mosquito-Biology.

Rafferty, John P. “What Purposes Do Mosquitoes Serve in Ecosystems? | Britannica.” Www.britannica.com, 3 Mar. 2022, www.britannica.com/story/what-purposes-do-mosquitoes-serve-in-ecosystems.

Statman-Weil, Zoe. “Aedes Communis: The Pollinating Mosquito.” Www.fs.usda.gov, www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/pollinators/pollinator-of-the-month/aedes_communis.shtml.

Black Fly Larvae

There is a small creek that flows down the hillside at the entrance to the arboretum. The creek’s source of water is rain. So it starts flowing in the fall when the rain returns and stops flowing sometime in June when the rain mostly dries up for the summer.

Below the bridge next to the White Oak Pavilion, there is a small rocky bed where black fly larvae are attached to some of the rocks. Its body is shaped like a bowling pin. The bulbous part of its abdomen is attached to the rock. Moving upward, its body tapers in a little before slightly expanding outward to its black head.

To adhere to a rock, stick or other debris, they weave a silken pad and use small hooks located on their abdomen to hold onto it. They will position themselves in the current where they can capture food from the water flowing over their bodies. They use comb-like structures near their mouth that look like eyelashes to filter out microscopic food like algae and bacteria.

Like all organisms on the earth, they have evolved to have a role in the well-being of the environment where they live. They contribute to the health of the ecology of the stream by filtering algae and bacteria out of the water for food which provides the benefit of improving water quality. In addition, black flies are an important food source for fish such as trout. In the last source listed below, the Angler’s Covey website has a Bug of the Month fly tying video by Brian Hilbert at the end of the article. Trout will eat the larvae and the emerging adults floating to the surface. Dragonflies, birds and amphibians will forage on the adult flies. I have often seen American dippers gleaning the rocks in the current of a stream and I now wonder if they were eating black fly larvae.

I tilted one on the rocks a little to try and get a better photo and their bodies quickly contracted and hugged the face of the rock for protection. Seeing that wasn’t going to work, I returned the rock, but the larvae were a little out of the flowing water. As I watched, some of them starting moving back over into the current. They grabbed onto the rock with their mouths, detached their abdomen, moved it over, and then reattached. They repeated this until they were back in a suitable spot.

Some of them were disturbed enough that they detached. They are able to move downstream on a silken thread and reattach in another location by weaving another pad. The silk is thin like a spider silk and mostly undetectable in the water. I managed to get my camera at an angle where I could catch the sunlight on the thread. I pointed it out with a red arrow in a photo below.

After reading about the life cycle of black flies, I went back to try and find the pupae or emerging adults. I found the pupae on the underside of the rock. The pupae were inside these cocoons that were open on one side. A branched respiratory organ that looked like root hairs waving around in the water extended outward on one side. To adapt to the fluctuations in the water level, the pupae are miraculously able to obtain oxygen in or out of the water. I was unable to locate any newly emerged adults on the rocks or vegetation next to the creek. I’ll keep checking and let you know if I find any.

Thanks for reading my blog. I recommend reading some of the articles listed below for more information. Spring is exploding with life and I hope you are able to get out and do some exploring.

Sources
“Black Fly (Family Simuliidae).” Field Station, 3 Apr. 2012, https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/black-fly/.

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Black Fly Biology. https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dep/programs-and-services/bureau-of-labs/vector-management/black-fly/biology. Accessed 13 Apr. 2026.

Leinweber, Rachel. “Bug of the Month: The Often Ignored Blackfly Larvae.” Angler’s Covey, 14 Feb. 2024, https://anglerscovey.com/2024/02/14/bug-of-the-month-all-about-blackfly-larvae/.

Fimbriate Gall Forming

I’m back with an update on the fimbriate gall wasp. The leaves are emerging and there are fuzzy, bright crimson galls starting to form! I love the vibrant red color and as posted before, I want to add my own common name crimson comet gall for this gall.

There is an unimaginable amount of life unfolding around me that it is dizzying to think about. An event, such as the laying of eggs by these gall wasps, has a tiny window in which to witness it. On top of that, the wasps are tiny and easily overlooked too. Observing nature is a mix of things. Sometimes it involves researching what I am interested in seeing and being informed so that I set myself up to be successful by being at the right place at the right time. Most times it is about being curious, staying tuned into my awareness of all my senses, and trying to quiet my mind.

In the poem Sometimes by Mary Oliver, she wrote:
“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”

So here I am trying to pay attention, be astonished, and tell you about it in my blog in hopes that you will be inspired to spend time wandering around outside exploring nature. Thanks for checking out my blog. I hope that you are enjoying spring. See you out there!

P.S. The last photo below shows an old leaf from last year that is still hanging on and it looks like it had a fimbriate gall on it.

Gall Wasp Laying Egg

The leaves and the male catkins have been bursting out of their buds over the past week. I have been out exploring the oak limbs and admiring the beauty of the rose-colored tips of the new leaves. I found a tree where the buds were just about to open and discovered a small insect clinging to many of them. It appeared that it was injecting its ovipositor into the bud to lay eggs. I was so excited to find these, and I immediately wondered if it was a gall wasp. My guess is that it is possibly the fimbriate gall wasp (Blog Post: Fimbriate Gall Wasp, May 1, 2024). To find out, I went and fetched a couple of pieces of twine and tied them to 4 or 5 places where the insects were laying their eggs. When the leaves emerge, I will see if a gall is forming. I’ll keep you posted on what I discover.

As the days grow longer, I hope that you are finding time to be out in nature immersing all of your senses in the spring weather, wild flowers, hatching insects, bird song, etc. Nature is an inexhaustible source of wonder. I’ll see you out there.

Humble Bumble House

The weather has been very springy out this week with unseasonably warm temperatures and sunny skies. The flowers are starting to bloom and bumble bee queens have awoken from their long winter’s nap. I have seen them nectaring on red-flowering currant, hound’s tongue, and Oregon grape. To seize the day, I made a small bumble bee house to hopefully attract a queen to build a hive.

I cleared a small bit of ground and put some sticks down to form a base. Then I put a flat rock on top of that to act as a platform for a mouse nest. This will hopefully keep it off the ground to help it stay dry. Bumble bees are attracted to the scent of old rodent nests to start new colonies in the spring. The rodent burrow provides a dry cavity and the old nest provides insulation to help the queen keep the new hive warm. I put a flower pot on top to act as the cavity. I added some some rocks on top to slightly elevate the lid so the drain hole in the bottom of the flower pot can allow for some ventilation. I created a small entrance with a few branches and put some rocks in between as a porch for bees to land on. I covered the pot with leaves and put some old pieces of wood in the front as a small roof for the entrance.

The life of a bumble bee colony is an annual cycle. It starts off in the spring when the overwintering queen emerges. She will start the nest by building small wax cells to lay her eggs which will be female worker bees. When these bees hatch, they will start helping to build the nest and forage for nectar and pollen for the developing larvae. At this point the queen will stay in the hive and focus on laying eggs. Depending on the species and the availability of forage in the environment, the nest will grow over the summer to be about the size of a small football and contain 50 to 400 or 500 bees. In the late summer, the queen will lay eggs that develop into males and new queens. The males and new queens will leave the colony in search of mates from other colonies. The males don’t return to the nest at this point and you might see them spending the night on plants. The new queens will continue to return to the colony until it is time to search for places to hibernate at the end of the summer. The old queen, the female workers, and the male bees will all die at the end of the season. Next spring the cycle starts over again.

The bumble bee nest is not as orderly as that of the honey bee with its honeycomb of hexagonal cells. Bumble bees make clusters of spherical cells for raising brood and storing small amounts of honey. Over the summer as the colony grows, the nest develops into this fascinating conglomeration of cells. Hopefully a queen bumble bee will find my flower pot and find it an enticing place to start a new colony.

Source
“Bumble Bees: Nesting and Overwintering | Xerces Society.” Xerces.org, xerces.org/bumble-bees/nesting-overwintering.

“Bumblebee Nests.” Bumblebee Conservation Trust, https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/learn-about-bumblebees/beginners/bumblebee-nests/. Accessed 18 Mar. 2026.

Xanthorhoe

This day I had noticed small debris drifting through the air. Chickadees and jays were poking around the upper canopy of the trees dislodging bits of leaves, lichen and moss as they looked for food. This fragment was different. It danced across the sky above me. It fluttered up and down. There was the slightest movement of air that I only noticed as I stood still, which I often do. This papery snippet seemed lighter than air. It floated. I watched it gracefully tumble down in front of me. It landed. I briefly lost it, like it had been absorbed into earth. I walked over and slowly kneeled on the ground where it landed. A creature was resting. Small waves washed over its body—brown bands of sediments settled on a sandy shore as the water slowly receded after a rain. These undulations reminded me of the elements of the earth that are pulsing through its body the same as mine. We are alive together in this moment. We sat quietly observing the world.