Baldfaced Hornet - Dolichovespula maculata

In mid-August B went to St. Peter's Abbey in Muenster. I decided to tag along and check for bugs to photograph. As I was wandering around one of the many beautiful gardens I met Jim who was collecting seeds from some of the flowers that had finished blooming. He told me that he had seen some hornets on one of the sunflowers. I checked it out and found these hornets crawling around holes on the stalks. They seemed to like the frothy goo that was oozing out.

Scarab Beetle - Trichiotinus assimilis

At a glance one might think this is some kind of bee. That's what I first thought, but when I photographed it, I saw it was a beetle. I found this one in the flower garden.

Prairie Long-lipped Tiger Beetle - Cicindela nebraskana -

This Tiger Beetle definitely has a fierce look. It somehow ended up in my lap when we were driving around looking for shorebirds in southern Saskatchewan on the May long weekend.

Primitive Minnow Mayfly - Siphlonurus alternatus

This is another Mayfly from last summer.

Mayfly - Callibaetis ferrugineus hageni

I'm fascinated with Mayflies and with the help of some of the experts over at Bugguide I now have a better understanding of them. They pointed me to some excellent resources. Right now I am reading a masters thesis by Jeffrey Michael Webb which can be found on the University of Saskatchewan website.

I would have never guessed that there are 675 known North American species of Mayfly; 321 of these occur in Canada, Saskatchewan having 107 species. The possibility of finding and photographing them seem limitless. It would probably take me 107 years to try and get them all. According to the thesis, Mayflies arose during the Carboniferous and are the oldest order of extant winged insects.

Most of all, I am fascinated by their eyes. I've learned that Callibaetis is one of the more sexually dimorphic species. The photos in this post are of the same species as my last post, but these are males, which have turbinate eyes (raised on a stalk), so they look different.

One of my older posts of a different species of Mayfly show just how different the eyes can be.

Mayfly - Callibaetis ferrugineus hageni

I've been going through my photos from last summer. Here's a Mayfly that I'd found resting on a window screen at work.