AN AFTERNOON OF INSECTS

     One warm, lovely afternoon in August of this year in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland, I saw several kinds of insects, most notably several digger wasps, a milkweed tiger moth caterpillar and a white-marked tussock moth caterpillar.  

     The digger wasps were flying from one mint plant to another in a lovely patch of mint plants along a country road, and crawling over tiny, attractive pale-lavender mint flowers to sip their sugary nectar.  The mint plants were over a foot tall, fragrant as mints should be and had an abundance of blossoms.  

     Living across the United States, digger wasps have three-quarter inch bodies and one-inch wing spans.  And they are handsome in their variety of colors.  Their heads, thoraxes, wings and the front half of their abdomens are black.  The back half of their abdomens is orange with two yellow spots.  

     Female digger wasps dig into soil to find June beetle grubs.  Each female stings every beetle larva she finds to paralyze it.  Then she lays an egg on the still-living, but paralyzed grub.  The young wasp larva ingests the beetle grub, spins a cocoon in soil and winters in it.  Next summer it emerges from the soil as an adult wasp, ready to fly, sip flower nectar and mate.  

     The attractive digger wasps visit a variety of flowers to drink their nectar.  I have enjoyed seeing these insects on pretty blooms in sunny meadows, lawns, roadsides and flower gardens.

     On that same afternoon, I saw a beautiful milkweed tiger moth caterpillar munching on a common milkweed leaf in an overgrown pasture.  It was a hairy larvae from head to "tail", with a variety of hair colors, making it outstanding and attractive.  

     That lovely caterpillar had tufts of long, black hairs in front, rear and along its sides.  A tuft of long, white hairs adorned each "corner" of the one and a half-inch larva.  And several tufts of shorter, orange "fur" covered the top of it.  All that hair serves to repel birds who might eat them.  

     Adult milkweed tiger moths have plain, light-gray wings and yellow abdomens with black dots.  And they have a one and a half-inch wing span.  They are less striking to see than their caterpillars.  

     I also saw a lovely white-marked tussock moth caterpillar, which was equally as lovely as the milkweed tiger moth larva.  Tussock caterpillars have clumps of long, white hair along each flank, and four patches of short, white hairs on top of their front halves.  They have long, black hair in front and rear, and a red spot on top of their heads.    

     Tussock larvae eat the foliage of several kinds of trees and shrubs in woods, and overgrown meadows.  But these caterpillars are seldom seen because they live among dense foliage.    

     Adult tussock moths have mottled-gray upper wings that camouflage them on tree trunks and limbs.  They, too, are seldom seen.  

     Both those kinds of moths inhabit the eastern United States.  The milkweed moths live in sunny areas, but the tussock moths dwell in deciduous and mixed woods.  

     I was thrilled to experience those kinds of insects, and others, on that August afternoon.  They are all attractive, and have intriguing life histories, as all living beings do.  

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