First post from AZ

I'm ashamed it has taken me this long to update my bug blog.  Hopefully I'll be more on top of things in days to come.

First and foremost, Ashley and I finished our stay in Iowa and because living in New York or Missouri didn't sound all that enticing, we decided to relocate to Arizona for a while.

Of course, I was eager to visit the southwest again for the chance of some new and exciting bugs.  Granted, I'm well behind in updating this blog so I can't post them all at once.  I'll start off slowly with things we were seeing in Arizona at first:

Anyone that has looked at bflies around Madera Canyon in the Santa Ritas know that GOLDEN-HEADED SCALLOPWINGS can be very common.  Our visits proved no exception:

I snapped a picture of this roadside-skipper in Madera Canyon and didn't really expect to be able to ID it.  A check of my books though and I decided it was probably an ELISSA ROADSIDE-SKIPPER.  Because this roadside-skipper has a small dot (not an hourglass-shaped dot) in the forewing cell (the dot nearest the bug's head), I believe that narrowed it down to either Elissa Roadside-Skipper or Texas Roadside-Skipper.  I didn't think the spots looked "creamy" enough to be Texas so I settled with Elissa.  Any thoughts?  Here's the only photo:

The BORDERED PATCHES were easy to identify as usual.  Here is a chewed-up individual:

Brees, you got an ID for me on this tiger beetle???

In terms of blues, CERAUNUS BLUES were pretty common:

However, the most common blue (and maybe most common butterfly) was the ubiquitous MARINE BLUE.  The identification of these was really simplified in Arizona where Cassius Blues don't occur (Cassius Blues are by far the most similar to Marine Blues).  Here is a typical Marine Blue at Proctor Rd:

I was surprised to see a fritillary at the Proctor Road area but alas, VARIEGATED FRITILLARIES ended up being somewhat common:

I spied this sootywing and for a moment or two, I tried desperately to make it into any other kind of sootywing other than COMMON SOOTYWING which I reluctantly settled on:

Another common species around Madera Canyon was the GOLDEN BANDED-SKIPPER.  They're really easy to identify!

I wasn't sure how easy the identification of this roadside-skipper was going to be but thankfully, it was straightforward.  These CASSUS ROADSIDE-SKIPPERS were actually quite different looking from other roadside-skippers:

Hey hey, this wasn't a butterfly.  Seeing tarantulas on roadways ended up being almost a daily occurrence.  I don't know what species this is and I was told that there are over a dozen species in Arizona so I gave up:

Missouri

I was recently in northeast Missouri for a day or two.  Here are some insect pictures from a morning I spent out near Hannibal.

First up are several pictures of female ZABULON SKIPPERS which was a species I had only seen once before (in Virginia):

... and here are some photos of males:

I found this skipper and decided it must be a SACHEM:

This SILVER-SPOTTED SKIPPER was pretty tame: 

I was happy to finally find a photogenic SILVERY CHECKERSPOT:

This TAWNY EMPEROR might have been my first of the summer, strangely enough:

This robber fly was pretty serious looking.  I haven't dealt with identifying these things yet, however:

I haven't done much digging yet in my books for what species this is but I'm pretty sure it's a type of CRUISER:

That's all for now.  Stay tuned for some pictures from the southwest....