Jim Fowler's photos with the keyword: insects

A day trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. I was lucky enough to find a nice bed of Spiranthes cernua beside the road. So, I stopped to photograph it and was soon joined by a Bee and a Butterfly. What a great day... I cannot verify that this butterfly is a valid pollinator for this orchid species, since I did not see pollinia attached to its proboscis. But, it spent a lot of time on the flowers, taking nectar from each flower on the inflorescence.

A day trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. I was lucky enough to find a nice bed of Spiranthes cernua beside the road. So, I stopped to photograph it and was soon joined by a Bee and a Butterfly. What a great day... I cannot verify that this butterfly is a valid pollinator for this orchid species, since I did not see pollinia attached to its proboscis. But, it spent a lot of time on the flowers, taking nectar from each flower on the inflorescence.

A day trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. I was lucky enough to find a nice bed of Spiranthes cernua beside the road. So, I stopped to photograph it and was soon joined by a Bee and a Butterfly. What a great day... This Bumble Bee already has a load of pollinia on its proboscis before entering the orchid flower.

A day trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. I was lucky enough to find a nice bed of Spiranthes cernua beside the road. So, I stopped to photograph it and was soon joined by a Bee and a Butterfly. What a great day... This Bumble Bee already has a load of pollinia on its proboscis before entering the orchid flower. Once it backed out, I could tell that the load of pollinia irritated the bee, because it immediately flew to the ground where it used its front legs to furiously brush off the pollinia. Then, it flew right back onto the inflorescence where it soon became loaded with more pollinia. Neat thing to witness...

A day trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. I was lucky enough to find a nice bed of Spiranthes cernua beside the road. So, I stopped to photograph it and was soon joined by a Bee and a Butterfly. What a great day... This Bumble Bee already has a load of pollinia on its proboscis before entering the orchid flower.

The critter is a female Katydid, Scudderia furcata (Forked-tail Bush Katydid). I know that it is a female because of the brown ovipositor (an organ used for laying/positioning eggs) on the rear end of the body of this insect. There is also a tiny crab spider on one of the flowers just next to the Katydid... (see note box) Several years ago, I was surprised to find a dense grouping of this fall-blooming orchid in one of our state Heritage Preserves. I had seen this orchid in small groups at this site, near a stream, but not in such a mass of flowers! This plot is about six feet by six feet and is situated on bare granite at about a 45 degree angle! The soil (if you can call it that) is only a couple of inches deep, and it is watered by a seep from above the bald. A couple of years ago, we had a very dry summer, and this fragile site suffered considerably, but somehow it managed to hang on, and now it is almost back to its historic best. This is always one of my favorite places to visit in the early fall...