Fireflies

Possible "Big Dipper" fireflies (P. pyralis). Taken 8:15 PM, June 25 in Warren County, NJ. Corn may be a "biological desert" but it sure has a lot of fireflies over it, especially when it is young.

The katydids are just now starting to mean business. And of course the fireflies have been out for a while, but I've just started paying more attention to them lately.  

They begin the light show at around 7:30 PM and then (this is what I've somehow failed to notice until now) they tend to go away almost completely once it gets really dark. There also seems to be a succession of different species over the course of the twilight. The "short, upward, vertical-liners" start it out, flashing in dazzling numbers over grassy areas. Then the "J-makers" and other higher flying or tree-dwelling ones become more noticeable. The "short, upward, vertical-liner" I take to be the Pennsylvania Firefly (Photuris pennsylvanica). According to my NWF insect guide, these often fool Big Dipper Fireflies (P. pyralis) - which I take to be my "J-makers" - into landing near them by imitating their female flash pattern on the ground, and then eating them!


This link from Dr. Steven Carr at Memorial U. of Newfoundland, shows the flashing patterns of the various species.

Ox beetles and other monsters

An Ox Beetle. Taken July 7th in a grassland in Ocean Co., NJ.

This (if my ID books and bugguide.net have steered me right) is an ox beetle (Strategus anteus). I've seen a lot crawling around sandy bare areas of my Ocean County grassland lately. It is one of 5 ox beetles (Strategus sp.) in the US and the only one (at least the only common one) that lives in the Northeast. Bugguide.net shows it going all the way up to Nantucket Island in Massachusetts. Females (which lack horns) lay eggs in rotting wood, where the larvae develop. Male horns probably serve as some sort of courtship or mate-getting ornament, which is amusing to picture!

 Another big beetle (Pasimachus sp., ground beetle family) common in my Ocean Co. grassland. This is a flightless beetle (shell is fused in the middle)! I've found shell remnants below Amercan Kestrel feeding perches. (Photo taken June 22.)

The sandy soils of south Jersey seem to support lots of really big insects. I've seen several other kinds of 1-2 inch beetles (including other dung beetles) crawling around between the grass tufts. Along with the abundance of over-sized grasshoppers, they seem to provide a main source of food for American kestrels (see here and here), and also possibly nighthawks which are common in the Pinelands and apparently eat a lot of beetles...this according to their BNA account and this wonderful Audubon print...

Beetle-hawks 2

Elytra (shell) from a large Pasimachus ground beetle found with pellets near an American Kestrel feeding post.

This beetle shell was found near (a few feet away from) an American Kestrel feeding post in Lakehurst, Ocean Co., NJ (taken June 22nd). I moved it over for composition purposes, but I'm pretty sure the kestrel ate it (note the pellets with insect bits in them). Also it has a hole in it that I could picture a kestrel's beak tip going into. Below is (I think) the same beetle species found dead about 50 feet away from the post. According to bugguide.net, it's in the genus Pasimachus, in the family Carabidae - the ground beetles. This adds weight to my theory that summer kestrels are as much beetle-hawks as they are vole-hawks, or sparrow-hawks. And I guess they are grasshopper-hawks, too, as I found a large grasshopper wing nearby, as well. See previous post on beetle-hawks here.

Thanks to bugguide.net I know that these big monsters are in the genus Pasimachus (Family Carabidae, the ground beetles), and that it is a flightless species, having wing shells ("elytra") that are fused in the middle.

Beetle-hawks

A sparrow-hawk? No, a beetle-hawk.
 

Two pellets (a.k.a. puke) freshly coughed up by American kestrels (they were still moist...note the ant). Also part of a dismembered iridescent beetle (a scarab?). All were found beneath favored kestrel feeding posts in an Ocean County (NJ) grassland. Almost all the kestrel pellets I've found so far this April have pieces of beetle shells in them. I think there are lots crawling out of the soft sandy soil -  maybe as hibernating adults, or maybe freshly-metamorphosed from wriggling, dung-fattened grubs. Some they are definitely catching on the ground, but I wonder if some of the aerial insect hawking I see them doing (way high up) is after these big and tasty slow-flying beasts. The pellets are about 1 inch long, for scale.