Of Milkweed and Milkweed Bugs

Most of the milkweed pods have released their seeds over the past month. I enjoyed photographing them in the sunlight and

In a staged setting of cut plant (it was blocking the path for the trick or treaters to my front door). The seeds are tightly packed and are usually released a few at time with each little breeze. If it rains, the fluff often becomes so matted that the seeds are bound together and eventually fall to the ground near the parent plant.

The milkweed bugs are out on warm afternoons all during this time – feeding on the pods before they open and then on the seeds. This year they were plentiful in the first week of November – with all stages of their bug development. (Note: the small yellow critters are aphids....they seem to enjoy the milkweed at the same time as the bugs but are on stems and leaves rather than the seed pods).

And then they were gone for this season. The milkweed and the bugs are ready for winter.

Zooming on Insects

The last week or so has been a great time for photographing insects. There were skippers enjoying some last season Joe Pye Weed at Centennial Park. I took pictures at different angles and discovered when I got home that there might have been two different types of skippers on the plants.

At home, I checked the milkweeds for insects and could find any adult milkweed bugs like I found a few weeks ago but there are some larval stage milkweed bugs. They develop so quickly that there are at least two stages in this one grouping…maybe three.

On another milkweed there are aphids – again. There must have been something that came and cleaned off a lot of the aphids, but they are back now. Again – there are multiple stages of aphids in this one picture with the whitish ones being the youngest and then look at the different sizes of the yellow ones.

There was a very small insect with a green metallic-looking thorax. Sometimes insects look like little machines.

And a fly on the milkweed – with bristles on the abdomen!

As you can tell – I am having a lot of fun right now using the zoom (optical + digital) in my camera! There is a lot to see out there.