Images

ns, Twin Macro Flash in Styrofoam Cooler, F5.0, ISO 100, Shutter Speed 200 USGSBIML Photoshopping Technique: Note that we now have added using the burn tool at 50% opacity set to shadows to clean up the halos that bleed into the black background from "hot" color sections of the picture.

Unknown Deer Fly form near Bowie Maryland

Unknown Deer Fly form near Bowie Maryland

Tachinid Fly from the Dominican Republic floating in hand sanitizer filled quartz cuvette, in which a thin film of blue food coloring was added to a black piece of plastic and inserted at the bottom of the cuvette and allowed to migrate upwards.

Here is a lovely carpenter bee from the southeastern part of the U.S., a bit smaller than X. viginica and as far as I know nests in twigs rather and does no damage to timbers (not that X. virginica does much in the way of real structural damage).

Xylocopa mordax, female, Dominican Republic, March 2012

Ahhhhhh, the beauty of the wings of Carpenter Bees, this lovely specimen from Thailand, found lounging around the Packer Lab, Trivia = Carpenter Bees lay the world's largest insect eggs.

A black and white version of the previous picture...can't decide if I should have left that straying barb on the left in there or not...it adds a lot of tension to the picture...perhaps too much.

Membracid from Dominican Republic floating in hand sanitizer in a quartz cuvette

Vespula squamosa - The Southern Yellow Jacket....the two yellow racing stripes on the top of the thorax (scutum) are diagnostic in the SE U.S. Collected by Tim McMahon from Talbot County, Maryland

Yucca filamentosa. A wild eastern Yucca. I always thought the odd Yucca in some beatup corner of the East was an escapee. But this is not the case as you can see here. Pollinated by moths, not bees. Specimen and picture by Helen Lowe Metzman.

Zanysson - A crabronid wasp. Most of the stinging wasps are fairly badass in aspect, to use a technical term. This one certainly is worthy of a tattoo on someone's chest and was collected by Merle Shepherd from Spring Island along the coast of South Carolina. It is unclear which species this is, but perhaps someone will reveal that to us.

Zanysson - A crabronid wasp. Most of the stinging wasps are fairly badass in aspect, to use a technical term. This one certainly is worthy of a tattoo on someone's chest and was collected by Merle Shepherd from Spring Island along the coast of South Carolina. It is unclear which species this is, but perhaps someone will reveal that to us.

White-throated Sparrow, Died in downtown Washington D.C. in the fall or spring of 2012 from striking a building at night. Retrieved by the Lights out DC program

White-throated Sparrow, Died in downtown Washington D.C. in the fall or spring of 2012 from striking a building at night. Retrieved by the Lights out DC program

Rarity here. This is species was described in the 1950s, named after the town it was collected near and only a handful of specimens have ever been collected that I am aware of. In fact it is so rare that it was on our list of "missing" species, published in 2011.

Of the woodland oriented bees this is regionally the most common one, Andrena carlni, this male is relatively easy tp tell because of the black hairs that line the edges of the eyes and the ocelli that are set back from the back of the head. Photography by Amanda Robinson.

This is a northern / arctic species that occurs worldwide. Recent discoveries have shown its distribution extends to high elevations in West Virginia (thank you Jane).This specimen is from Maine (thank you Alison).

Andrena confederata - A male of this uncommon species found in Calvert County and photographed by Dejen Mengis.

Andrena confederata - A male of this uncommon species found in Calvert County and photographed by Dejen Mengis.

Go to the woods in the Eastern United States, find a blooming Rhododendron, look for this bee, it specializes Rhodos and Azalea pollen for its babies. Collected in Giles County (probably on a Rhododendron) by Barbara Abraham's students at Mountain Lake Biological Station.