It gave me great pleasure to see this Crab Spider chowing down on a mosquito inside an Azalea blossom at Weymouth Woods, a preserve in the sandhills of North Carolina.

Photos below marked with an N (for "new") are the most recently added ones. Many thanks to folks like Art Evans, Mike Quinn, Riley Nelson, Neal Evenhuis,Wayne Maddison, G.B. Edwards, Fred Coyle, Patrick Coin, Bob Barber, Jay Comeaux, Tim Manolis, Kathy Biggs, and everyone else who has helped to identify some of my legion of critters that I've photographed without asking their name first.

N A yellow-flowering Lantana in our window box in Durham, NC hosted an unexpected variety of creatures; most surprising was Mystery Caterpillar #6 with its camouflage of dead flowers! I couldn't tell if the disguise was part of the inchworm, or if it had real dead Lantana flowers stuck to its back...

 Mystery Caterpillar #5 appeared in our car during our honeymoon in mid-October 2001. We were near Mountain Lake, VA and had just been examining the seed head of a mullein plant. He was cold.

Mystery Blue Butterfly from the LRGV of Texas, specifically  The Nature Conservancy's Chihuahua Woods Preserve. I saw several, of which this one was the most cooperative.

N A small pile of pig feces on a dirt road in the East Lake tract of the LRGV NWR attracted a Mystery dung beetle with orange spots, along with several more familiar Canthon sp. or Tumblebugs.

 Mystery beetle grub  (Scarabeid of some kind?) found under a rotten log at the Penny's Bend preserve near Durham, NC on March 31 2001. That's my reasonably big finger in there for scale. Here's the  face of another one (the same species?) from Irvin Farm.

 Another Mystery beetle larva - this one not really a grub, it looks predatory - crossed the road as I was leading a Wake County (NC) Audubon Society field trip in search of dragonflies in late September 2001.

 Mystery Mayfly , one of dozens that was lurking along the Rio Grande at Anzalduas County Park, TX on May 21, 2001, right after "Dragonfly Days" ended.
N The following April, my wife Airlie and I visited Lake Waccamaw and encountered another species of mayfly, this one in amazingly huge swarms! They were perching on just about everything, including Airlie!

 I found a tiny pool in a drying creek bed near Salmon Creek Campground. It was full of dozens, maybe hundreds, of these Mystery Naiads . I've been told that they're some kind of mayfly...

 This Lacewing showed up on my car window in front of the Alamo Inn in Alamo, TX.

 Unidentified Katydid, a nymph, from Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in Hidalgo County, TX, May 2000 (during the inaugural "Dragonfly Days" festival).

 My second Mystery Katydid was an adult perched on a cypress stump in Merchant's Millpond State Park, NC, in October 2001.

 Mystery grasshopper (in the genus Leptysma, maybe?) trying to look like a grass seed, from the Sandhills Gamelands on March 17 2001. The grass was growing on the Sphagnum-y margin of a pond. I saw this Mystery Leafhopper only minutes later on the same trip, in much drier habitat.

 Mystery Grasshopper #2 was in the woods near Horton's Pond, a swampy area in the woods in Chatham County, NC.

N We found Mystery Grasshopper #4 during Dragonfly Days III.

 Mystery Bee, probably a Halictid of some kind, but golden-colored instead of the usual Halictid green and blue. Found near Falls Lake, NC.

Another Mystery Bee, this one from the vicinity of Salmon Creek near Sierra City, CA.

N These Mystery Wasps are very common at Santa Ana, nesting under the leaves of a wide variety of plants.

 This Mystery Scorpionfly, a far cry from its more common orange-and-black cousins, turned up in North Carolina's Green Swamp.

N The much more conventional-looking (for the order Mecoptera, anyway) Mystery Scorpionfly #2, maybe some kind of Panorpa, greeted us along the Blue Ridge Parkway on July 19 2002.

 Mystery Fly #1. Paul Miliotis told me what it was at the time, but all I remember now is that it's in the family Bombyliidae, the bee flies. Apparently its larvae are parasitic on Tiger Beetles! Found in Santa Ana NWR, TX, during the second annual "Dragonfly Days" festival, May 2001.

N  Mystery Wolf Spider which turned up in our basement. Here's a closeup of its face.

 Mystery Crab Spider photographed near the American River in Sacramento, California.

 This large Orb Weaver  is eating a leafhopper (Homopteran). But look closely; a tiny white spider, presumably a male (?) is lurking underneath; moments later it shared the big one's meal!

N I would have missed Mystery Salticid #3 had it not been facing off with the much more conspicuous jumping spider Phidippus audax.

N Mystery Salticid #4 was eating a skipper of some kind when I found him. Santa Ana NWR has quite a variety of jumping spiders; here's Mystery Salticid #5 (some kind of Phidippus I think).

 I was leading a birding trip on Bodie Island at the 2001 Wings Over Water festival when this jellyfish came bobbing up a canal through the salt marsh.

 The Stinging Rose Caterpillar is less well-known than the Saddleback, but similarly unhealthy to play with. Both it and the Saddleback grow up into far less noxious, far less colorful moths.

 During our honeymoon, I spotted this Skiff Moth pupa attached to a wooden post in the Smart View area of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. At least, I think it's a pupa; the caterpillar looks pretty much identical! Despite its lack of apparent stinging structures, this critter belongs to the same family as the two formidable creatures pictured above: Limacodidae.

The Puss Caterpillar is less colorful than the Saddleback, but more painful. I had no idea what it was when I found it; I didn't even know it was a caterpillar until I flipped it over! Fortunately, I flipped it with a stick, and resisted the urge to touch it; Mike Quinn, LRGV butterfly ace, identified it from this photo about a year later. Its adult form is called the Southern Flannel Moth. I used to think the larva was called "Pus Caterpillar" after what happens if you touch it, but was recently corrected.

The Atala caterpillar is safe to touch, but tastes awful. Its bright color advertises the fact that it eats cycads, primarily the Florida native Coontie (Zamia floridana), and metabolizes the chemicals that make cycads inedible to most herbivores so that they make the Atala caterpillar inedible to most predators.

Given enough cycads, the above caterpillar matures into the similarly brightly colored, equally inedible Atala. Once endangered in Florida, the trend in landscaping with cycads has brought the species back from the brink and with a vengeance; in the Fairchild Tropical Garden, where the population started its comeback, the staff now have to squash the Atala's caterpillars to stop them from eating cycad species that are far rarer than the Atala is!

Oakworms may become pretty dull moths, but they sure make memorable caterpillars! I found this Pink-striped Oakworm  on the outside wall of the rest rooms in Lake Waccamaw State Park, NC, at the end of an October 2000 field trip with the Biology 31 (The Diversity of Life) class I was TAing that semester. It looks just about ready to pupate...

 The nests of the Fall Webworm are easily confused with those of tent caterpillars, but tents are around mainly in the spring, webworms in the fall. At least in Durham NC.

N By contrast with all the colorful caterpillars above, the Giant Swallowtail must taste pretty good, because it's so well camouflaged I almost walked right by it!

 Between every caterpillar and its butterfly (moth, skipper) is a pupa. This Viceroy Pupa was on a willow tree beside a pond in a quarry in Old Dock, NC, where we were hunting fossils with professor Rudy Raff.

I found this Ruddy Daggerwing  in a similarly stunned, flightless condition just outside the back end of Matheson Hammock County Park in Coral Gables, Dade County, Florida.

 Zebra Longwings are a common sight in south Florida, especially in hardwood hammock habitat. This pair was along the Gumbo Limbo trail in Everglades National Park one day during the summer of 1999.

The White Peacock occasionally strays north to the Carolinas, but I photographed this one in Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge in Florida.

I didn't see a single Bordered Patch during the whole two months I spent in the LRGV of Texas during the summer of 2000. In May of 2001, during the second annual "Dragonfly Days", I saw dozens of them in four days! I even found their  caterpillars.

N The Elada Checkerspot and Blue Wave are common Mexican species that range just over the US border into Texas and Arizona.

N Lots of Great Spangled Fritillaries were nectaring on the White Bee Balm patches along the Blue Ridge Parkway on July 19, 2002.

N On one visit to the Kepler tract of the LRGV NWR I found myself in the midst of a mind-boggling number of American Snouts. They were flying south across the Rio Grande, scattered throughout the sky as far as I could see in every direction, including straight up!

 Edith's Copper near Salmon Creek Campground in the Sierra Nevada.

The  Yucca Giant-Skipper  lives inside Yucca stems as a caterpillar. We spotted this one and a few others on a  Carolina Butterfly Society  field trip to the Sandhills Gamelands in Richmond County, NC in April 1999.

I've found Long-tailed Skipper in North Carolina's Green Swamp, a Nature Conservancy preserve, on two separate occasions. I took this slide in October 2000, on a Biology 31 field trip. On the same field trip a year later, we encountered several Common Wood-Nymphs. The Green Swamp is better known for its carnivorous plants; see my plant photos.

I photographed this Silver-spotted Skipper on the annual Guilford County butterfly count in July 1999. The temperature was 104 Fahrenheit.

N The Hammock Skipper is known for its habit of perching under, rather than on top of, leaves. As you can see here.

 Unusually high winds stranded this Tersa Sphinx Moth on a dock in Lake Waccamaw State Park. I carried it back to the edge of the woods.

N A temporary denizen of our window-box Lantana patch was this Snowberry Clearwing (Hemaris diffinis).

 Plesiomma unicolor, a brilliantly colored robberfly (family Asilidae). Actually two of them mating, the other is an orange blur in the background. The whole family is predatory; what little I can find on this genus indicates that they eat spiders!

 Ommatius sp., a much smaller and less colorful Asilid. This genus is distinguished by having plumose (feather-like) antennae. If the substrate looks strange, it's because this one, stunned by an early fall cold snap, wound up perched on my shorts as it waited for the sun to rise and warm it up.

  Even smaller than Ommatius, but still a robberfly: Holopogon sp.! Found in the Sandhills Gamelands of NC on May 5 2001, during another DNHS field trip.

  Laphria flavicollis looks like a bee, but actually it's yet another robber fly. Most flies that mimic bees do so to repel predators, but the bee hunters - there are actually several species - mimic to get close to unsuspecting prey.

N Some members of the genus Sarapogon are called "Bee Killers" because they will collect around domestic apiaries and eat large numbers of honeybees. Unlike the bumblebee-eating Laphrias, these don't look much like bees (to human eyes at least).

N A pair of mating robber flies - probably in the genus Polacantha - from the Green Swamp during an April visit.

N  ThisRobber fly (possibly Triorla interrupta) was eating a damselfly - a Dancer, I think, Argia sp. - when I encountered it.

N I encountered Stichopogon trifasciatus at the edge of a drying puddle in a salt lake in south Texas; this little robberfly acted a lot like a tiger beetle, a few scattering from every step but always landing on the mud nearby.

N At the edge of a spring-fed pool near another south Texas salt lake, I found a swarm of Ochthera sp. (mantis?), one of the shore flies (Ephydridae). They frequently spread their black-and-white forearms in some kind of diplay, probably in hopes of mating.

 Large Bee Flies caught in a compromising position. The stingless, bee-mimicking adults feed on nectar. They mimic bees for yet another reason: they parasitize solitary bee nests.

 Some other Bombyliids, such as Crysanthrax cypris, parasitize tiger beetles rather than bees. This family apparently likes to live dangerously!

N The spiders in the next section are lucky they didn't encounter this Tarantula Hawk, but Bill Haley of the Tennessee Aquarium and I felt lucky that we did! Later that same day, one not-so-lucky wolf spider ran afoul of its smaller cousin; most of the wasp family Pompilidae feed spiders to their larvae.

 The Velvet Ant is actually a wasp without wings. Actually a female wasp; the males do have wings. The wingless female still has a very painful sting.

I thought I had found two Stick Insects  mating, until I remembered that only odonates mate with the male's tail grasping the female's head. This is one walking stick shedding its skin! Actually, many walking sticks reproduce parthenogenically, without mating at all...

N Have you ever really looked at a walking stick's face?

 Plant bugs are often less well camouflaged than their predatory fellow Hemipterans. This Harlequin Bug and its nymph - actually several of each - were feeding on a shrub in Sculpture Park, Roseville, CA.

The genus Lethocerus is the largest, at least in body size, in the giant waterbug family Belostomatidae. I would never hold a live one in my hand, as their bite is even more painful than the Wheel Bug's. This is one of several dead ones I found washed up on the shore of the salt lake in the La Sal del Rey tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, in Hidalgo County, TX.

 Megacephala carolina, a beautiful nocturnal tiger beetle. I found this one hiding under some litter near Horton's Pond, in Chatham County NC.

N I encountered two species of tiger beetle around La Sal del Rey: Cicindela togata in dryer areas, and C. ocellata on wetter ground.

On the third day of the second annual "Dragonfly Days" festival, the show was nearly stolen by the beetles! Near the Olmito Fish Hatchery, Ken King found this Eyed Elater, a monstrous click beetle, on one tree, shortly after spotting two others mating high in another. Then he captured a beautiful  Longhorn Beetle.

 Dung Beetles don't all make big balls of dung and roll them away to their nests, but this one does! Near the Blue Ridge Parkway, September 1999; I think the dung was from a horse...

 Soldier Beetles on Tickweed . Coreopsis grows abundantly in Durham NC, particularly along the abandoned railroad bed off Will Suitt Road. These beetles were pollinating it in October 1999.

I caught this Mantisfly by accident, I was swinging at a perched dragonfly and caught this amazing creature instead. This was in the Santa Ana NWR in Hidalgo County, TX, summer 2000.

 California Giant Stonefly (Pteronarcys californicus), found on a rock under a bridge over a creek in the Sierra Nevada in late May 2001.

A somewhat gimpy Common Brown Tarantula challenged my rental car on the road near Laguna Atascosa NWR in Texas.

N Two years later, a healthier-looking one in nearby Mercedes found itself stranded in a tree by fast-rising water.

  Phidippus otiosus, another salticid, otherwise known as The Coolest Spider Ever! I found it at the edge of a stand of Atlantic White Cedar. I think it saw its reflection in my camera lens, because it displayed at me!

 Red-backed Jumping Spider eating a teneral Libellula pulchella in Sculpture Park near Roseville, CA. The spider is probably Phidippus johnsoni, but California has a few similar species.

 You normally expect to see a Crab Spider in a flower, waiting to ambush pollinating insects; this individual of Misumenoides formosipes has adopted a different strategy, pirating prey from a pitcher plant! Just before this I found a Jumping Spider, possibly Phidippus clarus, that had adopted the same strategy.

N During a fossil hunt in a quarry in Old Dock, North Carolina I stumbled into this Long-Jawed Orb Weaver.

Cambarus sp? peeking out of its burrow in West Point on the Eno, Durham County, NC in the summer of 2000.

 The gelatinous masses in Merchant's Millpond one October turned out to be Pectinatella magnifica, a freshwater bryozoan. Nearly all bryozoans (a phylum of colonial, sessile animals that filter-feed with structures called lophophores) are strictly marine, and have colonies protected by hard calcified exoskeletons rather than soft slimy goo. We originally thought they were some kind of algae, or maybe frog eggs.

N Lake Waccamaw is most widely known for its endemic species, which include the Waccamaw Spike along with a few other bivalves, a couple of snails, and at least one fish.

N Reputedly a lichen-eating species, Drymaeus multilineatus is a fairly common land snail in south Florida.

 Bluegills are noted for their interesting sexual behavior. Great big males like the one in the center defend the nests, visible here as a bare gravelly area, and mate with little females like the one to his left (your right). Or is that a female? Some males, called "sneakers", remain small and masquerade as females, sneaking copulations and fathering offspring without having to fight for territory with the big boys.

 My parents and I took a boat from San Diego one March to the Gray Whale calving grounds at Laguna San Ygnacio. It was a tour offered by the Point Reyes Bird Observatory. That's me in the picture with the whale.

  Common Dolphins are not so common - at least, not as common as Bottlenose - off the Outer Banks of NC. This is one of several which rode the bow of the Miss Hatteras on a March 3 2001 pelagic trip run by Brian Patteson.

 I found this mummified Mountain Lion carcass while doing bird censuses on Fort Bliss in New Mexico. I was lost at the time...

 African Oryx were introduced to New Mexico by a misguided program to establish better game species for hunters. They are now a pest there which destroys habitat and causes accidents on highways and runways. To get an idea of how big those wicked horns are, the animal wearing them is about the size of a horse.
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 Joshua S. Rose