Although the first identifiable warbler (Prairie) of the fall migration visited our Royal Poinciana tree this morning, I haven’t been able to post many photos of birds. That’s kind of a shame, because I think of myself as a birder first and a general naturalist second. But my photo archives are bulging with shots of animals that are, frankly, much easier to take pictures of than birds. And so I find myself, not really against my will but against my inclination, posting pictures of plants and insects. Both of those groups of organisms are much more abundant than birds, and, here’s the key, they stay put more readily.
So here’s another bug, a true bug (Hemipteran) this time. It’s a colorful little insect from the family Alydidae, or broad-headed bugs: Stenocoris sp.
Our area of the country has two species and it’s the job of the specialist entomologist, rather than the amateur naturalist, to separate them; all I can do is show you the picture and say “That there’s a rice bug! Stenocoris species. Ain’t it a beauty?”
In case you’re wondering, here’s how big it is; the scale is ruled in millimeters, with the big numbers being, of course, centimeters:
I like the greens and the reds, and the long antennae:
As far as I know, we don’t have any rice in the area, but this is the second individual of this species group that I’ve seen in the last three weeks. The first one flummoxed me, so I posted it to bugguide.net, where they quite quickly let me know what type of bug, if not what exact species, I was dealing with. Enjoy!