What’s In My Backyard? Meet the Neighbors: Four-banded Stink Bug Wasp For the introduction to this series, see here. I noticed this big beautiful wasp in my yard for the first time this year. These solitary wasps hunt stink bugs including the invasive Brown Marmorated Stink Bug. (Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs are originally from Asia.) […]
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What’s In My Backyard? Meet the Neighbors: Sutured Long-horned Beetle For the introduction to this series, see here. This bright red and black beetle loves to eat pollen. These beetles are easy to watch because they like to sit on big flat flowers and are slow-moving and not easily alarmed. They belong to the large
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What’s In My Backyard? Projects: Pressing Plants For the introduction to this series, see here. Today we are going to press plants and make an herbarium. An herbarium is a collection of dried pressed plants mounted on stiff paper. Herbariums are useful to showcase the plants of a certain location. Often scientists can learn a
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What’s In My Backyard? Meet the Neighbors: American Lady Butterfly For the introduction to this series, see here. Meet the American Lady Butterfly. This butterfly looks like the closely related Painted Lady Butterfly. How do you tell them apart? The secret is to look at the outside of the wings. American Ladies have two large
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What’s In My Backyard? Meet the Neighbors: GoldFinch For the introduction to this series, see here. Here is one of the brightest birds that might visit your yard. Goldfinches love sunflower seeds; if you plant sunflowers, they may become regular visitors. In winter the males lose their bright yellow plumage and become a much drabber
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What’s In My Backyard? Explore and Learn: endangered species For the introduction to this series, see here. When many people think of endangered species, they think about animals like Giant Pandas, Hawksbill Sea Turtles, and Bornean Orangutans. All three of these creatures are in danger of extinction. What many people do not know is that
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Science Snippet: Explore The Moon What object in the solar system is closest to the Earth? The closest object is our moon. On average the moon is 238,900 miles away. That distance is almost ten times the circumference of the Earth. This sounds like a long way, but it’s close compared to the other objects
What’s In My Backyard? Meet the Neighbors: Cottontail Rabbit For the introduction to this series, see here. Cottontail rabbits live all over the US. There are three species but they all look much the same. If you live in the east, you have Eastern cottontails living near you. If you live in the West, you
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What’s In My Backyard? Backyard Safari: What visits Yarrow For the introduction to this series, see here. Today we are going to find out what visits yarrow. What is yarrow? Yarrow is a tall feathery plant with flat rosettes of small flowers. It is related to chamomile. There are varieties that are native to the
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What’s In My Backyard? Meet the Neighbors: Peachtree Borer Moth For the introduction to this series, see here. This is a female Peachtree Borer Moth. It looks like a wasp but you can tell it is not because it does not have a narrow wasp waist. This sinister-looking insect is bad news for peach and
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