The Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy posts a photo of a mantis sitting in wait on a Greenway bush last week:
Having these is a sign of a healthy ecosystem, one of our main goals in maintaining the Parks organically. We hope this is a sign of a robust and growing population of these helpful, and really-cool-to-look-at! insects.
Jennifer Forman Orth, our go-to expert for invasive species, reports that with falling temperatures, more residents can expect their homes to be invaded by these brown bugs that, when startled, smell up the joint.
In most cases, she writes, they're actually western conifer seed bugs, which showed up here in the 1990s and which, fortunately, are not messing with local ecosystems:
You can often find them resting on the sides of houses, on doors and on window screens, where they are hoping to find a way to sneak in.
Jef Taylor reported around 6:20 p.m.:
Big flying ant emergence happening in Dedham now. These at definitely ant alates, big females with distended abdomens and tiny darker males.
Colleen Dillon checked in not long after from Quincy:
BIG swarm In West Quincy!
You may recall the endless swarms of icky little bugs around the same time last year.
Left Bank of the Charles videos a three-inch-long tubish thing making its way through some grass off Concord Avenue in Cambridge.
Fortunately, there was a pane of glass between Bob Brown and the preying mantis waiting for lunch on the side of the Wellesley library the other day.
Redgoldfly took this photo of a 3/4-inch bug in Waltham and wonders: What is it?
Copyright Redgoldfly. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.
Beetletown might be a better name for the Commonwealth's second largest city now that voracious Asian Longhorn Beetles have been found there:
... This pest attacks a wide variety of hardwood trees, particularly maples, and is considered a serious threat to the nursery, lumber, wood products, maple syrup, and tourism industries in our state. If it became established over a large area, it could also significantly disrupt the forest ecosystem.
The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, and the City of Worcester are partnering with the U.S. Forest Service and USDA APHIS-PPQ to coordinate a management plan to eradicate this species in Massachusetts. First steps include a survey of the area to determine the extent of the infestation, and regulatory management to prevent movement of host trees and wood out of the infested area. Infested trees will need to be removed and destroyed, and susceptible host trees may need treatment to prevent further infestations. ...
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