Red, Blue, Green, Oooh, Ouch!

In the span of a year here I’ve seen some stunning insects, and in some of those situations my prior background in collecting serves us well. Don’t need to whip out the field guide to know that some of these lawn jewels can hurt real bad or stink up the joint right quick if messed with.

The large, fuzzy bright red “ant” is a wingless female wasp called a velvet ant, or cow killer. Though slow to anger it has the longest stinger of them all and packs a wallop. This is the second Spring in a row where I’ve first seen the smaller reddish brown species of velvet ant and then the large vermilion one a week or so later. They are solitary predators and I have yet to see a winged male.

There are the small metallic blue flea beetles that chew holes in garden leaves and then there are larger metallic blue tiger beetles that would eat the flea beetles if given the chance. For a smaller beetle they have a powerful and sharp set of mandibles that put it in the “leave it alone” category along with the velvet ant.

The large, shiny green ground beetle is an uncommon sight anywhere and is known as a fiery searcher, or caterpillar hunter. In addition to a painful bite it pumps out enough of a nauseatingly smelly defense chemical to fill up a living room, and this discharge reeks of stank dumpster on a hot August day. The fiery searcher would earn its keep if it would eat the horn worms that devour our tomatoes. Come to think of it, everything in these photos but the blue flea beetle preys in part on crop pests. Entertaining and beneficial, but best not handle.