Recently, I have been seeing many fuzzy, white things floating through the air in the backyard. Most of these are seeds. Their silky hairs help them catch the wind in order to disperse away from their parent plants.
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| A wind-dispersed seed caught against a rose leaf. |
However, this evening, the air seemed to be full of a new kind of white speck. These specks appeared to be flying, not simply drifting on the breeze. I followed one until it landed on a leaf. It was indeed an insect, not a seed. Its fuzzy, white appearance came from a fringe of white tufts around its abdomen.
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| The mystery insect on a lilac (Syringa sp.) leaf. It is very small! |
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| A close-up of the mystery insect. From its wings, it looks like a parasitic wasp. |
As far as I can tell, the vein patterns on the wings suggest that it
is a parasitic wasp. Perhaps these insects had just emerged from a host
somewhere in the garden, but I'll have to leave this as an unsolved
mystery for now.
This is a wooly aphid. I used to live in Walla Walla and I remember around this time of year hundreds of them would be out. Mating, looking for places to lay eggs, and dying by the dozen. Ducks would scoop up piles from the bases of trees to eat.
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