bugs & blooms gallery

A green dock leaf beetle munches on the plant for which it is named.

The flowers of the green gentian are often overlooked because they blend in so well to the leaves and the stems of the plant. But a closer look reveals their delicate beauty.

Red ants slowly make their way through the buds of a yucca plant.

A bee rests on the bloom of a skunk-bush sumac bush in early spring.

A bee flies off after feeding on a blanket flower.

A honey bee prepares to enter a poppy flower even as its saddlebags appear full of pollen.

A red ant stands guard over a wide-footed treehopper as the latter consumes sap from the stem of a wild sunflower. In return for protection, the ant will collect the honeydew secreted as waste by the treehopper.

Margined burying beetles are a type of carrion beetle aptly named for their behavior of burying the carcasses of small mammals they encounter before laying their eggs in the bodies.

A robber fly lands on the door handle of a car to consume his prey.

A clear-wing moth dines on a wild aster.

A common thread-waisted wasp rests on a grass stem in the coolness of early morning.

A fritillary butterfly rests on a blanket flower.

A goldenrod crab spider sits in wait, ready to grab any unsuspecting prey that might stray too close.

A red milkweed beetle chews on the leaf of a showy milkweed plant.

Well camouflaged in the color of the leaf on which it sits, an assassin bug nymph dines on a wasp that landed within reach.

A yucca moth collects pollen from one flower that it will deposit on a different plant. Adult yucca moths don’t eat but they perform the service in return for the right to lay their eggs in the yucca flowers in a unique partnership that has developed over centuries.

A brightly colored lichen moth rests on a flower in Yellowstone.

A pair of cowpath tiger beetles mate in early spring.

A jumping spider looks up from consuming a smaller spider that could not escape his reach.

A tiny pug moth rests in its characteristic stance with wings spread.

The design on the back of a sand wasp makes it appear as if the insect has two faces.

A green stink bug rests on an anemone in a field of wildflowers.

A yellow-jacket sits on the bloom of a Rocky Mountain Bee Plant in the Beartooth Mountains.