Bug Encyclopedia
Search and identify bugs & insects — beetles, butterflies, moths, ants, bees, spiders and more — with size, habitat, danger, behavior, and how to tell them apart.
Eastern Pondhawk
A bold, ground-perching dragonfly whose bright green females and powdery blue males look almost like different species, and which readily preys on other dragonflies.
dragonfly
Black Soldier Fly
A sleek, dark, wasp-like fly whose larvae are voracious decomposers of decaying organic material, while the short-lived adults do not feed at all.
fly
Halloween Pennant
With broad orange-amber wings banded in dark brown, this dragonfly perches conspicuously atop tall grass stems, swaying like a small flag in the breeze.
dragonfly
Widow Skimmer
A medium-sized dragonfly named for the broad, dark mourning-veil-like patches at the base of its wings, seen perched on shoreline vegetation across much of North America.
dragonfly
Flame Skimmer
A blazing orange-red dragonfly of western waterways, the Flame Skimmer perches boldly on sunlit rocks and twigs, its amber-tinted wings glowing like embers in flight.
dragonfly
Painted Skimmer
The Painted Skimmer's warm amber-and-brown mottled wings look like they were dabbed with a paintbrush, making this medium-sized skimmer one of the more artistically marked dragonflies in the East.
dragonfly
Black Saddlebags
A large, nearly all-black dragonfly with a bold dark patch draped across the base of each hindwing, patrolling high over ponds and open ground like a small kite.
dragonfly
Eastern Amberwing
One of North America's smallest dragonflies, the male Eastern Amberwing glows with solid amber-orange wings and often wags its abdomen in a wasp-like display over floating algae.
dragonfly
Bagworm Moth
A moth best known for its larva's habit of constructing and living inside a spindle-shaped case of silk and plant debris that hangs from twigs, with adult males a plain sooty-winged moth and females remaining wingless and grub-like inside the bag for life.
moth
Long-Legged Fly
A jewel-bright little fly that flashes metallic green, blue, or bronze in the sunlight as it darts across leaves on comically long, stilt-like legs, pausing to perform quick territorial displays. Both adults and larvae are active hunters of even smaller insects, making this tiny fly a useful predator in gardens and wetlands alike.
fly