Colin Purrington's blog

Last fall I collected several hundred redbud seeds and crammed them into gel caps so that I could document the wasps that emerged in the spring.

Although scientists have known for decades that bug zappers do not control mosquitoes, gullible Americans buy 1.75 million of them every year.

Per posts on Reddit and Facebook, jars baited with malbec can trap Houdini flies (Cacoxenus indagator), an invasive kleptoparasite of solitary bees in the genus Osmia.

The cold and snow this winter have prevented me from taking many nature photographs, so it was a treat to have a look inside my two insect hotels.

Now that my eastern redbuds (Cercis canadensis) are pumping out thousands of pods each fall, I thought I’d start photographing the wasps that show up to parasitize the redbud bruchids (Gibbobruchus mimus) developing inside the seeds.

There’s an eastern black walnut (Juglans nigra) on my neighbor’s property that rains down fruit every fall, and I finally got curious about what species might be inside.

In case you never get to visit The Canadian Potato Museum on Prince Edward Island, here are photographs from the excellent exhibit on diseases and pests of potatoes.

Here are some photographs from a 2024 trip to Prince Edward Island.

Here are some of my favorite photographs from a recent stay at Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York.

I tested the Mosquito TNT in my Pennsylvania yard and concluded that it does not control mosquitoes.