A Vinyl County Almanac

  I was playing outside with my dog the other day and found this little fellow on the side of our house - an eastern boxelder bug ( Boisea trivittata ). As the name implies, these colorful insects are members of the order Hemiptera (commonly referred as the true bugs) which feed primarily on boxelders ( Acer negundo ). As it turns out, finding them on the side of your house is not at all unusual, as they like to sun themselves on the sides of buildings on cool or windy days in the fall and early spring (Evans 2008). What is apparently unusual is finding only one - if a spot is especially good for sunning and is close to their host tree, they will often gather there in very large groups. I guess I'll be back with more pictures if that happens.  In addition to boxelders, boxelder bugs will also feed on other trees in the maple family, as well as oaks and ailanthus. When I read this, I was a bit worried - we have a beloved red maple right behind our house - but it turns out that ...

Hello and welcome to "A Vinyl County Almanac!" I am a wildlife technician and nature writer who grew up in Connecticut and currently lives and works in southern New England. I am interested in the ecology of human-dominated landscapes, especially those along the eastern coast of the United States where I have spent most of my life.  The eastern United States, especially the area around the I-95 corridor, is a fascinating ecological paradox. On the one the hand, the region is full of people - all of the top five most densely populated states (New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maryland) are in New England and the Midatlantic. And yet, since the mass abandonment of agricultural land in the early twentieth century, forests have grown back to cover a not insignificant percentage of the land, with even densely populated states like Connecticut and Rhode Island having about 50% of their total land area covered by highly fragmented forests.  United States fo...