Favoritos de neomyte

CORRECTION: Elm bark borer.

This one really confused me. It looked to me like a cross between a longhorn beetle and leaf-footed bug.

After trying most of the 36+ photos I took of this beetle, I found Blood-necked Longhorn Beetle in the number 3 slot for suggestions by iNaturalist Computer Vision. I gave it a second look and saw that the fourth photo showed a Red-necked Longhorn Beetle with a black neck like this one. There is a similar black-necked beetle identified as a blood-necked beetle in Bugguide.net. See https://bugguide.net/node/view/396248. Most of the photos of blood-necked longhorn beetles in Bugguide.net have red necks.

I now see from the id. of @elytrid that this is an elm bark borer, not a blood-necked longhorn.

With temperatures in the mid-100s and no recent rain, water is a big attraction to birds in the area. Today, I was watering an area densely packed with volunteer frost weeds. Birds likely heard and saw the water spraying from the nozzle and came closer and closer to me. In addition to getting sprayed, the birds drank water off the leaves.

Despite the name black-throated, this specimen has a very light gray throat. The iNaturalist description of this species based on a Wikipedia article says "Adult males have a black throat and upper breast; females have a pale throat and black markings on their breast." Based on that, I originally marked the specimen(s) shown here as females. Based on comments below, I am not marking the sex of these specimens since they may be immature males. (There were several of these birds in the bushes as I watered but I did not count them.)

There are four prior iNaturalist August observations of this species in Tarrant County. None are early August observations. All are end-of-August observations except one undated observation. This appears to be the earliest Tarrant County summer observation of this species reported in iNaturalist. The 2021 Audobon checklist shows this species as "rare" for the second half of August. and does not show observations for the first half of August. I plan to submit this to eBird where there are additional Tarrant County observations of this species in the first eight days of August.

@sambiology @belbird @neomyte.

iNat Computer Vision suggests Rainbow Darter. However, there are no prior iNat reported observations of that species in Hot Springs National Park or near Hot Spinhgs or the southwestern quarter of the state. There being more than 200 species of darter located in Arkansas, I can't classify this interesting fish further.

Key features are the striking red coloration on the tail and fins and the barred patterning of its body. I got only this one twilight picture and did not see these fish in the morning when I returned to the site.
@neomyte