This is going to be short and I’m working on a longer post that I’ll get up tomorrow or Thursday, but I just couldn’t help but share an insect sighting from yesterday! I was driving past the American beautyberry shrub at work on my way to close the back entrance for the night when I spotted a bunch of loudly buzzing insects flying around the flowers that were just beginning to open. I assumed they were bumblebees and was about to drive off when I realized they weren’t flying quite right for bees. So, I took a closer look and saw dozens of these little guys sucking down nectar from the flowers:
Green June Beetle, Cotinis nitida
June bugs! Or at least what most people in North Carolina consider June bugs, the green June beetle, Cotinis nitida. These beetles send me straight back to happy moments from my childhood and I absolutely love seeing them, so I was thrilled to find a bunch of them out and about. They tend to have a sort of mass emergence here, so apparently the emergence has begun. I will expect to see hundreds – thousands! – of them over the next month or so! I want to get some really good photos of them this year, but I am totally happy just watching them do their thing too.
Just had to share because these beetles are something I really love and they represent summer to me. I hope you all love your June bugs – whether green, brown, or some other color – wherever you are!
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The Dragonfly Woman 
Here in Florida, the June Bugs start showing up in May. Which makes the name a little confusing, but nobody calls them May Bugs. It’s just more ways northerners try to make Floridians feel bad. The worst is around Christmas where everyone insists on snow being part and parcel of the season. I’ve never had a white Christmas! How do you think that makes me feel? CURSE YOU NORTHERNERS!
But, June bugs are cool. You start hearing them clatter on your windows and you know it’s May. : – )
If it makes you feel any better, it rarely snowed on Christmas in Colorado where I lived, so I almost never got the “traditional” white Christmas either! It was sometimes cold on Christmas, but more often than not it was balmy enough to go outside and play with whatever scooter, roller skates, or other wheeled contraption we got that year. It was often cold and snowy two weeks before on my birthday, but rarely on Christmas.
If your June bugs come out in May, more power to them for not doing the same thing every other June bug does! It’s ok to be different!
Well, they certainly continue well into June, so maybe it’s okay to still call them June bugs. Other than that they aren’t really bugs. So that should be Junebugs, shouldn’t it? But that rule has never been applied consistently.
June bugs like to fly up and roost on me. They have such wonderful karma.
Fun! Or at least I think it is. :)