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Photo#42064
Winter Invader

Winter Invader
Stratford, Fairfield County, Connecticut, USA
February 1, 2006
Size: back deck of home
Covers house during late fall thru early spring, does not like sun, rain or below freezing hundred to thousands spread over house, cars, mailbox. They have wings but I never saw them fly. We have large (100 acre) forest behind our house.

Plecoptera: Taeniopterygidae
This is a winter stonefly, with adults emerging (usually)in late winter and early spring.

 
Moved to Guide
I created a new guide page for the family and moved this there. Thanks for your help!

Trichoptera
Caddisfly? See here:

 
Invader id
This looks just like the one I captured.
Black, winged but does not appear to fly.
Thanks,Jay

lacewing maybe?
The image isn't good. You need to describe it better. What color is it? It's shaped like a lacewing, but I can't be sure with this image. Maybe somebody more knowledgable will know for sure.

 
Body Shape
Lacewings share their general body shape with many primitive orders of winged insects. As for which order it is- I'm not someone more knowledgable.

 
Invaders
Don,
I have other pictures. It is black. It looks like combination of ant and bee. Adult is 1/2 inch. Most are 3/8 inch. Winged but never saw it fly.
Someone else identified it as Trichoptera : "Caddisfly"

 
Habitat
Do you have any stream or other body of water nearby? Caddisflies are aquatic in their earlier stages.

 
Invaders from stream
Clear stream 100 feet, smal pond 100 yards

 
Moved to Guide
Moved this to a new guide page for the family

 
Aquatics
Stoneflies are also aquatic, so I'll have to go with Don Chandler on this one. Although his specialty is beetles, he still knows more about New England bugs in general than all of us put together.

 
Trichoptera: Hydropsychidae?
Chuck:
Thanks for that compliment - and with that I will have to say that the image now associated with the Taeniopterygid taken by Tom Murray in late summer is indeed a caddisfly (the large tibial spurs on the legs help give it away). The body is wedge-shaped, and so on. The size isn't given, but it looks like one of the small dark caddisfly groups. Looking very closely the palpi are quite long, which suggests a member of the Hydropsychidae. Not a stonefly for sure.
The taeniopterygid picture is blurry, but species are extremely long and thin, are grayish with somewhat patterned wings, and indeed can be commonly seen flying on warm, or even not so warm days during the winter. They never would fly in late summer.

 
Momentary Confusion
Tom Murray's caddisfly image was just given by Matthew Roth as an example of a possible ID. Embedding a thumbnail of an image in a comment doesn't affect the placement of the original image, nor does it affect the image commented on. For a minute there I thought you were saying that the Taeniopterygid was misplaced, but finally figured out what you were talking about. With the extra information about Tom's caddisfly, I moved it to the Hydropsychidae guide page.

Thanks again!

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