What bugs/diseases/critters have ya'll seen that weren't around 30-40 years ago?

[Fuddyduddy1952]

Spotted Lanternfly from Asia. They're all over the porch, flowers & bushes here in Virginia & appeared last couple years.

 

[jyoutz]

Spotted Lanternfly from Asia. They're all over the porch, flowers & bushes here in Virginia & appeared last couple years.View attachment 3650631View attachment 3650632

Not good

 

[bigtiller]

I used to hear owls quite often. They seamed to be everywhere but I seldom seen one.

Then one day I heard one and looked in the direction the hoots were coming from.

The animal that was making what I thought was an owl sound, was a morning dove.

 

[WinterDeere]

…she still jokingly says she doesn't believe bears actually exist.

Similar here. We find bear poop in our yard quite frequently, and hear reports of them constantly, but I have personally never seen one on our property. That’s a surprise, since I spend more time outdoors than any other 3 or 4 neighbors combined.

I’ve begun to joke that the large berry-filled turds I’m finding might just be a very large man who eats a lot of berries and doesn’t like us very much.

You do realize that Ben Franklin (pretty famous American) had wrote a letter comparing the eagle to the wild turkey? Mr. Franklin was alive in the 1700's?

He had apparently lobbied to make it our national bird, thinking the American Bald Eagle was a stupid choice. He made some good arguments for it, Ben was no dummy, but ultimately lost that contest.

Spotted Lanternfly from Asia. They're all over the porch, flowers & bushes here in Virginia & appeared last couple years.

Ground Zero for their import is not far from me, a slate company in eastern PA that was importing material from Asia.

They got overwhelming here, for a few years in the late 20-teens, then basically fizzled out. I think some local bird or bat adapted to eat them. We went from having playground equipment and houses covered in them, to almost never seeing one anymore.

 

[Sigarms]

He had apparently lobbied to make it our national bird, thinking the American Bald Eagle was a stupid choice. He made some good arguments for it, Ben was no dummy, but ultimately lost that contest.

Did Benjamin Franklin Want the National Bird To Be A Turkey?

The story about Benjamin Franklin wanting the National Bird to be a turkey is just a myth. This false story began due to a letter Franklin wrote to his daughter criticizing the original eagle design for the Great Seal, saying that it looked more like a turkey. In the letter, Franklin wrote that...

fi.edu

What I really want to know is how Ben knew that the Eagle could be somewhat lazy LOL

 

[WinterDeere]

Did Benjamin Franklin Want the National Bird To Be A Turkey?

The story about Benjamin Franklin wanting the National Bird to be a turkey is just a myth. This false story began due to a letter Franklin wrote to his daughter criticizing the original eagle design for the Great Seal, saying that it looked more like a turkey. In the letter, Franklin wrote that...

fi.edu

Interesting! Good thing I used “apparently”.

 

[Sigarms]

Interesting! Good thing I used “apparently”.

I honestly thought the same thing for a very long time...

 

[ponytug]

Too bad about the Ben Franklin turkey story. I'd always believed that as well.

That sort of reliance on what was said out of my experience often brings to mind this Legally Blonde scene;

And yes, there's no way that I'd bet my life on whether a reported or recorded item was accurate or factual, especially one several thousand years ago. Nuh huh, not happening.

All the best,

Peter

 

[Oaktree]

I've been mowing around the milkweed patches on the family homestead... any butterfly which migrates thousands of miles deserves a break.

I do the same. Extremely fragrant when in bloom, and the patches are full of insects...monarchs, hummingbird moths, all sorts of bees. Last year bears seem to have discovered it, one morning the whole patch had been trampled. Speaking of bears, they seem to be more plentiful in recent years. We've always had them, but not to the extent we do now.

Bats have largely disappeared around here over the last 20 or so years, though we did see some a few evenings ago. Hopefully, they'll recover...the mosquito population has boomed in their absence.

 

[Runner]

Not bug, critter or disease, but Russian olive bushes are another extremely invasive species around NW MO. The leaves are kind of pretty and they smell like bubble gum, but horrible plants. They would take over the yard in a couple of years if I didn't cut and spray to keep them out.