Last week, I noticed a huge wasp perched on a dried-up cucumber leaf. It was a male cicada killer wasp, Sphecius speciosus. These beneficial wasps show up each year shortly after the annual cicadas ...

It’s late summer, and the dog-day cicadas (Tibicen canicularis, identifiable by its large size and black-and-olive-green pattern on the back of the thorax) are making themselves known. The males, ...