This head-on portrait highlights a red milkweed beetle, a ubiquitous resident on milkweed plants beginning in midsummer, and from that point onward I doubt there is a milkweed that doesn’t have at least one. Their long antennae remind me of longhorn cattle, and I find myself thinking of them in their numbers as a sort of herd, roaming the plains of their plants. As it turns out, I’m not along in this association; the milkweed beetle is a type of longhorn beetle.
According to an article by Penn State Extension, milkweed beetles make a “peet” sound when startled. I don’t recall ever hearing a startled beetle myself, or if I have, I likely didn’t recognize the beetle as the source and probably attributed it to a nearby bird. I don’t often think of beetles as making any sound, save perhaps for hardcore chewing, so a startled beetle making a “peet” would likely be met by an equally startled photographer!
What I do know about milkweed beetles is that they mate like rabbits; where there’s one, there’s several, and where there’s several, there’s at least one pair going at it. My archives have more than one such shot, but then, that’s nature for you – birds do it, and bees do it, and none of them are the least bit bashful about it. Sadly, I have not yet encountered a batch of young beetles – beetle-lings? – which apparently look like miniature versions of their adult selves, and would prove a fun challenge for macro photography.