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Other Pollinators / Mingus Trail
« Last post by The15thMember on March 14, 2024, 12:21:27 pm »My family and I hiked up to the Mingus Family Cemetery yesterday in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I saw so many aggregations of little Andrena mining bees emerging. We saw a lot of eastern comma butterflies puddling along the trail, although they were too fast for me to get any good pictures of them with my phone camera. We also found this beautiful beetle, which I can't seem to ID. I'm inclined to think it's some sort of dynastid beetle, but even after scouring Bugguide for around a hour, I couldn't seem to find any that are this color. And Google was no help, since "large green beetle NC" and other related searches just gives me page after page of June bugs. We also saw some interesting mushrooms and some beautiful moss sporophytes.