{"id":47042,"date":"2013-08-31T15:10:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-31T14:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?guid=bc815a81f4603d4fca2aa9b4ea8cdf45"},"modified":"2026-07-16T08:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T07:00:08","slug":"milkweed-bugs-large-small","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/milkweed-bugs-large-small\/","title":{"rendered":"Milkweed Bugs, Large & Small"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year I wrote a blog about the milkweed bug Oncopeltus fasciatus, which is also called the large milkweed bug. It’s the kind I usually seeon milkweed stems and leaves or sunning themselves on objects near milkweed.<\/p>\n

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Large milkweed bugs, Oncopeltus fasciatus, sunning on a fence rail. Adults sport a bright pattern of two black spots adn a wide black band on a orange-red background.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This week I stopped to look at the milkweed bug pictured below. It was sitting on milkweed flowers where its colors contrasted beautifully with the pink and cream blossoms. Looking more closely I saw by the pattern on its back that it was not the kind I usually see. It was the other milkweed bug: Lygaeus kalmii, also called the small milkweed bug.<\/p>\n

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A small milkweed bug, Lygaeus kalmii. The adult pattern is usually described as a red X on black, but I see a black heart and three red triangles on a red background.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like large milkweed bugs, small milkweed bugs also mainly eat milkweed seeds, piercing them with a sharp beak, injecting enzymes, and then sucking up the dissolved food. Both kinds of milkweed bugs also sometimes drink nectar from flowers — the one above may have been having a sip when I spotted it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year I wrote a blog about the milkweed bug Oncopeltus fasciatus, which is also called the large milkweed bug. It’s the kind I usually seeon milkweed stems and leaves or sunning themselves on objects near milkweed. This week I stopped to look at the milkweed bug pictured below. It was sitting on milkweed flowers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":2193106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-2EsmoNgjwak\/TohpFLNFh-I\/AAAAAAAAAbE\/HLeFinggErA\/s1600\/3","fifu_image_alt":"Milkweed Bugs, Large & Small","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[2450,5619,5618,5620,5617],"class_list":["post-47042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-julie-feinstein","tag-large-milkweed-bug","tag-lygaeus-kalmii","tag-oncopeltus-fasciatus","tag-small-milkweed-bug"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2193106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}