Ask any New Englander about native insects, and he’s apt to immediately identify two: the mosquito and the black fly. The former find ample breeding ground in the wetlands of the region and feast annually on the blood of hikers and beachgoers. The black fly is, if anything, even more vicious. Thankfully it is more limited in both range and time period, thriving only in the late spring and early summer in northern New England. The other regional scourge is the gypsy moth, which every ten years or so appears in the form of thousands of tiny caterpillars that decimate the foliage. Many attempts have been made to curtail the menace, including introduction of a parasitic fly that eats gypsy moth larvae. Unfortunately, the fly also eats larvae of the luna moth, a delicate greenish moth with a wingspan of up to five inches that is New England’s most beautiful insect. In recent years, the luna moth has made a comeback and it is a more common nighttime visitor in the region.

Due to all of the variations in habitat, New England is a rich breeding ground for creepy-crawlies, most of which are absolutely harmless. There are more spiders in New York and New England than there are bird species in all of North America. The only poisonous variety, however, is the black widow, which is recognizable by its jet-black body with a broken red hourglass on its abdomen. These spiders are extremely rare; and while their venom is a neurotoxin, only about 1 percent of bites end in death.