Wednesday was a slow news day - nothing but an earthquake, the threat of a derecho, tornadoes, the discovery of Asian carp a few miles from Lake Michigan and one or two other things I missed. In the middle of all of these doldrums, we got sent a photo of a large insect, which I tried my best to identify and managed to get it wrong.

After the jump, more links about bugs: better identification of the Wednesday insect, some world-class local collections in our midst and contemporary insect identification humor from The Onion.

Warning: most of the photos contain links to pictures of bugs. If you like bugs, you'll like the links. If you are squeamish about bugs, this might be the Links column to skip.

On Wednesday, JT from American Harley Davidson on Jackson Road sent in a photo of a big bug to the newsroom of AnnArbor.com. I talked to him on the phone and he described it as a huge moth. I managed to misidentify it as a Dobsonfly, posted the result, and went home.

Based on multiple reader comments, it's now clear that this insect was a member of the Sphingidae family, commonly known as Sphinx moths, hawk moths, or hummingbird moths.

Here are some ways I'm going to make sure I don't make this mistake again.

Identifying butterflies and moths with photographic guides

BugGuide.net is hosted by Iowa State University Entomology: "The guide is a collection of guide pages providing information about insects, spiders, and other related arthropods. Information provided includes natural history, images, links to other web sites of interest, and references to useful books."

Moth Photographers Group at Mississippi State University:"The Moth Photographers Group exists as a non-profit, self-help organization for the purpose of aiding nature photographers and others in the identification of moths. The ultimate aim of the organization is to make available on the Internet photographs of a high percentage of the moths occuring in North America."

Butterflies and Moths of North America: "The "Butterflies and Moths of North America" web site and database were built upon a foundation developed by scientists at the USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center from 1995-2005. The dedicated work of NPWRC scientists, staff, and contractors is invaluable to this project, and their efforts are much appreciated."

Insects in our midst

The University of Michigan Museum of Zoology Insect Collection has 4.5 million specimens: "An emphasis on specific taxonomic groups has produced outstanding collections of the Acari, Orthoptera, and Odonata, and to a lesser extent, the Homoptera, Coleoptera and Lepidoptera. The aquatic groups and a significant portion of the mite collection are databased and there is an ongoing effort to make the rest of the collection digitally accessible."

Odonata are the dragonflies; the Michigan Odonata Survey has a thorough collection of this species found in Michigan with lots of beautiful photos if you like dragonflies.

The weblog Urban Dragon Hunters, which chronicles an ongoing search for dragonfly species in Wayne County: "Most ecologists like to work in pristine areas. Urban areas are largely ignored. Since 2001, we have recorded 46 new species for Wayne County, MI, bringing the total to 95 species (there's a link to the checklist below)."

Insect identification in contemporary humor

The Onion has written a number of articles similar to my brief Wednesday account. A 1996 news brief noted large cockroaches in a Cleveland apartment. A 2007 description of a sighting of a bee in Dallas, Texas. notes: "According to entomologists at the University of Texas at Dallas, the Apis mellifera was most likely trying to pollinate a nearby cluster of dandelions and was not, as alleged by 50-year-old attorney Georgia Sakko, who has twice endured the pain of childbirth and successfully battled breast cancer, "out to get us.""

Beware of stories that you write that are too closely modeled on previous Onion stories.

Osage orange

Uncovered Market has an October 2005 photo of an Osage orange, a green wrinkly thing found at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market and marketed as good to repel bugs. A search through Real Time Farms did not turn up any of these for sale yet this season.

Edward Vielmetti writes about bugs for AnnArbor.com. Contact edwardvielmetti@annarbor.com.