Stink bug
Pentatomidae · True bugs
Stink bug
Staten Island, 5 July 2026
A stink bug on a grass seed head on Staten Island in July, yellow-green and speckled with black, the piercing mouthparts typical of the family tucked away for the moment. The straw colour, the narrow build and the grass seed head it is sitting on all fit the Rice Stink Bug, a grass specialist of the eastern states that turns up well north of any rice, though a nymph of one of the commoner brown stink bugs is not fully excluded.
Stink bugs feed by stabbing plant tissue and drawing out the contents rather than chewing, and get their name from the defensive compounds most species release from glands on the thorax when disturbed. Genus is a harder call than family here; this angle doesn't show the underside markings that would settle it.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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